India’s deepening water stress

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 1

Context:

The Ministry of Jal Shakti had announced an ambitious plan-  JalJeevan Mission- to provide water connections to every household in India by 2024. 

• In view of the ongoing erosion of water resources and an ever-increasing demand for water, the thrust should not be on promising water supply. 
• Instead the aim should be towards protecting and conserving water resources on the one hand and minimising and enhancing efficiency of water usage on the other. 

Water crisis in India

• According to the composite water management index released by the think tank NITI Aayog in 2019, 21 major cities (including Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad) were on the brink of exhausting groundwater resources, affecting about 100 million people. 
• The study also points out that by 2030, the demand for water is projected to be twice the available supply.
• Chennai crisis: In 2019, many parts of the city went without piped water for months. Chennai remains a example of the impending tragedies brought about by the city’s inability to meet the basic needs of citizens- drinking water, cooking and sanitation.
  • Many have cited the poor rainfall received in Chennai in the previous year as one of the main reasons for the water crisis. Though it is true that rainfall was low, the ground-level steps (or missteps) have been equally responsible factors.
  • Reasons behind: Lack of sustainable urban planning
    • The city has been built by incrementally encroaching floodplains and paving over lakes and wetlands that would have otherwise helped the process of recharging groundwater. 
    • The lack of space for water to percolate underground prevented rainwater from recharging the aquifers.
    • This was further worsened by the loss of green cover (which would have otherwise helped water retention) to make way for infrastructure projects. 
    • It leads to flooding during normal rainfall due to stagnation, and on the other hand leads to drought-like conditions due to the prevention of underground water storage. 
• Rural Punjab crisis

• The draft report of the Central Ground Water Board concluded that Punjab would be reduced to a desert in 25 years if the extraction of its groundwater resources continues mindlessly.
• 82% of Punjab’s land area has seen a huge decline in groundwater levels, wherein 109 out of 138 administrative blocks have been placed in the ‘over exploited’ category. 
• Groundwater extraction which was at 35% in the 1960s and 1970s, rose to 70% post the Green Revolution.
• Governments subsidised power for irrigation that left tubewells running for hours.
• Cultivation of water-intensive crops such as paddy has further aggravated water depletion, even turning water saline.

Understanding sources used

• One should see India’s looming water crisis through the lens of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’. 
  • It not only allows a better grasp of the causative factors but also enables a stronger grip on the strategies to be deployed to reverse the water crisis. 
• In the rural areas, 80%-90% of the drinking water and 75% of the water used for agriculture is drawn from groundwater sources. 
• In urban areas, 50%-60% of the water supply is drawn from groundwater sources. The remaining water is sourced from surface water resources such as rivers, lakes, tanks and reservoirs.

Way forward:

• Participatory groundwater management approaches with its combination of water budgeting, aquifer recharging and community involvement.
• Need for synergy: Recently, the two Ministries of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation and the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, were merged to form the Ministry of Jal Shakti in 2019.
  • The Ministry of Water Resources must reconfigure its relationship with other Ministries and Departments (Urban Development, Local Self-Government and Environment). 
  • At the sectoral level, the Ministries and Departments of water resources must coordinate efforts with their counterparts in agriculture, the environment and rural development for greater convergence to achieve water and food security. 
  • At the disciplinary level, governance and management should increasingly interact and draw from the expertise of fields such as hydrology (watershed sustainability), hydrogeology (aquifer mapping and recharge) and agriculture sciences (water-sensitive crop choices and soil health). 
• Enhanced integration and coordination through effective land and water zoning regulations that protect urban water bodies, groundwater sources, wetlands and green cover.
• Enhance waste water recycling and water recharge activities targeting aquifers and wells through rainwater harvesting.
• Surface water conservation including the many rivers and lakes which are in a critical and dying state due to encroachment, pollution, over-abstraction and obstruction of water flow by dams.

As the expert committee constituted under the Union Water Resources Ministry drafts a new National Water Policy, one hopes it would be rooted in locus specific realities and allows greater flexibility for integrating the insights and work of multiple departments and disciplines making way for new configurations to sustainably manage the country’s water resources.

The Hindu Link:

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/finding-a-way-out-of-indias-deepening-water-stress/article37292441.ece

Question- India’s water crisis can be solved by the amalgamation of conservation efforts with enhancing water use efficiency across various sectors. Elucidate.