by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
The water-starved Latur district of Maharashtra's Marathwada region is now witnessing the frightening sight of armed guards patrolling along its water reservoirs, where assembly of more than five persons has been banned. With an unrelenting summer leaving most parts of India baked to bone, it is no more an unbelievable sight that water lorries are piling up in all sorts of unthought-of places: Usha Kiran Building, on Mumbai's Carmichael Road, its toniest patch, where the late Dhirubhai Ambani lived with his family for many years; Subhadra, at Worli, which houses, among others, BJP minister Nitin Gadkari and NCP heavyweight Ajit Pawar; not to speak of the chrome-and-steel skyscrapers in proud Gurgaon, the Millenium City in Delhi's outskirts which will come to a standstill without the water tankers.
Shortage of water is India's age-old scourge. But, after two successive years of drought, the summer of this year has pushed the country to the edge of tolerance. About 330 million people are hit by drought across 10 states. The affected area comprises 256 districts—39.75 per cent of the total number. Nor is it a short-term or one-off calamity, like a twister or an earthquake. In 1951, per capita water availability was well over 5,000 cubic meters annually, which has dwindled to 1,500 cubic meters and is likely to hit 1,100 cubic meters in the next 15 years. These figures need to be seen against the background of global fresh water availability, which is 6,000 cubic meters.
The country has two sources of fresh water—from surface, and the groundwater in underground aquifers. It is the latter that accounts for some 55 per cent of India's water needs. But that's not where the chafe is. The root of the trouble lies in agriculture. It drinks up not only most of the groundwater but a full 80 per cent of India's total available water. When the fearsome spectacle of 'water trains' rolling into Latur began to unfold a couple of weeks back, the topic of debate in the dry district was to find the best way to put the emergency supply to use—by watering the parched sugarcane fields, or by pumping it into the neighbourhood beer factories. Saving a part of it for drinking purposes came last on the priorities. It is the focus on agriculture that is driving the states to behave like warring nations between each other. Thus, Punjab has defiantly refused to give Haryana its legitimate share of the Ravi and Beas rivers, by just not building the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) canal as directed by the Supreme Court of India. As a result, only a half of the state of Haryana is getting eight days' of water supply after every 32 days.
The political class in India lacks both interest and capability to instil into the people any concern for the economy of water usage. Just how no-brainer some of the ideas of politicians are is exemplified by Delhi's AAP government's promise to supply 21,000 litres of free water per month to each household. Though the volume is not great, if one compares it to the average daily consumption per room of 1,600 litres in 5-star hotels of the city, or 67,000 litres per day at Rashtrapati Bhavan. But 700 litres per day for a family of, say, five is none too small. By giving it free, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is buying votes at the cost of a precious natural resource that needs to be conserved. If he had the courage, or the will, he could tweak the water tariff to make the mega-guzzlers of Lutyen's Delhi fully cross-subsidise free supply to low users of 40 litres per capita daily, which is the WHO suggested minimum. But now, with Kejriwal's "free water" being limited to only those households covered by the pipe network (for metering), about 30 per cent of households that are not piped have their inmates exposed to the "tanker mafia", who sell water carried from government bore-wells at the price of milk. On the other hand, the rich in Delhi have enough low priced water to hold aquatic sports at home.
It is the same apathy to understand the economy of water usage that has, over the decades, incentivized a pathetically wasteful cropping pattern. Sugarcane, for that matter, cannot be the crop of choice for a terrain where the water table is going down nearly a foot each year. Even if it is still to be grown, the state's 'sugar barons' who control the industry must not resort to giant pumps to water the fields. Instead, there can be sprinklers, or drip irrigation, to conserve water. It happens all across the Mediterranean countries, as measured supply of water leads to rich harvest of crops. Ditto about the highly water absorbing crop of paddy which is cultivated in Punjab and Haryana, states where monsoon is weak and bore-wells are the main source of irrigation.
For a country like India, where agriculture is the main user of water, and cropping pattern has not changed much since, perhaps, the medieval times, if a ‘second green revolution’ takes place—which it must—its colour cannot remain all green. Instead, it must embody the united colours of harvest—with the red and green of tomato; the shiny black of aubergine that grows in eastern Uttar Pradesh; the red, green, yellow and black of the peppers, abundant in Himachal Pradesh; or the luscious pineapple of Tripura. A phased shift from India’s obsession with rice, wheat and sugarcane may teach India how to save its groundwater, and also make farmers richer. The political class needs to take bold decisions and innovative ways to preserve water and impose country-wide partial emergency to end water wastage and penalise those using water for populism.
