Conserving the last drop

The way forward may be to not rely only on dams, interlinked rivers, and borewell drilling — but to supplant these with effective water conservation, storage and groundwater recharge

For the past one week, The Hindu has explored the multi-faceted crisis of water scarcity that has gripped India this summer, through a daily series titled ‘Last Drop’. The series sought to give our readers a comprehensive understanding of six critical themes underpinning the scarcity question.

For each theme the series outlined the contours of the crisis at a national level; it also supplied grassroots context, telling compelling stories from villages across the country, to illustrate the hard realities that millions of water-starved rural poor live with daily.

The series kicked off with a close look at the frenzied pace of borewell drilling that can be found across many parts of India, from the suburban neighbourhoods of Hyderabad to the parched dry lands of Latur.

Land of 90,000 borewells

In the first article of the series (“Drilling for their lives”, May 3), we visited the heartland of Marathwada, which is in some ways the epicentre of the 2016 drought. There we discovered a land of 90,000 borewells, a number so breathtaking that it even defied calculations of the official well-enumerators of the area. It had also driven the water table 1,300 feet into the ground in some parts.

We next visited the heartland of the Deccan plateau in Telangana (“Telangana’s tanker economy”, May 4), where a severe deficit of rainfall has pushed distressed households into the arms of the private water tanker economy.

At this early stage in the series, it was becoming increasingly evident that to avoid suffering the worst effects of the water-scarce months, a bridge had to be built between flood and drought, in the words of Professor S. Janakarajan, Professorial Consultant at the Madras Institute of Development Studies and President, South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies.

In our goal to provide our readers with a 360 degree view of water problems in India, we shifted our gaze from quantity to quality concerns, and nowhere in the country were water quality issues more starkly exemplified than in a small pocket of northwestern Tamil Nadu, in the districts of Krishnagiri and Dharmapuri (“Drinking water, sipping poison”, May 5). This region has been seriously afflicted by fluoride-contaminated groundwater, with sometimes catastrophic health consequences for the population. Our report shone a light upon the unusually high prevalence of kidney disease, renal failure, epileptic seizures, and mental retardation among the people here, notwithstanding a major Japan-financed fluorosis mitigation project.

Delving further into some of the solutions that the Indian government has come up with over the years to stave off periodic droughts, the ‘Last Drop’ series re-examined the logic and potential pitfalls associated with big dams and the proposal to interlink major rivers (“Interlinking: An idea with flaws, May 7”).

In the Mettur region of Tamil Nadu, we unearthed a curious paradox of poverty amidst plenty, in the currency of water (“Scarcity in Mettur’s vicinity”, May 6). At the heart of this conundrum was the ever-prevalent problem of wasted runoff, or water that is improperly channelled and fails to efficiently recharge groundwater levels.

The failure to upgrade water storage capacity can be traced back to inadequate policy attention towards de-silting dams, tanks and canals, and also on repair and maintenance to plug leaks along the way.

Problem in policy

Policy is also to blame in some parts of the country, for deeper, systemic failures with regards to water scarcity. For example, in Maharashtra, endemic corruption has beset large-scale construction deals, and drought expert P. Sainath explained that Rs. 1,18,000 crore was spent in that State over 12 years, and yet only 18 per cent of gross cropped area was under irrigation.

Similarly, Maharashtra and parts of the Deccan peninsula exemplify the distorting effects of crop subsidies and a skewed agricultural produce market that rewards farmers who cultivate unsuitably water-intensive crops such as sugarcane and other cash crops.

Yet policy is also shaping the very fundamentals of river-based irrigation and drinking water systems, especially through the mega project of interlinking the key river basins across the country. This proposal has found enthusiastic supporters in the present government. But as our article on its flaws explained, there are several monumental consequences that it will have to reckon with. These include the risk that it could displace nearly 1.5 million people due to the submergence of 27.66 lakh hectares of land.

If such risks are rigorously managed, then there could be tangible benefits in terms of 35 million additional hectares of irrigation, the generation of 34,000 additional megawatts of power, and “incidental benefits” of flood control, navigation, fisheries, salinity and pollution control, according to the Central government.

If India is to boldly march into a water-secure future that it builds for itself, then it must also glance backward to learn how our ancestors invested meticulously in conserving water, harvesting rainfall and allowing these savings to nurture the aquifer and water table.

Rounding off the ‘Last Drop’ series, we therefore invited our readers to join us on a delectable journey through time for a glimpse into how the ancient bawari system, or stepwells, of Rajasthan promoted a sustainable, community-focused approach towards water conservation (“Conservation: Lessons from ancient India”, May 8).

Indeed the way forward may be for India to not rely only on large dams, interlinked rivers, and borewell drilling, but also supplant these extraction-focussed projects with more effective and widespread water conservation, storage and groundwater recharge.

Establishing this harmony between water extraction and restoration could help us avoid a bleak future ravaged by endless cycles of floods and droughts.

narayan@thehindu.co.in

Keywords: water conservation, groundwater, drinking water

Source: The Hindu, 9-05-2016

Unseeing the drought

The suffering of millions does not create public outrage, much less government 

The people of India’s villages carry collective memories of centuries of calamitous losses of sometimes millions of lives in famines. Famines have been pushed into history, unarguably one of free India’s greatest accomplishments. But the same can’t be said about droughts, which continue to extract an enormous toll on human suffering.

At least a third of the residents in India’s countryside are battling drought — many for the third consecutive year. Near-zero yields, sinking groundwater levels, drying streams and reservoirs have resulted in a massive slowdown in agricultural growth — it grew by minus 0.2 per cent in 2014-15, with no imminent signs of recovery. For millions of farmers, especially the small and marginal ones who are most dependent on rains, there is little food and almost no work alternative. The rural reality is stark: Around 55 per cent of households have no land at all, and are entirely dependent on manual labour to provide food to their families. But outside farming, there is little work available in the countryside.

The human consequences of this massive distress movement of people are inestimable. This should be intolerable in a country that boasts of being the fastest growing major economy in the world, with stocks of foodgrains in government warehouses ranging from 50 to 80 million tonnes. But the avoidable suffering of millions of children, women and men in today’s India, because they lack food, work and water, still does not create public outrage, much less elementary accountability from governments.

Even colonial governments were guided in times of scarcity by famine codes, which contained detailed guidelines to employ all persons who seek work in low-paid public works, to enable survival. These were combined with programmes of distress-feeding of children, the old and sick, and starving; fodder camps for cattle; and the transportation of water. In the decades I worked in the civil service, we still regarded the preservation of human and animal life during scarcities, along with protection of persons from caste and communal violence, to be among the highest duties of public service. The times today are dramatically different. In the glitter of contemporary India, the distress of city car drivers in the country’s capital, who have to find other modes of transport on alternate days, occupies far more public and media attention than the agony of daily survival of millions of people in rural India.

The highest priority of the Central government in times of scarcity should be to ensure the creation of millions of additional person-days of work in all affected villages. Instead, we find that it continues a policy of false claims, low-resourcing and poor management of highly delayed financial flows.

Colonial famine codes and scarcity codes of post-colonial India were not legally binding, but they spurred local administrations to create millions of person-days of wage employment in a vast battery of village public works. Today, the duties of governments are written into a law, the historic Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which creates legal obligations on governments to create at least 100 days of work in a year for all rural households that seek wage work in rural public works close to their homes. Given the scale of distress of landless workers, small and marginal farmers and livestock rearing communities in times of recurring scarcity, it can reasonably be expected that there would be a huge spurt of demand for employment in these times.

The finance minister claimed he had allocated the highest ever resources to MGNREGA in the 2016 budget. However, allocations have actually fallen significantly in real terms from the peak of 0.6 per cent of GDP in 2010-11 to 0.26 per cent of GDP in 2016-17. Also, if the 2010-11 allocations are adjusted for inflation, allocations in 2016-17 should be higher than Rs 66,000 crore to actually qualify as the highest ever. The allocations made in the current budget is Rs 38,500 crore. Of this, as much as Rs 12,590 crore is required to meet the record high of pending liabilities at the end of the last financial year (2015-16). Therefore, the amount of resources required to meet wage demands in the current year is only Rs 25,910 crore.

What does this huge bill of pending liabilities represent? It simply means that workers have not been paid wages, often for several months, for work done in the past. If wages are delayed so extensively even during times of acute distress then a precariously surviving impoverished person cannot rely on MGNREGA to extend wage and social protection in normally lean times. In effect, by deliberately delaying fund releases to states, the Central government ensures that fewer and fewer workers actually demand work under the programme. This is, under the law, a demand-led programme, in which the Central government is legally bound to provide all the resources needed to meet the demands for work up to 100 days per rural household. Chronically delayed payments kill the demand for work and thereby subvert the central purpose of the law.

Drought has been declared in 10 states. The Union government made a grand announcement of 50 days additional work in drought affected areas, but it did not back it with the allocation of a single additional rupee. We estimate that an additional 50 days of work just for drought affected job-card holders would require an additional allocation of Rs 15,000 crore — that’s over and above the normal requirements of the programme, which have not been made to begin with. And the sad reality is that all 10 states ended the year with a negative balance of pending liabilities because of long-delayed releases from the Centre, and as a result, a mere 7 per cent of households in these states crossed 100 days of work.

It has become customary for the present government to make tall claims whenever it is confronted with criticism of neglect of the social and farm sectors, and of people battling drought. A simple reference to actual facts reveals the hollowness of its claims each time. Yet each time it seems to hope that people may not notice.

Source: Indian Express, 5-05-2016

A drought of action

ndia has a lasting infrastructure of public support that can, in principle, be expanded in drought years to provide relief. But business as usual seems to be the motto

Droughts in India used to be times of frantic relief activity. Large-scale public works were organised, often employing more than 1,00,000 workers in a single district. Food distribution was arranged for destitute persons who were unable to work. Arrangements were also made for debt relief, cattle camps, water supply and more. The drought relief system was best developed in the western States of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan, but the basic framework was much the same elsewhere even if its implementation often fell short.

This year, nothing like the same sense of urgency can be observed, despite 256 districts being declared drought-affected. To some extent, of course, people’s ability to withstand drought on their own has increased: incomes have risen, the rural economy is more diversified, and water supply facilities have improved. Also, a semblance of social security system has emerged in rural India, with permanent income support measures such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Public Distribution System (PDS), midday meals and social security pensions. This also reduces people’s dependence on special relief measures in drought years.

None of this, however, obviates the need for active intervention in a drought situation. Despite rapid economic growth and some entitlements, the rural poor in India continue to live in conditions of appalling deprivation and insecurity. And in some respects, notably water scarcity, the impact of drought may be worse than before. Recent reports from Bundelkhand and elsewhere confirm that without emergency support, drought continues to plunge millions of people into intolerable hardship.

To some extent, the nature of the required interventions has changed. The simplest way of preventing starvation in a drought situation today is to intensify the permanent income support measures mentioned earlier, for instance by expanding employment under MGNREGS, providing special food rations under the PDS, and arranging for improved school meals. That may not be enough, but it would be a good start.

The MGNREGS funds crunch

There are, however, no sign of this happening. According to official data, the MGNREGS generated 230 crore person-days of work in 2015-16. This essentially restored MGNREGS employment generation to the level it had reached before crashing to 166 crore person-days in 2014-15, when a new government took charge at the Centre. However, the Finance Minister had not provided for this recovery. The result was a mountain of arrears at the end of 2015-16 — more than Rs.12,000 crore. Yet the Finance Minister continued the unspoken policy (initiated by the previous government) of keeping the MGNREGS budget more or less constant in money terms year after year. If last year’s employment level is to be maintained this year, the Central government would need to spend at least Rs. 50,000 crore, rising to more than Rs. 60,000 crore if arrears are to be cleared — a legal obligation since MGNREGS workers have a right to payment within 15 days. Yet the allocation for MGNREGS in this year’s Budget is only Rs. 38,500 crore. Unless the Central government accepts the need for a large injection of funds, MGNREGS employment is all set to contract again, or wage payments will be postponed — both would be a disaster in a drought year as well as a violation of people’s entitlements under the law.

Slipping up on food security

It is arguable that the PDS is even more important than MGNREGS as a tool of drought relief. Monthly food rations under the PDS are more regular and predictable than MGNREGS work. They also cover a much larger fraction of the rural population — 75 per cent under the National Food Security Act (NFSA). A well-managed PDS is a major safeguard against hunger and starvation.

It is no accident that the worst reports of food deprivation come from Uttar Pradesh, which is nowhere near implementing the NFSA. No Indian State has more to gain than U.P. from the NFSA. Before the Act came into force, barely one-fourth of the rural population in U.P. benefited from the PDS under the “below poverty line” (BPL) category. The rest received nothing as the “above poverty line” (APL) quota was routinely sold in the open market by corrupt middlemen. Further, even BPL cards were often in the wrong hands. The NFSA is a chance for the government of U.P. to clean up this mess and cover 80 per cent of the rural population under an improved PDS, as many of the poorer States have already done to a large extent.

Unfortunately, recent reports on the status of the NFSA in U.P. are most alarming. Rapid investigations conducted recently in Moradabad, Rae Bareli and Lucknow districts (the last one just 23 km from the State Assembly) all came to the same conclusion: NFSA ration cards are yet to be distributed, many people are not even aware of the Act, and the same flawed system continues much as before. So much for Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s upbeat statement (made twice, on record, on April 7, 2016) that “we have implemented the Right to Food Act”. One wonders whether he knows that elections are coming up next year in U.P., and whether he thinks that this is the way to win them. Opposition parties, it seems, are equally blind to the situation.

In other States, the status of the NFSA varies a great deal, from dismal (e.g. in Rajasthan) to reasonably promising (in many of the eastern States). Alas, these developments are receiving very little attention. Few issues are more important at this time than the successful roll-out of the NFSA, yet it seems to be off the Central government’s radar. The Finance Minister’s recent Budget speech, for instance, did not make a single reference to it, or for that matter to nutrition in general. In fact, the Central government (led by the Prime Minister’s Office) is making things worse by pushing for Aadhaar-based biometric authentication of PDS beneficiaries. This wholly inappropriate technology has already caused havoc in Rajasthan, and is all set to disrupt the PDS across the country if the Central government has its way.

For the first time, India has a lasting infrastructure of public support that can, in principle, be expanded in drought years to prevent hunger and starvation. Business as usual, however, seems to be the motto. The price is paid by millions of people who are not just exposed to intense hardship but also losing valuable human and physical capital, condemning them to further poverty in the future.

Jean Drèze is Visiting Professor at the Department of Economics, Ranchi University.

Keywords: drought conditions, water scarcity, MGNREGS, public distribution system, NFSA, Right to Food Act

Source: The Hindu, 27-04-2016

For A Sustainable Solution to Drought





Think & act beyond immediate drought relief

The government has informed the Supreme Court that a quarter of India's population is affected by drought. Why the judiciary gets involved in something that clearly is in the domain of the executive is a valid discussion we defer for now. The government also apprised the court of its remedial measures. The urgent always gets precedence over the important. The important thing to do is to plan for optimal utilisation of the water resources India has, and India has just 4% of the world's water while it has 18% of the world's population.India allows most of the bounty of the two monsoons it gets to drain away to the sea. It must build more dams, big, small and tiny , to store a much larger proportion. Vidarbha gets more rain than the drier parts of Gujarat, but has not bothered to carry out water harvesting as Gujarat has, and so suffers. India needs a policy for national, integrated use of water across the country , based on equitable water entitlements of all Indians, overriding upp er riparian chauvinism. Such an in ternal model would help India's and other nations' claims against upper riparian chauvinism over the waters of rivers that originate outside the na tional borders. Canals and pipelines should be planned to make equitable access to water a reality. Water, as well as power that is used to extract water, must shed their subsidy , to prevent overuse. If these subsidies are removed, water-guzzling crops will become non-competitive in water-deficient areas: sugarcane will shift from Maharashtra to Bihar and eastern UP . Archaic flooding of fields must give way to drip irrigation and fertigation. Capital-intensive farming will call for economies of scale and, therefore, for allowing leasing of farmland. For this to be viable, firm titles to land must be guaranteed by the state. Industry must learn to recycle all the water it uses, and strive for zero net use of water.
All this is doable, with sufficient political will and leadership. An informed public discourse will help build the consensus needed to make these bold changes to policy. Stop hyperventillating over IPL.

Source: Economic Times, 21-04-2016