India’s Growing Water Crisis

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 1

The UNESCO United Nations World Water Development Report of 2022 has encapsulated global concern over the sharp rise in freshwater withdrawal from streams, lakes, aquifers and human-made reservoirs, impending water stress and also water scarcity being experienced in different parts of the world.

The new Water Report of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) sounded a note of caution about this silent crisis of a global dimension, with millions of people being deprived of water to live and to sustain their livelihood.

Growing Water Stress

• The Water Scarcity Clock, an interactive webtool, shows that over two billion people live in countries now experiencing high water stress; the numbers will continue to increase. 
• The Global Drought Risk and Water Stress map (2019) shows that major parts of India, particularly west, central and parts of peninsular India are highly water stressed and experience water scarcity. 
• A NITI Aayog report, ‘Composite Water Management Index’ (2018) has sounded a note of caution about the worst water crisis in the country, with more than 600 million people facing acute water shortages. 
• The typical response of the areas where water shortage or scarcity is high includes transfer of water from the hinterlands/upper catchments or drawing it from stored surface water bodies or aquifers. 
• This triggers sectoral and regional competition; rural-urban transfer of water is one such issue of global concern.

Water Stress and Water Scarcity:

• Water scarcity is a physical, objective reality that can be measured consistently across regions and over time.
• “Water stress” refers to the ability, or lack thereof, to meet human and ecological demand for water.

Types of water scarcity

• Water scarcity is the lack of fresh water resources to meet the standard water demand. There are two types of water scarcity
• Physical water scarcity is where there is not enough water to meet all demands, including that needed for ecosystems to function effectively.
• Arid areas for example Central and West Asia, and North Africa often suffer from physical water scarcity.
• Economic water scarcity is caused by a lack of investment in infrastructure or technology to draw water from rivers, aquifers, or other water sources, or insufficient human capacity to satisfy the demand for water.
• Much of Sub-Saharan Africa has economic water scarcity.

Urban Water Use

• According to Census 2011, the urban population in India accounted for 34% of total population distributed in 7,935 towns of all classes.
• It is estimated that the urban population component in India will cross the 40% mark by 2030 and the 50% mark by 2050 (World Urbanization Prospects, 2018). 
• The urban population accounted for 50% of the total world population by the end of the last century. 
• Although the pace of India’s urbanisation is relatively slow, it is now urbanising at a rapid pace — the size of the urban population is substantial. 
• Water use in the urban sector has increased as more and more people shift to urban areas, and per capita use of water in these centres rises, which will continue to grow with improved standards of living.
• Examining the urban water management trajectory, it is evident that in the initial stages when a city is small, it is concerned only with water supply; in a majority of cases, water is sourced locally, with groundwater meeting the bulk of the supply. 
• As the city grows and water management infrastructures develop, dependence shifts to surface water.
• With a further growth of cities, water sources shift further up in the hinterlands, or the allocation of urban water is enhanced at the expense of irrigation water. 
• Almost all cities in India that depend on surface water experience this trend. 
• City water supply is now a subject of inter-basin and inter-State transfers of water.

The case of Ahmadabad

• Ahmedabad is an interesting case in this context. More than 80% of water supply in this city used to be met from groundwater sources till the mid-1980s.
• The depth to groundwater level reached 67 meters in confined aquifers. The city now depends on the Narmada canal for the bulk of its water supply.
• The shift is from local groundwater to canal water receiving supply from an inter-State and inter-basin transfer of surface water.
• Whatever be the source, surface or groundwater, cities largely depend on rural areas for raw water supply, which has the potential to ignite the rural-urban dispute.
• Available studies covering Nagpur and Chennai indicate the imminent problem of rural-urban water disputes that the country is going to face in the not-so-distant future as water scarcity grows, which will be further exacerbated by climate change.

A system perspective and catchment scale-based approach are necessary to link reallocation of water with wider discussions on development, infrastructure investment, fostering a rural-urban partnership and adopting an integrated approach in water management.

Institutional strengthening can offer entry points and provide opportunities to build flexibility into water resource allocation at a regional level, enabling adjustments in rapidly urbanizing regions.