Aqua crisis: Editorial on potable water scarcity in India

 Conservation of water should be prioritised, through policy interventions and by raising awareness.

The scarcity of a resource that covers 71% of the earth’s surface seems to be cruelly ironic. But that is the crisis confronting India and, particularly, the country’s poor today. Per-person water availability in India has fallen by about 75% in the 75 years since Independence. Every Indian today has access to only 1,486 cubic metres of potable water per year, which places the country in the water-stressed category. In fact, India is dangerously close to the 1,000 cubic metre benchmark that would push the country into the water-scarce category. Data from the Central Ground Water Board show that as many as 1,006 units out of the 7,089 assessed across India could be categorised as ‘over-exploited’ — more water is extracted from them than is usually replenished by the monsoon rains. Given that 62% of India’s irrigation needs and 85% of rural water supply are derived from groundwater, it is not surprising that agricultural-intensive states like Punjab, Haryana, and Tamil Nadu top the list of states with the most over-exploited groundwater units. Another factor compounding the problem is climate change. The recent synthesis report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — it compiled several previous reports together — has stressed that global development has to be ‘climate resilient’ if there is any hope of pulling the planet back from the brink of reaching the dreaded 1.5-degree Celsius limit of warming above pre-industrial levels by the 2030s. The intensification of climate change would worsen water paucity, generating catastrophic spillover effects in several sectors.

Safe drinking water is a public resource; in theory, it should be available to all. And yet, encroachment and pollution of surface water bodies, over extraction, the lack of alternative sources of replenishing aquifers, municipal inertia, poor urban planning, among other factors, put this public resource out of the reach of many people. Conservation of water should be prioritised, through policy interventions and by raising awareness. The steeper challenge is to find a balance between a populous country’s agricultural needs and the availability of drinking water. What makes the crisis serious is its layered nature. Plans of water conservation are meaningless unless there is a simultaneous, sustained campaign to address challenges that straddle such spheres as ecology, environment, climate, civic responsibilities, urban design and so on.

What India’s new water policy seeks to deliver

 

Mihir Shah writes: It calls for multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder approach to water management.

In November 2019, the Ministry of Jal Shakti had set up a committee to draft the new National Water Policy (NWP). This was the first time that the government asked a committee of independent experts to draft the policy. Over a period of one year, the committee received 124 submissions by state and central governments, academics and practitioners. The NWP is based on the striking consensus that emerged through these wide-ranging deliberations.

The policy recognises limits to endlessly increasing water supply and proposes a shift towards demand management. Irrigation consumes 80-90 per cent of India’s water, most of which is used by rice, wheat and sugarcane. Without a radical change in this pattern of water demand, the basic water needs of millions of people cannot be met. Thus, crop diversification is the single most important step in resolving India’s water crisis. The policy suggests diversifying public procurement operations to include nutri-cereals, pulses and oilseeds. This would incentivise farmers to diversify their cropping patterns, resulting in huge savings of water. The largest outlets for these procured crops are the Integrated Child Development Services, the mid-day meal scheme and the public distribution system. Creating this link would also help address the crisis of malnutrition and diabetes, given the superior nutritional profile of these crops. Reduce-Recycle-Reuse has been proposed as the basic mantra of integrated urban water supply and wastewater management, with treatment of sewage and eco-restoration of urban river stretches, as far as possible through decentralised wastewater management. All non-potable use, such as flushing, fire protection, vehicle washing must mandatorily shift to treated wastewater.

Within supply-side options, the NWP points to trillions of litres stored in big dams, which are still not reaching farmers and explains how irrigated area could be greatly expanded at very low cost by deploying pressurised closed conveyance pipelines, combined with Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems and pressurised micro-irrigation. The NWP places major emphasis on supply of water through “nature-based solutions” such as the rejuvenation of catchment areas, to be incentivised through compensation for eco-system services. Specially curated “blue-green infrastructure” such as rain gardens and bio-swales, restored rivers with wet meadows, wetlands constructed for bio-remediation, urban parks, permeable pavements, green roofs etc are proposed for urban areas.

The NWP gives the highest priority to sustainable and equitable management of groundwater. Participatory groundwater management is the key. Information on aquifer boundaries, water storage capacities and flows provided in a user-friendly manner to stakeholders, designated as custodians of their aquifers, would enable them to develop protocols for effective management of groundwater.

From time immemorial, the people of India have had a reverential relationship with rivers. But water policy has seen rivers primarily as a resource to serve economic purposes. This overwhelmingly instrumentalist view of rivers has led to their terrible degradation. While acknowledging their economic role, the NWP accords river protection and revitalisation prior and primary importance. Steps to restore river flows include: Re-vegetation of catchments, regulation of groundwater extraction, river-bed pumping and mining of sand and boulders. The NWP outlines a process to draft a Rights of Rivers Act, including their right to flow, to meander and to meet the sea.

The new NWP considers water quality as the most serious un-addressed issue in India today. It proposes that every water ministry, at the Centre and states, include a water quality department. The policy advocates adoption of state-of-the-art, low-cost, low-energy, eco-sensitive technologies for sewage treatment. Widespread use of reverse osmosis has led to huge water wastage and adverse impact on water quality. The policy wants RO units to be discouraged if the total dissolved solids count in water is less than 500mg/L. It suggests a task force on emerging water contaminants to better understand and tackle the threats they are likely to pose.

The policy makes radical suggestions for reforming governance of water, which suffers from three kinds of “hydro-schizophrenia”: That between irrigation and drinking water, surface and groundwater, as also water and wastewater. Government departments, working in silos, have generally dealt with just one side of these binaries. Rivers are drying up because of over-extraction of groundwater, which reduces the base-flows needed for rivers to have water after the monsoon. Dealing with drinking water and irrigation in silos has meant that aquifers providing assured sources of drinking water dry up because the same aquifers are used for irrigation, which consumes much more water. And when water and wastewater are separated in planning, the result is a fall in water quality.

The NWP also suggests the creation of a unified multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder National Water Commission (NWC), which would become an exemplar for states to follow. Government water departments include professionals predominantly from civil engineering, hydrology and hydrogeology. Without experts in water management, social mobilisation, agronomy, soil science, hydrometeorology, public health, river ecology and ecological economics, solutions to India’s complex water problems will remain elusive. Since systems such as water are greater than the sum of their constituent parts, solving water problems requires understanding whole systems, deploying multi-disciplinary teams and a trans-disciplinary approach. Since wisdom on water is not the exclusive preserve of any one section of society, governments should build enduring partnerships with primary stakeholders of water, who must become an integral part of the NWC and its counterparts in the states. The indigenous knowledge of our people, with a long history of water management, is an invaluable intellectual resource that must be fully leveraged.

This column first appeared in the print edition on October 29, 2021 under the title ‘A new paradigm for water’. The writer chaired the committee to draft the new National Water Policy set up by the Ministry of Jal Shakti in 2019

Source: Indian Express, 29/10/21

Centre, states must seize opportunity to come together for water governance

 

The Centre can work with the states in building a credible institutional architecture for gathering data and producing knowledge about water resources — a foundational necessity to address most federal water governance challenges.

A slew of bills on water awaits Parliament’s approval. Two of them, passed by the Lok Sabha, were listed for clearing by Rajya Sabha in the monsoon session — The Interstate River Water Disputes Amendment Bill 2019 and the Dam Safety Bill 2019. The truncated session could not get to discuss the bills, though. A common issue that the bills confront is with respect to the ways in which the Centre can work with the states to deal with the emerging challenges of inter-state water governance. The latest centrally sponsored scheme (CSS), Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), too is pumping massive finances into achieving universal access to safe and secure drinking water in rural areas — otherwise a domain of the states. JJM presents an opportunity to get states on board for a dialogue towards stronger Centre-states coordination and federal water governance ecosystem.

The two bills under Parliament’s consideration attend to longstanding issues of inter-state externalities. The Interstate River Water Disputes Amendment Bill 2019 seeks to improve the inter-state water disputes resolution by setting up a permanent tribunal supported by a deliberative mechanism, the dispute resolution committee. The Dam Safety Bill 2019 aims to deal with the risks of India’s ageing dams, with the help of a comprehensive federal institutional framework comprising committees and authorities for dam safety at national and state levels. The other pending bills also propose corresponding institutional structures and processes.

However, the agenda of future federal water governance is not limited to these issues alone. There are a whole set of reasons — some well-known and others new — why a coordinated response from the Centre and states is vital. These include emerging concerns of long-term national water security and sustainability, the risks of climate change, and the growing environmental challenges, including river pollution. These challenges need systematic federal response where the Centre and the states need to work in a partnership mode.

Greater Centre-states coordination is also crucial for pursuing the current national projects — whether Ganga river rejuvenation or inland navigation or inter-basin transfers. However, water governance is perceived and practiced as the states’ exclusive domain, even though their powers are subject to those of the Union under the Entry 56 about inter-state river water governance. The River Boards Act 1956 legislated under the Entry 56 has been in disuse. No river board was ever created under the law. The Centre’s role is largely limited to resolving inter-state river water disputes. That, too, a detached one in setting up tribunals for their adjudication.

Combined with the states’ dominant executive power, these conditions create challenges for federal water governance. The country is ill-equipped to address the governance of increasingly federalised waters to pursue its development and sustainability goals.

This state of affairs puts the proposed bills at a disadvantage. Each bill proposes their own institutional mechanisms and processes leaning on closer Centre-state coordination and deliberation. The disputes resolution committee and dam safety authority rely on active Centre-states participation. Segmented and fragmented mechanisms bear the risks of the federal water governance gap. The massive central assistance through JJM is an opportunity to open a dialogue with the states to address this gap.

JJM involves large-scale intergovernmental transfers to states at a proposed outlay of Rs 3.6 lakh crore (Centre and states together) over the next five years towards universal access to safe and secure drinking water in rural areas. In terms of the numbers, this is perhaps the largest CSS so far — larger than even the MGNREGA or the PMGSY.

Globally, federated systems with comparable organisation of powers have used similar investments to usher key water sector reforms. Australia has plans to make large investments to nudge its federal constituents towards a dialogue under its National Water Act of 2007 and to arrive at the Murray-Darling agreement. The experiences also suggest that inter-governmental transfers produce better outcomes when the transfers build on an ex ante federal consensus.

The scale of investments under JJM can be used similarly to draw states to deliberate over reworking of the larger structural contours of federal water governance. The engagement can also be beneficial to JJM’s success.

Drinking water supply is within the states’ domain of responsibilities. They are equipped with the institutional channels for this purpose. The mission has to build on these structures for enduring outcomes. It has to ensure that the states maintain the assets and facilities created through the mission. Such institutionalisation is most critical for JJM’s success. States will certainly appreciate the much-needed succour to strengthen their institutions and improve the delivery of this essential service to its populations.

The symbiotic phase of implementing JJM can be productively used to engage in a dialogue with the states about the larger water resources management agenda, beyond the mission’s goals. It can discuss the contours of Centre-state partnership for the success of the above two bills and move towards a robust federal water governance ecosystem. The dialogue can consider the long-recommended idea of distributing responsibilities and partnership-building between the Centre and states to long-term water security goals. For instance, the Centre can work with the states in building a credible institutional architecture for gathering data and producing knowledge about water resources — a foundational necessity to address most federal water governance challenges.

This article first appeared in the print edition on November 19, 2020 under the title ‘Writing on the water’. Chokkakula is with the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. Views are personal

Source: Indian Express, 19/11/20

Let’s be water wise for a secure future

As per Niti Aayog, India is facing a water crisis, with around 50% population experiencing high to extreme water shortage. By next year, 21 Indian cities may run out of groundwater. Globally, India is ranked 120 among 122 countries in the world that are facing an acute water crisis.

A couple of months ago, when India cricket captain Virat Kohli’s household was fined by the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram for washing cars with running water from a pipe, one of my friends could not believe that this was an offence liable for penalty. Her reaction was obviously based on the assumption that water is a free commodity or a gift of nature to be used willy-nilly by all.

Not anymore.

The alarm bells are ringing loud and clear. As per Niti Aayog, India is facing a water crisis, with around 50% population experiencing high to extreme water shortage. By next year, 21 Indian cities may run out of groundwater. And by 2030, if proactive water management steps are not undertaken, 40% of India would have no groundwater and no access to drinking water.

Globally, India is ranked 120 among 122 countries in the world that are facing an acute water crisis.

It’s not very difficult to understand why we have reached this situation. With average decline in rainfall in most regions of the country year-after-year and reckless extraction, groundwater has been falling drastically. Rivers, lakes and wells have been drying up. The fact that forests are being cut does not help either. Besides, there is no water management. India does not store even one-tenth of its annual rainfall, neither is there any focus on recycling grey water and rejuvenating water bodies. What is worrisome is the fact that there are growing inequalities in water availability—people in villages in Marathwada walk for several miles to get a bucket of water, while in cities some continue to pilfer and waste it.

Cut to Gurugram. The story is the same except that it is heightened manifold. Groundwater is falling drastically—by 1 to 3 metres every year—and faster than the Indian average due to rampant extraction for construction, industrial and residential use through illegal borewells. Groundwater table in the city has fallen from 15 feet in 1990 to 80 feet in 2010. Because of heavy concretisation, rainwater is neither absorbed nor does the run-off get accumulated in water bodies, which, too, are disappearing.

Buildings have been built on top of dried water bodies or else water bodies have been reduced to waste dumps and then encroached upon. Natural drains have been concretised. Storm water drains are clogged and their carrying capacity limited. The water supply infrastructure is faulty and has leakages leading to loss of substantial volume during distribution. There is next-to-negligible recycling of grey water. Overall, there is no focus on conservation, restoration, recharge or reuse.

Water efficiency alone can reduce water demand by a significant 25%.

At the residential level, putting waste RO water to use in gardening, not using pipes to clean cars or to water plants, opting for bucket bath instead of a shower bath, using water more judiciously in cleaning utensils, installing rainwater harvesting systems and maintaining them, not allowing water tanks to overflow and using water efficient fixtures and appliances are some of the measures to save water.

These solutions will now be reinforced with greater vigour by the centre and local municipalities. Nationally, the government has launched Jal Shakti Abhiyan (JSA) to rejuvenate the water sector, much on the lines of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Covering water-stressed blocks in 255 districts across the country, the JSA focuses on a) rainwater harvesting, b) reuse of treated waste water, c) rejuvenation of water bodies, and plantation.

The National Urban Sanitation Policy 2008 mandates reuse of at least 20% treated waste water. Besides, each city must initiate action to revive at least one water body under JSA. Plantation near water bodies, public spaces, parks and on roadside to improve green cover needs to be undertaken. The focus will be on citizen’s participation and funds are being allocated by the Centre to the urban local bodies (ULBs)—in-charge of execution.

Gurugram has had a headstart in launching its water restoration programmed titled “Gurujal” under the aegis of JSA. A helpline number 18001801817 to register water-related complaints, suggestions and feedback has been launched. Data collection for all borewells in the city is underway. Teams have been formed to check illegal extraction of water and compliance of rainwater harvesting systems. Awareness drives with RWAs, schools, NGOs, panchayats, builders and corporates are also being planned.

Interestingly, in one of the manuals of Jal Shakti Abhiyan, Garden Estate Colony of Gurugram features as a case study for best practices in rainwater and surface-run off harvesting. The colony has captured 46% of its rainwater harvesting potential and improved its water table by 1.7 metres. If Garden Estate can do it, other too can. All it takes is willingness.

In 2016, Gurugram’s water table reached a low that it was declared a dark zone. It’s high time we become water-wise. It will take effort from everyone to turn the tide.

(Shubhra Puri is the founder of Gurgaon First, a citizen initiative to promote sustainability in Gurugram through workshops and research books)

Source: Hindustan Times, 6/08/2019

India stares at water scarcity

Tackling drought must be the immediate priority for administrators across the country

The coming elections to the Lok Sabha, crucial to the future of our democracy, our pluralism, our federalism, are only a few weeks away.

But something else, something urgent, something is already upon us. And something that is going to coincide with the elections. A drought.

The rains have failed us. Nothing new, one might say. True, except that the rains’ let down this time comes on top of an already low-rain and, in many places, no-rain ground situation. And the next nearest rains are six months away. The cruelly blue, cloudless skies over much of India, north, central, eastern and peninsular India, say it all. And there is no guarantee that June will see the onset of a normal monsoon.

What the sky says

Does anyone care? Does the political class? The Prime Minister and Chief Ministers are not unaware of the situation. They cannot be. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has given them enough data. But when droughts and elections intersect, it is extremely uncomfortable to leaders. It is inconvenient to dwell on the skies’ tidings. Which government would like to tell farmers that suffering lies at their threshold? Who would like to tell them that water will be scarcer than before, that aquifers will plummet, crops wither, livestock go thirsty? Which government would, just weeks before the elections, tell us that with reservoirs drying up taps will sputter to a stop and that we may well be looking at water-rationing? The truth is, none of them will say that. This is where, as Amartya Sen has told us time and again, the media comes in, and comes in redemptively. It is India’s great good luck that public awareness, nudged and prodded by public discussions on meteorological data and media reportage, has kept droughts from deepening into famines in our country.

The IMD report on scant rains has received scant attention so far, with exceptions being provided by P. Sainath’s relentless warnings and observations of experts of the calibre and veracity of Ramchandra Sable, agro-meteorologist, and D.M. More, Secretary of the Second Maharashtra Irrigation Commission, reported in The Hindustan Times (January 6, 2019).

Rain deficit facts

To turn to the facts. The actual deficit last monsoon was modest — barely 10%. But the post-monsoon rainfall (October to December, 2018) or PMR as it is called by meteorologists has registered a 44% deficit. This national average deficit conceals shortages in some regions where it is much higher. In Marathwada, according to the IMD, the deficit is 84%, in Vidarbha, 88%.

Why should we worry, more than before, this time? For the reason that this low-rain and no-rain situation is going to aggravate the water crisis that we have brought upon ourselves without the ‘help’ of a dry sky. Years of policy-driven, corporate-driven water transfers from rural to urban, agriculture to industry, poor to rich and so on have made our country-side chronically water-scarce. Urban India does not realise this fast enough or well enough. It will, when there are power-outages and air-conditioners do not work! “By April-May,” Mr. Sainath said to me, “this drought could be tormenting millions in several States.” And that is when election-campaigning will be at its peak.

The pre-election mood ‘yesterday’ was all about agrarian distress, farm-loan waivers. Will the pre-election mood ‘tomorrow’ be even thinking of, leave alone talking of, drought and what can be done to address it beyond loan-waivers?

Though our major leaders deny it, Kaun Banega Pradhan Mantri — KBPM — is what occupies the high seat in their thinking today. They seem to be in aphasia if not amnesia about the massive waterlessness that has hit us already. If they see the parched ponds, the sharded earth, the leaf-shedding trees, panting crops, drooping livestock, they do not talk about it.

That is how politics is. And yet that is not how politics should be and that is not how the rural Indian voter is going to allow politics to be. Not any more. And good for that voter that it be so. Anti-incumbency may take five years in electoral politics to mature into an ouster. It does not take more than one failed farm-season to turn to impatience and then to rage. No politician in office or aspiring to it today can ignore the drought. It is going to be the biggest and immediate test for the new governments in Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh. Somewhere in her hurt ego, a ‘relieved’ Vasundhara Raje must be glad she is not going to have to fight the drought. Likewise, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Raman Singh. Not the Bharatiya Janata Party, not the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), not Narendra Modi but the drought is going to be the real challenge to the ‘collective opposition’ as it seeks to and could well manage to, oust the present regime.

Let there be no doubt that the Prime Minister of India 2019 will have to be India’s Drought Commissioner.

And let her or him face the challenge four-square and render a national service.

Time and money are short

There is a prequel to this.

For the NDA, time is short, money is not. For the Opposition, time is short, money shorter. What is short for both, equally, is credibility. It is critically short. The voter, especially the rural voter, has no illusions. A government either helps it overcome its life-and-death problems or does not. The ‘Delhi Government’ will be tested in 2019 for its credibility on many issues, among which certainly l’affaire Rafale is now top-of-the-list, followed by the Reserve Bank of India and the Central Bureau of Investigation mess-ups. But the elections in 2019 will test its credibility by what it does and says it will do for water-starved, food-short, livelihood-broken, rural India’s agrarian distress. And in States where the NDA is not in power — and now the States in which it is not exceeds the number of States in which it is — the rural voter will vote against whoever is in office unless the ‘government party’ makes drought relief, water-use, food security and massive earth-related programmes its absolute priority. In other words, unless it makes agrarian distress, now aggravated by the drought, its priority.

The failure of rains this time is so serious that ‘drought’ now means not just a farm crisis but a national crisis that will affect towns and cities no less than villages. ‘Agrarian crisis’ appears to urban India as something ‘out there’. No longer true. It is only a matter of time when the ‘taken-for-granted’ piped water supply will falter and when water cans will cost even more than they do, today.

Whoever becomes Prime Minister will do well to appoint a commission like the Farmers’ Commission, which Dr. M.S. Swaminathan headed, to advise him or her on how water scarce India, all of India, needs to face drought. And give that Commission just one month to complete its study, make its recommendations not just to government but to all Indians, to us, who have become so used to water-access imbalance, water-use lopsidedness, water prodigality in the midst of water poverty that we just do not care. And this time, not advisories or appeals but penalties will be needed.

Addressing the deepening drought, agrarian distress and water-management are critical not just for our governments to survive but for us to survive our governments.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi is a former administrator, diplomat and governor

Source: The Hindu, 23/01/2019

Saving rivers

As a first step, the capacity of treatment plants along all rivers must be urgently expanded

The finding of the Central Pollution Control Board that the number of critically polluted segments of India’s rivers has risen to 351 from 302 two years ago is a strong indictment of the departments responsible for environmental protection. The data show that the plethora of laws enacted to regulate waste management and protect water quality are simply not working. The study also underscores the failure of many national programmes run by the Centre for river conservation, preservation of wetlands, and water quality monitoring. Tests of Ganga water indicate it has fared better in Uttar Pradesh; but then, the clean-up plan for the river has received dedicated Central funding of ₹3,696 crore over three and a half years, compared to ₹351 crore given to 14 States to conserve 32 rivers. The failed efforts to control pollution are all too evident in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Assam, which account for a third of the degraded river segments. Their problems are worsened by the poor infrastructure available in a large number of cities and towns located near rivers. It is notable that these results come from a CPCB audit that was carried out at the instance of the National Green Tribunal. Ideally, the Board should be reporting more frequently on pollution, and carrying out intensive measures through State Pollution Control Boards to eliminate pollutants, starting with sewage and industrial effluents.

ALSO READ

More river stretches are critically polluted: Central Pollution Control Board

 

Managing sewage requires steady funding of treatment plants for all urban agglomerations that discharge their waste into rivers, and also reliable power supply. The deficit between sewerage available and the volume generated along the polluted stretches was estimated by the CPCB last year at 13,196 million litres a day. Rapid urbanisation is widening the gap, since infrastructure planning is not keeping pace with growth in housing. Moreover, with low priority accorded to enforcement of laws by the SPCBs and Pollution Control Committees — something that is unlikely to change quickly — the immediate plan should be to expand the supply of treatment plants. Sustained civil society pressure on governments is vital to ensure that this is done in a time-bound manner. On the industrial side, the plan to bring all liquid effluent discharge from textile units and tanneries to zero has to be pursued vigorously, giving industries the assistance to help them choose the best technologies for the recovery of waste water for reuse. These measures are urgently needed to revive India’s many dying rivers, protect its agriculture, and prevent serious harm to public health from contaminated water. A 2013 World Bank study estimated that environmental degradation is costing India at least $80 billion a year, of which losses to rivers form a significant part. This is indeed a problem of catastrophic dimensions.

Source: The Hindu, 18/09/2018

Death of a river is the death of an ecosystem

Do we really need to be told the obvious, by Leonardo da Vinci, no less, that “Water is the driving force in Nature”? “Thousands have lived without love, not one without water,” said the twentieth century English poet WH Auden, which may be closer to the bone. Indeed, we can go for longer without food than without water. Plans to protect air, water, women and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man. All these fights are one fight. All their solutions are interlinked. The death of a river is the death of an ecosystem.

In human terms the death of a river or a lake or a sea is as though somebody important in the family, somebody central to its well-being, has suddenly died. The absence of this key person pushes the remainder of the family below the poverty line – the line of loss and deprivation. If a parent dies, the children and remaining spouse must start all over again from minus. They have lost their advantages in several ways, if they had them to start with – they have lost their emotional confidence, their physical nurture, perhaps their financial security and certainly they have lost out on their overall well-being. That is the impact of a river dying, as if your father or mother suddenly died when you were very young, leaving you deprived forever. That is why our culture still mourns the disappearance of the Saraswati in ancient times. That is why we must fight for our rivers now, many of whom are half-dead. The pity and terror of it is they are being killed by our own indifference and greed or worse, by our inability to see that water is the pillar of our family and not an impersonal ‘substance’. Water contains us. As E.E. Cummings wrote, “For whatever we lose (of a you or a me)/Something of ourselves we find in the sea.”

Moreover, respecting water has everything to do with believing in God. If we believe in a Creator, then by abusing water, which is not only what most of our world is made but is also what we ourselves are mostly made of, we are guilty of a sin against Creation.

Respecting water also has everything to do with not believing in God. If we think we do not need a Mr or Ms Fixit God person but are absolute and ‘scientific’ masters of our destiny, we are guilty, by not respecting water, of destroying mankind. “Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it,” as Margaret Atwood writes in The Penelopiad.

One of the most powerful invocations of water was by Martin Luther King Jr in his fight for civil rights: “Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Water not only sustains our physical life and its context, it also sustains our spiritual life. Some of the most deeply moving experiences of a person’s life are with water from a holy river or spring. The water from these places symbolises our spiritual healing while rain pouring down from the sky is considered the master healer, the well-spring of life and the antidote to poison. But in the end, it will not matter who said what. It’s when the well or the tap is dry that we realise the worth of water.

Source: Hindustan Times, 4-06-2016

Citizens have right to safe water, say draft legislation

Groundwater will not be a free resource’.

The government has for the first time said that citizens had a right to safe water and laid out stringent rules on how corporations and large entities can extract groundwater in two separate pieces of draft legislation uploaded on the website of the Union Water Ministry and open for public comment.

The Bills —in a first — also propose fines ranging from Rs.5,000 to Rs. 5,00,000 depending on the level of infraction and who the perpetrators were. Groundwater wouldn’t also be a free resource and those who could pay for it ought to be doing so while ensuring that it was equitably available to all. The Bill doesn’t detail a mechanism but lays down broad principles.

To be sure, previous governments have also tried to enact legislation to ensure that groundwater— a fragile resource and 80% of India’s irrigation supply— is used judiciously. However, these didn’t account for the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution vesting powers to panchayats and municipalities in the management of water that includes groundwater and was rarely adopted by States.

More power to panchayats

The draft bills — the National Water Framework Bill and the Model Bill for the Conservation, Protection, Regulation and Management of Groundwater will be open for public comment until the month end, aim to decentralise water management and give more power to panchayats and gram sabhas to decide how water can be better used.

“What have we learned from Maharashtra [drought]? That in spite of spending so much on large dams it is among the least irrigated States,” Mihir Shah, Former Planning Commission member and Chair of the committee that drafted the Bills told The Hindu, “and that’s because the end users of water had little say.”

The most fundamental reform that the Bill sought to make was to do away with the “British Common Law” concept — as Mr. Shah described it — that he who owned the land could extract unlimited groundwater. According to the provisions of the proposed Bill, corporations and industries extracting groundwater now had to submit plans to ensure that water was used responsibly and that any possible contamination was remedied.

Funds for river clean-up

The NDA government has announced massive budget outlays to clean up rivers such as the Ganga as well embark on interlinking rivers to improve storage capabilities. The present legislation doesn’t attempt to decide if the States or the Centre ought to have the final say in developing or conserving water bodies.

The Bills also say that the top priority in the use of groundwater ought to be in meeting drinking, sanitation, food security, sustenance agriculture, the needs of women and only after that for industry.

There would also be an incentive for those who cultivate less water-intensive crops. There would also be groundwater security boards and groundwater protection zones that would be overseen by State bodies.

Keywords: right to safe water, NDA government, groundwater

Source: The Hindu, 4-06-2016

Most States have below 'normal' water storage in reservoirs

Important reservoirs in three of five regions in the country now have less water in storage compared to what they had on an average during the last ten years at this time of the year.

The latest bulletin of the Central Water Commission based on the data available on April 28, reveals that only Tripura, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh have reservoir storage levels that are better than 'normal', a term that denotes the average level of the last 10 years. The Commission's bulletin includes data on the storage status of 91 important reservoirs in the country that the Commission monitors.

The Western region, which includes Gujarat and Maharashtra, and the Southern region, which includes Andhra Pradesh Telangana, two combined projects in both these States, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, seem particularly hard-hit.

Reservoirs in the Western region have a live storage of 18 per cent compared to the ten-year average of 35 per cent. The figures are 13 and 23 per cent respectively for the Southern region and 21 and 31 per cent respectively for the Northern region, which includes Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan. The Central region, which includes Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and Eastern region, which includes Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal and Tripura have levels that are normal or better than normal.

All the regions have less water in storage than what they had at the corresponding point in time last year.

Reservoirs in the Telengana-Andhra region are the worst off with a deficit of 82 per cent, followed by Uttarakhand, with 75 per cent, and Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, with 61 per cent each.

Most reservoirs in Maharashtra have witnessed a drop of 50 per cent or more in storage levels when compared to the ten year average.

In the other hard-hit regions - Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand and as well as two combined projects in Andhra and Telengana - all reservoirs have recorded a decline in storage of more than 50 percent, except one.

Other States too that do not have as dismal a storage position also have reservoirs that have witnessed a more than 50 decline compared to the 'normal' numbers.

And in contrast, some of the deficit States have seen an improvement in the situation over the past week. Marginal improvements were seen in the position of Punjab, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh, for instance.

The total live storage capacity of all 91 reservoirs is 21 per cent, which is 64 percent of the storage this time last year and 77 percent of the decadal average.

Keywords: Central Water Commission, water management, reservoirs, drought

Source: The Hindu, 2-05-2016

March 22: World Water Day

Every year World Water Day (WWD) is observed globally on 22 March to preserve and ration consumption of water. Significance of the Day: WWD is observed to make a difference for the members of the global population who suffer from water related issues. It marks a day to prepare for how we manage water in the future. 2016 Theme: “Better Water, Better Jobs”. It focuses on the central role that water plays in creating and supporting good quality jobs. Almost half of the world’s workers (nearly 1.5 billion) people work in water related sectors and nearly all jobs depend on water and those that ensure its safe delivery. Background WWD was first formally proposed in Agenda 21 of United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992. Later, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) accepted the recommendation of UNCED and celebrated first World Water Day on 22 March 1993. Since then this day is observed annually to draw attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of fresh water resources. 2015 theme of WWD was ‘Water and Sustainable Development’.

India’s water crisis is set to worsen

In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a touchstone of dystopian literature, men will visit violence upon each other for the sake of water to drink. The future, unfortunately, is now in Latur in Maharashtra’s Marathwada region where the collector has invoked Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code relating to unlawful assembly. His order prohibits more than five people from gathering near 20 water storage tanks until 31 May in order to prevent possible violence over water scarcity in the drought-hit area. This has been some time coming. Last year, the city’s residents were supplied municipal water once in 15 days; this was later lowered to once a month.

In Punjab, meanwhile, the state Assembly has defied the Supreme Court to resolve that the Sutlej-Yamuna Link Canal (SYL) will not be built. With the Punjab Sutlej-Yamuna Link Land (Return of Property Rights) Bill, 2016, it has decided to deny Haryana its allotted share of the waters of the Ravi and Beas rivers, reneging on a 1976 deal. The consequence: half of the state receiving canal water for eight days after every 32 days, with the state’s southern regions particularly hard-hit.

The specifics are different in both cases. But there are two common inefficiencies that reflect upon India’s burgeoning water crisis—political and agricultural, the latter deriving in large part from the former.

Maharashtra’s sugar belt— which includes Marathwada— declared record production of the crop in 2014-15, a year in which it also faced a second drought after 2012-13. The problem: sugarcane is a water-guzzling crop, consuming over 70% of irrigated water, although it occupies just about 4% of farmed land in the state. That discrepancy hasn’t stopped successive state governments from bailing out the sugar industry time and again with subsidies and loan waivers, short-circuiting market dynamics and incentivizing sugarcane production. This must be seen in the context of the sugar lobby’s political influence and the involvement of a number of state politicians in the industry.

The SYL presents a different kind of opportunism. The issue, framed in populist terms, has been used as a political football since the days of the Khalistan movement. That legacy has shaped the terms of the debate, particularly in light of Punjab’s crop patterns; water-intensive rice crops cover over 60% of the state’s area under cultivation. That makes it easy to portray any inclination to honour the SYL agreement as being antifarmer, the kiss of death in Punjab’s politics.

Marathwada and the SYL are a microcosm of the water disputes that speckle the Indian map. And they are going to grow more intractable. Over the past 50 years, per capita availability of fresh water in India has declined from 3,000 cubic metres to a little over a thousand cubic metres; the global average is 6,000 cubic metres. Underlying this, both cause and effect, is escalating groundwater scarcity.

Of the country’s two sources of fresh water—surface water and groundwater—the latter accounts for some 55%. It also accounts for about 60% of irrigation needs, which take up 80% of India’s total water usage. That skewed pattern is in direct and growing conflict with growing urbanization levels, given that urban water demand per capita daily is thrice as high as rural demand. With India’s urban population expected to hit 50% of the total population by 2050, according to UN figures, that is an untenable situation.

As Marathwada and SYL show, the problem ties into a political ecosystem that is entangled in calculations of patronage and electoral viability. Massive agricultural subsidies, a mainstay of every administration, have incentivized indiscriminate water usage and inefficient cultivation patterns—a problem the Economic Survey 2015-16, presented last month, recognized when it said that the system “encourages using more inputs such as fertiliser, water and power, to the detriment of soil quality, health and the environment”. The result, according to the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration: India’s water tables are dropping at the rate of 0.3 metre a year. That sets up a vicious cycle, increasing the importance and political value of surface water, making those disputes more difficult in turn, thus boosting dependence on—and depletion of—groundwater. And unpredictable monsoon adds to the mix; according to the Central Water Commission’s latest numbers, water levels in India’s most important reservoirs now stand at a mere 29% of total capacity.

South Asia is a severely water insecure region. Climate change, according to multiple studies, will hit Asia’s coastal regions among the hardest; large parts of India are already highly stressed. Today happens to be World Water Day. It’s an apt time to consider the policies that are hastening the process.

Source: Mint epaper, 22-03-2016

International Water Day Imperatives





The escalation of the conflict between Punjab and Haryana over the Sutlej-Yamuna Link is pointer to rising water scarci ty in the country. Of the 20 major river systems, 14 are already water-stressed; 75% of the population live in water-stressed regions, a third of whom live in water-scarce areas. Climate change, the demands of a rising population and the need for agriculture to keep pace, increased rate of urbanisation and industrialisation will exacerbate water stress.The Constitution has water as a state subject, except for reg ulation of inter-state rivers. The Centre, at best, plays referee Rising water-stress makes imperative a national legal and po licy framework for water to ensure fair and equitable alloca tion amongst different regions and with in regions among user groups, environ ment protection, development priorities efficient water use, demand and supply Key to ensuring balance between compet ing demands is a basin-based approach to allocate water amongst constituent regi ons and states. This will require setting up river basin-based authorities that must both be represen tative of all constituents and staffed by experts. Allocating fair share of water for every state requires assessments based on objective criteria such as specificities of the river basin size of dependent population, existing water use and demand efficiency of use, and projected future use, and alignment of development priorities, while ensuring the environmental needs of the river and aquifer. The basin authorities must cre ate a hierarchy of uses.
An equitable, efficient and scientific allocation that reconci les competing demands and is legally enforceable will stand India in good stead in negotiating water treaties with its nei ghbours, especially China.

Source: Economic Times, 22-03-2016

Needed, a National Water Policy & Law





India, with 18% of the world's population and 4% of its water resources, is clearly a water-stressed nation. Constitutionally , water is a state subject. But after two consecutive deficient monsoons, the need for a national framework law on water is an idea whose time has come. A central law is needed to bring coherence and force to largely uncoordinated and ad-hoc water policy. True, several states have enacted laws on water and related issues. Yet, states tend to have varied legal positions and perceptions, say , on riparian water use and ownership.None of the concerned states, for example, have laws or executive notifications specifying the basis for water allocation among different segments of river basins in their jurisdic tion. Hence the need for national consen sus on water, complete with attendant rules, tenets and principles that can ap ply across states and regions. The rules of allocation and entitlement must be made and revised through a transparent pro cess nationally . Besides, polluted rivers and other water sources call for focused policy attention. Water policy has ecological implications, and the concerns on climate change require national action.So does integrated inland water transport.
Consider, for instance, our rising groundwater use, which is plain unsustainable. It has led to dropping water tables and depleting aquifers. Perverse incentives like free power have meant that groundwater now accounts for over 50% of the irrigated area. Also, 80% of domestic water supply in India now comes from groundwater and primarily as a coping mechanism, given the widespread mismanagement and ill-maintenance of piped water supply . The fast-growing urban population compounds the problem. The bottom line is that there's overarching need for a national water law.
Source: Economic Times, 30-11-2015

India must treat water as strategic resource, fight China’s throttlehold

As if to underscore the contrast between an autocracy and a democracy, China’s announcement recently that all six power-generating units at the world’s highest-elevation dam in Zangmu, Tibet, are now fully operational coincided with protesters stalling the movement of trucks to Lower Subansiri, India’s sole large dam project currently under construction. After finishing the $1.6 billion Zangmu project on the Brahmaputra ahead of schedule, China is racing to complete a series of additional dams on the river. These dams, collectively, are set to affect the quality and quantity of downstream flows.

The water situation in India is far worse than in China, including in terms of per capita availability. China’s population is just marginally larger than India’s but its internally renewable water resources (2,813 billion cubic metres per year) are almost twice as large as India’s. In aggregate water availability, including external inflows (which are sizeable in India’s case), China boasts virtually 50% larger resources than India.

Yet, even as China’s dam builders target rivers flowing to India, including the Brahmaputra, Indus, Sutlej and Arun (Kosi), New Delhi has failed to evolve a strategic, long-term approach to the country’s pressing water challenges. The flash floods that ravaged Himachal Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh between 2000 and 2005 were linked to the unannounced releases from rain-swollen Chinese dams and barrages.

China’s centralised, megaprojects-driven approach to water resources, reflected in its emergence long ago as the world’s most dam-dotted country, is the antithesis of the policy line in India, where water is a state (not federal) subject under the Constitution and where anti-dam NGOs are powerful. The Narmada Dam remains incomplete after decades of work. The largest dam India has built since Independence — the 2,000-megawatt Tehri Dam on the Bhagirathi — pales in comparison to China’s giant projects, such as the 22,500-megawatt Three Gorges Dam and the new Mekong mega-dams like Xiaowan, which dwarfs Paris’s Eiffel Tower in height, and Nuozhadu, which boasts a 190-square km reservoir.

India’s surface-water storage capacity — an important measure of any nation’s ability to deal with drought or seasonal imbalances in water availability — is one of the world’s lowest, in per capita terms. Amounting to 200 cubic meters per head yearly, less than 1/11th of China’s. The 2030 Water Resources Group has warned that India is likely to face a 50% deficit between water demand and supply by 2030.

In 1960, India generously reserved more than 80% of the Indus basin waters for its adversary Pakistan under a treaty of indefinite duration. This pact remains the world’s most generous water-sharing arrangement. (The volume of waters earmarked for Pakistan — by way of comparison — is over 90 times the 1.85 billion cubic metres the US is required to release to Mexico under a bilateral treaty.)

India’s 1996 Ganges water-sharing treaty with Bangladesh guarantees specific cross-border flows in the critical dry season — a new principle in international water relations. This provision means that even if the river’s flows were to diminish due to reasons beyond India’s control — such as climate change or the planned Chinese damming of a key Ganges tributary, the Arun (Kosi), which contributes significantly to downstream Ganges water levels — India would still be obligated to supply Bangladesh 34,060 cubic feet of water per second (cusecs), on average, in the dry season, as stipulated by the treaty. Bangladesh’s share of current downstream flows is about 50%.

But China is not India: With its frenzied dam building, Beijing refuses to enter into a water-sharing arrangement with any co-riparian nation, even though its control over the Tibetan Plateau (the starting place of major international rivers) and Xinjiang (the source of the transnational Irtysh and Ili rivers) has armed it with unparalleled hydro-hegemony. There is deep concern among its riparian neighbours that, by building extensive hydro-engineering infrastructure on upstream basins, it is seeking to turn water into a potential political weapon. China pays little heed to the interests of even friendly countries, as its heavy upstream damming of the Mekong and Salween illustrate.

New Delhi has to brace for China moving its dam building from the upper and middle reaches to the lower, border-hugging sections of the rivers flowing to India. The Brahmaputra is particularly a magnet for China’s dam builders because this river’s cross-border annual discharge of 165.4 billion cubic metres into India is greater than the combined trans-boundary flows of the key rivers running from Chinese territory to Southeast Asia. As China gradually moves its dam building to the Brahmaputra’s water-rich Great Bend — the area where the river takes a horseshoe bend to enter India, forming the world’s longest and steepest canyon in the process — it is expected to embark on Mekong-style mega-dams.

Only five rivers in the world carry more water than the Brahmaputra and only one — mainland China’s Yellow River — carries more silt. The Brahmaputra is the world’s highest-altitude river. It represents a unique fluvial ecosystem largely due to the heavy load of high-quality nutrient-rich silt it carries from forbidding Himalayan heights. The Brahmaputra annual flooding cycle helps re-fertilise overworked soils in the Assam plains and large parts of Bangladesh, where the river is the biggest source of water supply. The likely silt-movement blockage from China’s upstream damming constitutes a bigger threat than even diminution of cross-border flows.

India must get its act together, both by treating water as a highly strategic resource and by shining an international spotlight on China’s unilateralist course. Just as China — through a creeping, covert war — is working to change the territorial and maritime status quo in Asia, its dam frenzy is designed to appropriate internationally shared water resources. No country faces a bigger challenge than India from China’s throttlehold over the headwaters of Asia’s major transnational rivers and its growing capacity to serve as the upstream controller by re-engineering trans-boundary flows through dams.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author, most recently, of Water, Peace, and War