Introduction:

• The General Budget for 2020–21, Finance Minister announced that the government will identify 100 most ‘water stressed’ districts and comprehensive measures on addressing this shortage will be chalked out. Ms Sitharaman further told that this will be a part of the Jal Jivan mission, for which Rs 3.06 lakh crore has been earmarked.

Outline of the Jal Jivan mission:

• The proceeds outlined for the Jal Jivan is slated to be used for augmenting existing water resources, recharging of lakes, water desalination, rain water harvesting as well as sewage water treatment.

• Announcement of such a huge cash spending on a problem which had so far been mostly heard only in seminars, closed door discussions and by the way of NGO activism, was no aberration.

• This development had been written in 2018 when NITI Aayog, the top intellectual body of the Central Government, came up with its maiden the Composite Water Management Index (CWMI).

• This was the first ever effort in independent India to fathom the water crisis scientifically at every inch of the country.

• NITI Aayog described it as “the first comprehensive collection of country-wide water data in India based on in-depth structured
questionnaires followed by focus group discussions to generate qualitative information.”

• The scenario that this decorated document unveiled left little option with the government to further delay the response to the looming water crisis in front of the country.

Ground Water Crisis in India: How severe is it?

• According to the maiden CWMI report released by the NITI Aayog in 2018, 21 major cities (Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and others) are racing to reach zero groundwater levels by 2020, affecting access for 100 million people.

• Nearly 40 percent of the population will have absolutely no access to drinking water by 2030, and 6 percent of India’s GDP would be lost by 2050 due to water crisis.

• However, 12 per cent of India’s population is already living the ‘Day Zero’ scenario, thanks to excessive groundwater pumping, an inefficient and wasteful water management system and years of deficient rains. The CWMI report also states that by 2030, the country’s water demand is projected to be twice the available supply, implying severe water scarcity for hundreds of millions of people. It has been reported that in many parts of the country the water table is declining at the rate of 1-2 m/year.

International norms to recognised as water stress country:

• As per the international norms, a country is classified as water stressed and water scarce if per capita water availability goes below 1700 cubic meter and 1000 cubic meter, respectively.

• The per capita availability of water is estimated to decline further to 1465 cubic meter by 2025 and 1235 cubic meter by 2050. If it declines further to around 1000-1100 cubic meter, then India could be declared as water-stressed country.”

Government’s Response So Far:

• Equipped with the broad scientific data about rapidly deteriorating qualitative as well as quantitative water tables across India, the Narendra Modi Government established a whole new ministry to fight the menace in its second term.

• In May 2019, as Modi 2.0 government took the reign of the country in its second term, the Prime Minister merged two ministries Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation and Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation to create a new ministry, which was named as Ministry of Jal Shakti.

• The ministry launched Jal Shakti Abhiyan in an effort to over-bridge the water challenge being faced by 1592 water-stressed blocks in 256 districts by the way of a campaign for water conservation and water security.

• It was decided on the highest level that water conservation efforts would be unleashed to ensure five important water conservation interventions: water conservation and rainwater harvesting; renovation of traditional and other water bodies/tanks; reuse borewell recharge structures; watershed development and intensive afforestation.

Two ways the government can play its role:

• One, by extending policy incentives to stop the misuse of groundwater; and

• Two, by unleashing a movement on the model of ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ to create awareness among people against wasting water.

Anatomy of the Problem:

• While talking about the water crisis, potability is only a small part of the problem.

• In fact, many developed countries have already found a solution of potable water by turning seawater into drinkable water on mass scale. But the real catastrophe waiting to happen, is in agriculture.

• As per the Land Use Statistics 2014–15, the total geographical area of the country is 328.7 million hectares, of which 140.1 million hectares is the reported net sown area. As per a World Bank report, India withdrew a total of 761 billion cubic meter ground water in 2018 out of which 688 billion cubic metre was used for agriculture. This is 90 percent of the total groundwater withdrawn in a year. The other side of the problem is that out of the total water volume needed for agriculture, 70 percent is groundwater today. Both the data, if put together, gives us a glimpse about the possible ways to find a solution of this grim problem.

Agricultural success in Punjab region:

Punjab, a celebrated story of agricultural success, is gradually turning into a graveyard of agriculture. The result of the policy of excessive subsidy on chemical fertilizers and pesticides on one hand and encouragement to farmers for unbridled use of groundwater by providing them free electricity on the other, has resulted in double whammy. One, the state is devoid of groundwater and two, the upper crest under soil has developed a layer of hard chemical residue due to which the rainwater simply flows away without seeping into the ground. So, there is little bewilderment that Punjab has the highest groundwater development ratio.
The level of groundwater development is very high in the states of Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan, where groundwater development is more than 100 percent with Punjab being on top with 172 percent. This implies that in these states, the annual groundwater consumption is more than annual groundwater recharge. Not only that, incentives to wastewater has also worsened the state’s water productivity. Punjab requires two to three times as much water as Bihar and West Bengal to produce a kilogram of rice.

How will it impact the farmers?

• Farmers often give such maths a cold shoulder terming it a luxury because they think it is something they are supposed to worry about in favour of comparatively affluent people. What they don’t comprehend is that it is them, who is most affected by this anomaly.

• The adversity befalls upon them in two ways.

• Sinking water level increases their cost of cultivation and decreases the production level at one hand, and increases their cost of living on the other hand.

• Water scarcity impacts farmers’ profit negatively, established a study titled ‘The Efficiency of Rationing: Agricultural Power Subsidies, Power Supply and Groundwater Depletion in Rajasthan’ published in 2018.

• This study found that farmers facing greater water scarcity sink deeper wells and are more likely to grow water-hardy crops and make investments in water-conserving irrigation technologies.

• Despite these investments, water scarcity still decreases profits and lands them in debt, according to the study.

• In many parts of the country, where the ground water has reached to the level of rocks beneath soil, the productivity has gone down drastically and the cost of cultivation has shot up. Even in the selection of crops, the farmers in such areas don’t find much option. Even if the water table goes down below 600 ft plus, the cost of borewell increases multiple times.

• There are strong links between cash cropping, the failure of borewells, overwhelming debts and farmer suicides in the semi-arid regions of northern and western Andhra Pradesh and other parts of the Deccan plateau, according to a study published in Third World Quarterly in 2013.

What is the solution?

• One thing is very clear. We cannot create water. We can only preserve water that we already have with us and that we will get in future in the form of rains. But again the rain data across the globe describes the challenge.

• While at just over 260 cubic km per year, India uses 25 percent of all groundwater extracted globally, ahead of the US and China, while it receives only four percent of the global precipitation and ranks 133 in the world in terms of water availability per person per annum.

• The approach to control the situation before it gets out of hand must have multi-directional dimensions. And because 90 percent of the water is used by agriculture, no solution will work lest we should keep cultivation in the centre.

• The key to the solution is producing more with less water. This goal can be achieved in two ways, one by shifting from more water guzzling crops to lesser ones and two, by creating awareness among farmers to use micro-irrigation tools.

• To achieve the optimum result with the first approach, ICAR’s two bodies, National Institute of Agricultural Economics and Policy Research and Indian Institute of Farming Systems Research at Modipuram, Meerut, are working toward this aim. The crop planning would be based
on local climatic conditions, water availability and overall demand-supply situation and could help the government to plan its
incentives in such ways that farmers will adopt those recommended crops, according to the ICAR.

• Experts say there is a need to double the area under micro-irrigation from the current level of nine million hectares.

• But it is easier said than done. In spite of the fact that almost all states have subsidy on getting micro-irrigation system, it is flouted by the lower lever corruption by the related companies in connivance with agriculture department officials. This discourages farmers from going for it.

• Moreover, due to lack of awareness, most of them think that micro-irrigation is only for the regions where farmers don’t have much water availability.

• To change the mind set of the producers, the government needs to rope in private sector along with its own agencies for successfully running focussed awareness programmes around benefits of micro-irrigation.

• The farmers should be taught how flood irrigation results in wastage of water and energy as well as reduce the efficiency of fertilisers.

• Also, there should be stress laid on the need for scheduling of irrigation process and said technologies like moisture sensor and other software that are available to achieve this aim.

• Other than to use the available water judiciously, the farmers also need to be made aware and trained about conservation of water. There are many farmers across the country who have developed unique models of cultivation where each drop of rain water falling within their farm land is preserved.

Conclusion:

• With all means of communication, it has to be made a part of national conscience that ground water rejuvenation has no option and that it is needed not only for future generations, but also for the present population.