India’s water crisis: Solutions and hurdles
Water in most rivers in India is unfit for drinking, and sometimes even for bathing, due to constant addition of untreated wastewater containing both biological and chemical pollutants. Though the Ganga Action Plan was launched in 1984 to clean up River Ganga in 25 years, much of the 2,525 km-long river is still far from clean
India has 18% of the world’s population but only 4% of the world’s freshwater. The total amount of usable water in India is approximately between 700 to 1,200 billion cubic meters (bcm). The population of India according to the 2011 census is 1.2 billion. Therefore, India has only 1,000 cubic metres of water per person, even using the higher value of the range.
In 1951, India had between 3,000 and 4,000 cubic metres of water per person. ‘Water-stress’ for a country is the availability of less than 1,700 cubic metres of water per person per year. The significant reduction in annual per capita water availability in India over the last decade is reflected in official data. The water shortage, which has been gradually increasing, has reached crisis proportions at present. The NITI Ayog (National Institution for Transforming India) of the Indian government, in its June 2018 report on Composite Water Management Index, reported that 21 cities in India would run out of groundwater by 2020.
Three main causes can be identified for India’s water crisis. The first is insufficient water per person due to sheer numbers i.e. population growth. The second is poor water quality due to low investment in urban water-treatment facilities and the inability of the state pollution control boards to enforce industrial effluent standards. Maintenance of the facilities created is also not proper because of lack of funds. The boards have inadequate technical and human resources. Water in most rivers in India is unfit for drinking, and sometimes even for bathing, due to constant addition of untreated wastewater containing both biological and chemical pollutants. Though the Ganga Action Plan was launched in 1984 to clean up River Ganga in 25 years, much of the 2,525 kmlong river is still far from clean.
The third problem is depletion of groundwater supplies, primarily due to over-extraction for agriculture, in the absence of any regulation. Though the degree of over-extraction varies significantly across states, India’s average rate of extraction has grown from a base of 90 bcm in 1980 to 251 bcm in 2010. A contributing factor is the excessive cultivation of water-intensive crops, particularly in rain-deficient regions, such as rice in Punjab and sugarcane in Maharashtra.
Much of urban India does not receive a regular clean drinking water supply due to rapid and unplanned urbanization. The informal settlements where many urban poor live are treated as illegal by municipal bodies and public water utilities. The water distributed through water tankers is never sufficient and poorer households spend a disproportionately large share of their income to purchase water from private vendors. Women often walk long distances to a common water tap, where they stand in queue awaiting their turn.
To resolve the crisis, first, the central and state governments should empower local communities with information on the status of groundwater i.e. how much can be extracted without depleting the aquifer, to manage extraction in a cooperative way. Second, integrated watershed development as outlined on the government website has to be implemented vigorously. This includes prevention of soil run-off, regeneration of natural vegetation, rainwater harvesting and recharging of the groundwater table. Some rural communities across states have successfully managed their water resources by building check dams to store water, renewing the vegetative cover etc. Third, state pollution control boards need to enforce industrial effluent standards. Adequate sewage treatment facilities must be constructed, along with better solid waste management. Fourth, old, leaky urban water-distribution systems need to be modernized. The government can work with private firms to replace the networks. The issue of shifting agriculture practices away from the cultivation of waterintensive crops has wider ramifications and is not easy to resolve.
The Ministry of Jal Shakti (water power) has recently been set up by the government by merging the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation with the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation. Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, who heads the new unified ministry, is optimistic that it can deal with multiple water-related issues to solve the water crisis facing the country.
The new Ministry of Jal Shakti could simplify things by obviating the necessity
for multiple authorities dealing with water. For example, the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) draws raw water from three surface sources – the Yamuna River, the Bhakra Canal and the Upper Ganga Canal, further augmented by groundwater. The allocation of Yamuna water among the five basin states of the Yamuna i.e. Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi is decided by the Upper Yamuna River Board under the central government. The Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB), created to resolve the Ravi and Beas river water dispute between Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir, also influences water supply in Delhi. It is this kind of confusing scenario that the new ministry should address.
Shekhawat said in an interview to the Economic Times that under the Jal Shakti Abhiyan (campaign), teams comprising joint secretaries, hydrologists and engineers have been sent to visit all waterstressed districts on a priority basis. The Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) is expected to complete its aquifer-mapping work by March 2020. Plans are afoot to replicate successful community initiatives for groundwater replenishment where possible, along with convergence of various state and central schemes. A network of sewage treatment infrastructure is being built to clean Ganga, its tributaries and distributaries so as to cover the entire river basin. Pointing out that, of the 4,000 bcm of rainwater received by India, only 1,000 bcm is used, the minister asserted that if up to 2,000 bcm of rainwater can be saved, India will be water-surplus. For this, rainwater harvesting needs to become a movement of the common man. He cited the example of Israel, saying that they had turned water crisis into opportunity.
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) can be utilized to do productive work for water resource management. Larger companies can also be persuaded to take initiative under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
Water distribution in India is uneven, causing floods in some states and droughts in others. River interlinking might be helpful, provided a consensus could be reached among all states on this issue. Now, after the open-defecation-free (ODF) programme, the government was now moving into the ODF-plus programme, entailing simultaneous solid and liquid waste management in villages, Shekhawat said.
The government seems to have simplistic solutions to all water-related issues. However, ground realities tell a different story e.g. the topography of many informal settlements in cities is not conducive to laying of water pipeline, so including them in the Nal Se Jal (piped water) project may be easier said than done. The basic issue of ‘informal’ settlements may also have to be resolved before putting water connections in place.
Another question is whether the ministry can deal with state level conflicts. In the Mullaperiyar dam conflict between Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the then Ministry of Water Resources could not constructively intervene despite directions from the Supreme Court. In fact the Mullaperiyar conflict highlights the immense challenge about to be posed by the proposed river interlinking project. However, there is no reason why a community movement, supported by state-level actors, cannot address the present water crisis and reverse it to a large extent.
(Tbe author is an environmental
consultant)