India is a blessed country in so many ways as far as water endowment is concerned. Our monsoons, rivers, aquifers, the Himalayas, the rich traditional techniques and management systems, to name a few. But the impacts of accumulated mismanagement over the last several decades are now coming out in the form of crisis in multiple ways.

Unfortunately, the government treats water management as its exclusive monopoly. To call for a people’s movement for water conservation in such a situation is disingenuous, to say the least. Particularly when the water resources establishment is doing every thing against the sage advice. For example, the Ken Betwa River Link project, the top priority river link project of the government, involves cutting down of 46 lakh trees from drought prone Bundelkhand and facilitate export of water to outside Bundelkhand areas. Imagine how much water the 46 lakh trees can harvest?

Or consider this another recent instance: Between April 25 and June 12, 2019, the three dams Bhakra, Pong and Ranjit Sagar, on Sutlej, Beas and Ravi respectively, released over 2 Billion Cubic Meters of Water in non-agricultural season, most of which flowed away to Pakistan. This was of course against the public statements of Prime Minister and earlier Water Resources Minister Nitin Gadkari, both of whom said not a drop of water will flow from Pakistan out of India’s share of Indus water. Leaving that aside, it is well known that Punjab and Haryana suffer massive groundwater depletions every year. Why was this water not used to recharge groundwater?

So what are some of the key dimensions of India’s water management crisis?

The Groundwater Lifeline 

Most of the water that India uses today comes from over 30 million wells and tubewells. Irrigation is India’s biggest user of water and over two thirds of irrigated area gets water from groundwater. 85% of rural domestic supply, over 55% of Urban and Industrial water supply comes from groundwater. The graph of % of water in each sub sector coming from groundwater has been going up for at least four decades. In fact, some estimates show that over 90% of additional water India used in last four decades have come from groundwater. It sounds like an unmitigable blessing. That’s not how blessings work, unfortunately.

Central Ground Water Board’s data shows that in about 70% of areas, groundwater is depleting and at many places it has exhausted or is on verge of exhaustion. The quality is deteriorating. Warnings have been available for decades now, but the government has done little to address the emerging crisis.

In fact, India’s water resources establishment, led by the big dam ideologues at Central Water Commission have ensured that the government does not even acknowledge that groundwater is India’s water lifeline. That is the first change required. The acknowledgement of that reality in National Water Policy would mean that focus of India’s water resources policy, plans and programs is attainment of sustenance of that water lifeline.

This would need action on four fronts. Firstly, understand as to from where the groundwater recharge happens. And provide protection to groundwater recharge mechanisms like the forests, floodplains, rivers, wetlands, local water bodies. Secondly enhance recharge from these mechanisms where possible. Thirdly create more recharge mechanisms, including reverse borewells. And Fourthly and most importantly, regulate groundwater use.

That regulation has to happen, considering the resource location and its contours. Groundwater occurs in Aquifers. Aquifers in most places are local, and groundwater use is also local. So regulation has to start at local level. So create legal, institutional and financial enabling situation to make such regulation possible. For cities and industries, this may include pricing mechanisms, with higher price for higher users and an element of cross subsidization for the poorer people.

Unfortunately, no effective action has been taken on this groundwater regulation front. The Central Ground Water Authority, set up under the Supreme Court orders in 1996-97, is acting like a licensing body rather than regulating body. Regulation does not mean you pay and exploit. It would also mean restricting and stopping wasteful and unjustified water use activities in critical and over exploited areas. Regulation should ensure that water withdrawal is within limits of annual recharge.

The degraded Catchments 

While Chennai and Tamil Nadu water scarcity grabbed headlines this summer, few remembered that less than a year back, in July 2018 to be precise, all the dams in Cauvery, the most important river basin of Tamil Nadu, were so full that water started getting released to the flooded downstream rivers. The Mullaperiyar provided another bounty to Tamil Nadu in Aug 2018. When Cauvery dams were over flowing around July 24, 2018, the South West Monsoon rainfall in Cauvery basin was actually below normal. What does this phenomena of overflowing dams less than halfway through the monsoon, and when rainfall is below normal, followed by unprecedented water crisis less than a year later signify? What is described here is equally relevant for most river basins of India.

This phenomenon essentially signifies that our catchments have decreasing capacity to capture, store and recharge rain water. So the rainfall in the catchments is quickly ending up in the rivers and reservoirs, leading to floods in monsoon, but dried rivers and water scarcity soon thereafter.

Deforestation, destruction of wetlands and other water bodies, reducing capacity of the soils to hold moisture are all contributing to this degrading catchments. The way to reverse this crisis is to reverse all this.

Urban Water Policy Vacuum

The Urban Water footprint is going up in multiple ways, but the Urban Water Sector is operating in complete policy vacuum. There is no policy or guidelines or regulation to guide Urban Water sector. Under the circumstances, the cities won’t harvest rain, won’t recharge groundwater, won’t reduced transmission and distribution losses, won’t adopt other demand side measures, won’t protect its water bodies, won’t treat its sewage and recycle it. In stead, they would demand, lazy, easy solutions like more big dams, more river linking projects or massive desalinization projects. The government has smart city programme, but none for a water smart city! Can there be a smart city without it being water smart?
To correct this situation, as a first step India urgently needs a National Urban Water Policy that will define a water smart city and also provide best practice guidelines for various aspects of Urban Water Sector.

Outdated Water Institutions

India’s water institutions were established soon after independence or some even before independence. They have outdated mindset and institutional architecture. This needs urgent overhaul.

The clearest problem with India’s water institutions is symbolized by the fact that we do not even have reliable water information in India. This is because Central Water Commission, which heads India’s water institutions is involved in so many functions that are in conflict with each other. We need an independent institution, on the lines of USGS, whose main mandate will be to gather all the key water information on daily basis and promptly put it in public domain. But such an institute will have no role in water resources development or management. Similarly, we need National Rivers Commission that will monitor the state of India’s rivers and come up with reports and recommendations about what ails India’s rivers. River Basin organisations will be inter state bodies that will come out with all the relevant information about the state of river basins.

In conclusion

The Prime Minister, in his Mann ki baat on June 30, 2019, the first episode in Modi’s second term, while highlighting need for water conservation, used the 8% figure: “You will be surprised that only 8% of the water received from rains in the entire year is harvested in our country.” So where does that 8% come from? The PM did not elaborate, but India’s annual rainfall is around 4000 BCM, 8% of which comes to 320 BCM. That is approximately the storage capacity of big dams in India. big dams are certainly not rainwater harvesting option, though it is a water storage option.

But big dams are not the only storage option, nor the best storage option. The groundwater aquifers are the most benign, naturally gifted storage options, that does not even involve costs, impacts or losses. The wetlands, the local water bodies, and the soil moisture are other major water storage options. But by mentioning this 8% storage figure, the PM is not just privileging big dams as storage option, is in fact ignoring all other, most of which are much better storage options.

Till our water resources establishment does not get out of this bias for big dams and big projects, there is little hope that our water blessings will not become disasters.

Courtesy: Counter View

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In a recent study, researchers from the Indian Institutes of Technology at Indore and Guwahati have uncovered how human activities affect the ability of river catchments to cope with climate change. The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, has investigated the ability of these catchment areas to be resilient with disturbances in the natural water cycles. The team studied 55 catchment areas in peninsular India and found that more than 60% of them cannot cope with the changing climate, and may soon dry up.

Most rivers in peninsular India are rain-fed. The rainwater that discharges into the catchment areas feed these rivers. Besides, there is also a part of it that gets back into the atmosphere. “After falling on the ground, the rainwater gets divided into runoff and actual evapotranspiration—the amount of water that is transferred to the atmosphere via evaporation and transpiration”, notes Prof Manish Kumar Goyal from IIT Indore, who is an author of the study.

However, when a catchment becomes drier, a larger portion of the precipitation ends up as evapotranspiration, thus decreasing the runoff. River catchments can be affected by human activities and the changing climate. Unless rivers are resilient to these changes and bounce back to normal functioning, they get stuck in this cycle of becoming drier, eventually ebbing away.

The researchers of the current study analysed the influence of human activities and climate change on the resilience of 55 catchments areas from 17 river basins, including the Kaveri and Godavari. They examined the difference in the water that flows into a river (run-off) of these catchments between two periods to understand which of the two affect them more significantly. The first analysis was between 1988 and 1997 when there was less human activity in these regions, and again from 2001 to 2011, a period that witnessed a substantial rise in anthropogenic activities.

The researchers quantified the resilience of the river catchments in two ways. One, based on the deviation of the catchment’s response from its normal behaviour during the climate warming period. This period corresponds to the time where the annual temperature over India has increased by 0.22°C for every 10 years since 1971 compared to 0.05°C increase previously. The second approach was based on the catchment’s ability to maintain the partitioning between run-off water and evapotranspiration during the warming period in a way compatible with normal behaviour.

The results show that only 23 catchments are resilient to changes in climatic warming. Though none of them was seen to be completely resilient, more than 60% of those dominated by human settlements were not at all resilient. Almost all the catchments of river basins, like Baitarni, Brahmani, Godavari, Krishna, Mahi, Narmada, Sabarmati and Tapi, had a downward trend in their runoff generation.

“The annual runoff of many catchments have undergone downward trend, but their annual precipitations have shown an increasing rate, indicating that precipitation is not the sole reason for changes in the long-term runoff generation”, say the researchers.

On the contrary, around 60% of the catchments dominated by climatic changes are resilient, say the researchers. Most of these include regions from the eastern and upper southern part of India, whereas most of those in the western part were found to be non-resilient. All but ten catchments saw a decrease in the runoff generated during the period with increased human activities.

“Though the study considers climatic variability and human-induced distress on the catchment as independent of each other, the relationship between the two is very intricate and is never independent”, say the Prof Manish Kumar Goyal.

The researchers suggest that steps like planting grass, shrubs or trees to control soil erosion, water conservation techniques like roof water harvesting and harvesting ponds, and better management of forests are needed to mitigate the negative impact of human activities. “There should be guidelines to ensure sustainable extraction of water from rivers so that the rivers can maintain the flow that is key to sustain the aquatic ecosystem in it”, asserts Prof Goyal. In the next part of the study, the researchers hope to explore the influence of various human activities, such as pollution and deforestation of wetlands, on the catchment.

Courtesy: Counter View

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Nearly 163.1 million people lack access to clean water close to their homes in India, more than two-and-a-half times those similarly affected in Ethiopia, which is second in the list. The other countries in this top five list are Nigeria, China, and Democratic Republic of the Congo.
 
At the same time, since 2000, India is second after China in the list of most-improved nations in providing water access, reaching nearly 300.7 million people compared to China’s 334.2 million, according to the report.
 
The report comes a day ahead of World Water Day, observed on March 22 every year.

 
Globally, an estimated 89% of the world population has clean water in or near home–an increase from 81% in 2000, added the report–leaving 844 million people struggling to access water. Today, nearly 60% of the world lives in water-stressed areas.
 
The latest data come at a time when a review of United Nations Global Goal 6, to deliver safe water and sanitation to all by 2030, is scheduled for summer 2018.

 
The challenges India faces include falling groundwater levels, drought, pressure of demand from agriculture and industry, pollution and poor water resource management, according to the report.
 
India’s estimated per capita availability of water in 2025 will be 1,341 cubic metre. This may further fall to 1,140 cubic metre in 2050, bringing it closer to becoming water-scarce, according to this 2017 assessment by the ministry of water resources, IndiaSpend reported on December 30, 2017. In the decade ending 2011, the availability reduced by 15% in India.
 
An area with an annual per capita availability of less than 1,700 cubic metre per person is considered to be water-stressed, and less than 1,000 cubic metre per person, water-scarce.
 
India’s restructured rural water programme aims to reach 90% of the rural households by 2022. Presently, only 56.3% of the rural population has piped water supply, according to this January, 2018 government response in Rajya Sabha (upper house of the parliament).
 
Women across the world spend nearly two-and-a-half months a year fetching water
 
The widespread global lack of access to water has been attributed to multiple inequalities including wealth, ethnicity, religion and cultural attitudes. But gender intensifies the inequality, the report stated. The onus of fetching water falls disproportionately on women and girls.
 
A woman collecting 50 litres daily, the UN-recommended amount per person, for her family of four from a water source 30 minutes away would spend two-and-a half months a year on this task, it added. Women and girls spent nearly 200 million hours every day or 22,800 years collecting water, according to this 2016 press statement from United Nations Children’s Fund.
 
One in four rural households spends more than half an hour walking to a water source, according to the Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS II), which surveyed 42,153 Indian households, IndiaSpend reported in June 26, 2016.
 
Wealth inequalities also contributed to the access to water. In Pakistan, 79.2% of the poorest and 98% of the richest people have clean water. In Bangladesh, the gap is narrower–98.9% of the richest and 93.2% of the poorest have access to clean water.
 
(Paliath is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)
 
We welcome feedback. Please write to respond@indiaspend.org. We reserve the right to edit responses for language and grammar.
 

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Madhavan Ramadas, 42, a banana and coconut farmer in district Thrissur, Kerala faced hardship every summer as his home open well would dry up. Across India, barely 3% wells registered a rise in water level exceeding 4 metres in the year ending January 2016. Only 35% of wells showed any rise in water level, indicating the scale of the problem

 
Singh’s well bucked a nationwide trend–across India, barely 3% wells registered a rise in water level exceeding 4 metres in the year ending January 2016, according to this 2016 Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) report. Only 35% of wells showed any rise in water level, which declined in 64% of wells. Average water levels in January 2016 were lower than the average water level between 2006 and 2015.
 

 

Source: Ground Water Scenario in India January 2016, Central Ground Water Board, Ministry of Water ResourcesWell depth in January 2016, as compared to decadal mean of January (2006-15)
 
Behind the trend of falling water levels is India’s 251 cubic kilometer (cu km) annual groundwater extraction rate–equivalent to 26 times the water stored in the Bhakra Dam–making India the world’s biggest consumer of groundwater, according to a 2012 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization report. With annual extraction rates of 112 cu km, China and the US tie at a distant second.
 

Source: Managing Water Under Uncertainty and Risk, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural OrganizationData for 2010. Together, these countries account for 72% of the groundwater extracted annually.
 
Over nine-tenths of groundwater is extracted for irrigation, according to the Ground Water Year Book for 2014-15 released by the CGWB, underscoring India’s dependence on groundwater for irrigation–it provides water for 60% of the irrigated area, as IndiaSpendreported in October 2016. Over the last four decades—when India commissioned roughly halfof its 50 biggest dams—around 84% of the total addition to the net irrigated area has come from groundwater, according to this July 2016 report by a government committee.
 
Just like the rest of India, Singh depended on his well to irrigate his 15 bighas of farmed land. But unlike Singh, major farming states—Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana—are seeing water levels in wells fall instead of rise.
 
A well-recharging project implemented by the Jal Bhagirathi Foundation (JBF), a Jodhpur-based not-for-profit, enabled Singh to switch from growing only castor oil to chillies, vegetables and, of late, Thai apple ber; his income grew by 40% and could increase by 250% if the berries yield the return Singh expects. “Now my well yields the same water flow even in the summer months,” Singh told IndiaSpend over the phone. “Now the water is sweet, earlier it was salty,” he added, referring to the improved quality of water.
 

In 2015, Mahaveer Singh (left), 56, of Thumbo ka Goliya, southwest Rajasthan, saw water levels rise over 4 metres in his well when only 3% wells across India saw such a rise. A rainwater harvesting well recharging project implemented within 2 km of Singh’s 15 bighas of irrigated agricultural land has increased the availability of water in his well as well as improved the quality of water–earlier it was salty, now it is sweet. Switching from growing castor oil to vegetables increased farmer Singh’s income by 40%. With Thai variety apple ber (right), his latest crop, Singh expects to see his income grow 250%.
 
In contrast, the average farmer in Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana faces the prospect of having no groundwater left for irrigation by 2025.
 

Source: Ground Water Year Book for 2014-15, Dynamic Ground Water Resources of IndiaGroundwater development index is a measure of the groundwater consumed to the groundwater recharged through rainfall, canal seepage, return flows from irrigation and recharge from water bodies and conservation structures.
 
Too easily accessible groundwater is being exploited
 
The problem–and the advantage–with groundwater is its decentralised access. A licence is all you need to sink a well on owned land and extract water. Consequently, India has an estimated 30 million groundwater structures, according to the July 2016 government report.
 
In Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana, groundwater abstraction exceeds the rate at which it is being replenished through rainfall, back flows from irrigation and seepage from canals, other water bodies and conservation structures. A licence does not prevent groundwater exploitation, and instead breeds corruption within the system, said Rajendra Singh, a water conservationist from Alwar, in Rajasthan.
 
“We cannot police 30 million groundwater structures through a licence quota-permit raj,” said the July 2016 government report, instead suggesting that groundwater be recognised as a “common pool resource”, which means that it be considered a community resource and not a resource belonging to the owner of the land. The report also suggested that the government promote “community-driven decentralised water management”.
 
Why should communities manage groundwater?
 
Local stakeholders are best positioned to police the use of water, and they are more likely to do so honestly because their lives depend on its availability.
 
“Community-driven decentralised water management was the norm in India until about 100 years ago, prior to the development of the modern canal-based flood irrigation system and extraction technology,” said Singh, the water conservationist.
 
Wells have also been inextricably entwined in the Indian cultural ethos for being more than a source of water, often with separate wells earmarked for the upper classes and for dalits—a gruesome reality until today.
 
Between 700 and 1900 AD, west India saw the creation of 3,000 wells, so complex that they came to be known as underground water buildings, or popularly, stepwells, according to the book Steps to Water: The Ancient Stepwells of India. Stepwells around Hampi, in Karnataka, in Delhi, and in Haryana also date back to this period. Without more community-driven initiatives to protect wells, this heritage of India might become “a past glory”, said Jos Raphael, director of Mazhapolima, a well-recharging initiative of the District RainWater Harvesting Mission in Thrissur, a district in Kerala.
 
Through his non-governmental organisation Tarun Bharat Sangh, Singh, the water conservationist, has actively promoted community-driven decentralised management of natural resources, including wells around the river Arvari in Rajasthan.
 
“We have created Neer Nari Panchayats to monitor well withdrawals. They don’t allow the water table to fall beyond a certain level, so that even the poorest people who rely on shallow wells are not disadvantaged,” he explained.
 
Harvesting rainwater could recharge India’s wells en masse
 
Mazhapolima, a community-driven project to recharge wells in district Thrissur, Kerala, has made life easier for thousands, including the family of Madhavan Ramadas, 42, a banana and coconut farmer.
 
Ramadas’s family–like 75% of Thrissur’s population–depends on about 4.5 lakh open wells for their water needs. Up until 2008, summers were a nightmare for the Ramadas family.
 
“Water shortages were the norm as our well used to run dry by April,” Ramadas told IndiaSpend over the phone. “Seventy percent of wells in Thrissur would dry up during summer.”
 
In 2008, Ramadas signed up for Mazhapolima, which involved setting up a system to harvest and channel rainwater to recharge his family’s open well. As a result, in 2009, the family had sufficient water to last through April. A year later, the well water lasted until May, and by 2010, summer water shortages were a thing of the past.
 

In Kerala, rooftop rainwater harvesting systems involving a pipe and gutter are being used to to recharge home open wells, under a community-driven project, Mazhapolima, which has increased the utilisable groundwater potential in a sample 7.6 sq km coastal area by 43.35 million litres as well as improved the quality of water.
 
Well-recharging has worked successfully, especially for coastal communities in the district of Thrissur, but hasn’t been as effective for those living in the mountains or in the plains, said Raphael.
 
Mazhapolima has increased the groundwater potential in a coastal area covering 7.6 sq km by 43.35 million litres, as well as improved the quality of water, he added.
 
Singh, the farmer in arid Rajasthan, has also benefited from water harvesting and well-recharging.
 
With the aid of non-governmental organisations and funds raised from the community, the JBF constructed a sand dam—a structure which slows down the flow of water thus increasing the amount that percolates underground—on the dry bed of a nala (stormwater drain), flowing 1.5 km away from Singh’s fields. The dam increased the water level of 103 wells, within a 4 km radius of the dam, according to Kanupriya Harish, executive director of the JBF.
 
The JBF plans to scale the sand dam water harvesting technology—an African invention—to six more districts in Rajasthan, with support from HSBC Bank, Excellent Development, a British not-for-profit, and local communities.
 
“In Thumbo ka Golia, the community contributed 18% of the Rs 17 lakh project cost,” said Harish. “Seeing the success, more communities are asking for help, and (are) ready to pay their share.”
 
(Bahri is a freelance writer and editor based in Mount Abu, Rajasthan.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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