Water level in more than half of India’s major reservoirs is below 40%
The water level in more than half of India’s 150 major reservoirs is lower than 40% of their capacity, with the storage in two-thirds being less than 50%, said the Central Water Commission (CWC) on Thursday.
The depleting water level is attributed to patchy rainfall due to El Nino leading to drought and a prolonged dry spell in Asia amid the warming of the Pacific Ocean.
At least 60% of the country, including nearly 53% in March
FOR ANY QUERIES/DELIVERY ISSUES
RAVI KRISHNAN alone, has witnessed rain deficiency or no rainfall since January. The country has received 1% above-normal rainfall at 20 mm since March, as per data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD).
During the post-monsoon period (October-December 2023), more than 50% of regions in the country were rain-deficient.
The available water this week in these reservoirs was 67.591 billion cubic metres (BCM), 16% lower than the corresponding period of last year’s 80.557 BCM and 38% of total live storage capacity, according to CWC’s latest
MANHAR KAPOOR weekly bulletin.
The live storage available in 150 reservoirs as of Thursday was 84% of the live storage of the corresponding period of the previous year.
Water reserves are the lowest since March 2019, when reservoir capacity fell to 35% and saw southern cities such as
Chennai run out of water.
The situation could escalate in central and southern cities which face extreme heatwaves in April and May. Similarly, falling water levels in hydropower dams are raising worries, as the summer threatens to turn up power demand and strain the electricity grid.
“In case rainfall is deficient in the upcoming months, hydropower generation would be further impacted," an official with a hydropower generation company told Mint earlier. Falling water reservoir level raises concerns not only about the water crisis in central and southern cities and hydropower generation but also about summer crop sowing in irrigated areas, which may weigh on the gross value added (GVA) growth of agriculture and allied sectors, according to farm experts.
“The low reservoir level is likely to increase dependency of summer crops on rainfall. This may delay crop sowing in irrigated areas,” said Devendra Pant, chief economist at India Ratings.
“Despite an increase in irrigation intensity, Indian agriculture has high dependence on rainfall. This is evident from agriculture GVA growth in the December quarter of 2023-24.”
On the assumption of normal rainfall and its spread over space and time across the country during June-September (southwest monsoon), Indian agricultural GVA is expected to grow around 3% in 2024-25, Pant estimated.
GVA growth of agriculture and allied sectors contracted 0.8% in the October-December quarter from 1.6% growth seen in the previous quarter. This is the first time in 19 quarters that farm GVA has seen a decline. The growth rate was 5.2% in the year-ago period. In FY23, agriculture GVA growth stood at 4.7%