The Scarce Water

Has anyone seen any water?


Come summer and the country will have to get ready for yet another water scarcity situation. Water resources are depleting while management continues to be inefficient. The availability of both surface and groundwater is further being reduced by pollution and inappropriate waste disposal. Gone are the days when the per capita water availability stood at more than 5000 cubic metres at the national level. Presently it stands around 1900 cubic metres and is likely to fall further to less than 1000 cubic metre in this decade. and the situation of plenty is threatening to become one of acute water scarcity.
The disease afflicting the water sector has not developed overnight. The signs of distress had been evident since decades, but people remained mesmerised with the thought that being a water-endowed country having adequate water sources, monsoons would bring in the needed water every year. While politicians remained occupied with vote banks,billions of cubic metres of the precious resource got emptied into the sea unutilised year after year during the monsoons.
The extreme variations in the availability of water over space and time with more than 80% of the annual flows occurring during the monsoon months of July to September, have, while causing harmful abundance in some regions, resulted in acute water scarcity conditions in many parts of the country. Since a few months account for most of the year’s rainfall and consequent water availability, the ability to hold water in reservoirs and spread out its release over the year can mean the difference between devastating floods and droughts, adequate aquifer replenishment or depleted ground water resources. As the population is expected to reach 1300 million in the year 2025, the present slow pace of progress in developing and managing the water resources of the country will lead to alarming situations if ameliorative actions on policy and institutional reforms are not taken now on a war footing. As of now, we have been able to hold back only a little more than 10% of the annually available monsoon flows and even in the next two decades not much progress can be expected with opposition from environmentalists and other activists against storage structures.
The utter confusion prevailing among planners, academicians, intellectuals and stakeholders about the approach to be adopted in dealing with water, has been the root cause impeding the progress in developing this resource. On the management side, the confusion is further compounded with political opportunism vetoing all suggestions for improving water- use efficiency with measures such as proper pricing of water, controlling groundwater withdrawals, etc.
The increasing demand on fresh water has brought up many issues in the water sector: issues of development, equity and sustainability.The problems are not beyond the present state of our knowledge and technology but what is needed is an apex organisation needed to co-ordinate the activities of harnessing and augmenting the available water to optimise its productivity. Presently such a set up does not exist.
A plethora of independent governmental institutions both at the national and state levels is presently dealing with the different aspects of water. For example, at the national level, Ministry of Water Resources (MOWR) which should have been the custodian of all aspects of water as a resource, has been concerned only with the ‘‘irrigation aspects’’ of water resources. Water supply -urban and rural, soil conservation and watershed development, environment, water quality, etc. are dealt with other Ministries/Departments. True, there are constant inter-departmental references and meetings, but co-ordination is weak. Hence attempts to take holistic views have been frustrated by the institutional gaps caused due to lack of needed coordination, procedures and guidelines. Integrated water planning to identify and optimise water and complementary investment is therefore lacking and each institution follows its own interests, frequently, to the exclusion of the common good. The condition of state level institutions in this regard is also not conducive to achieving results in optimising resource utilisation. Though, the Central Water Commission (CWC), the technical arm of MOWR, with more than six decades of service to the nation in the water resources sector has played a crucial role in the planning and design of a large number of major, medium and multi-purpose projects all over the country, due to built in constraints, it has not been able to play an effective role.
The National Commission for Integrated Water Resources Development Plan (NCIWRDP) set up by MOWR, in their Report (September, 1999) had suggested many institutional reforms at the central and state levels. The Commission has strongly recommended that ‘‘CWC should be restructured into a statutory high powered inter-disciplinary commission with maximum autonomy’’ to cope with the challenges of integrated water development and management.
The fact that a similar apex body, the National Dairy Development Board, was created by statute with clear mandate and large powers even though ‘‘dairying’’ is a state subject, confirms that when there is a felt need the government can create innovative organisations using parallel powers. A duly empowered CWC is the need of the hour.
While there is every possibility of vested interests resisting the creation of such an apex body, in the overall interest of the sector, such a powerful body alone can co-ordinate the needed efforts to meet the challenges of the coming decades in the water sector. With the expertise available and the powers provided, CWC would then be able to ensure that instead of working at cross-purposes, all concerned would utilise their energies to push through such projects to fruition, and that the minimum threshold is crossed within a fixed time-frame to facilitate everyone getting their basic needs of water met.
We have few options left. Either we put in place the necessary institutions with adequate powers to streamline the related activities to manage the resource or face the increasing distress with a growing population.The need of the day is to ensure that the spectre of scarcity haunting the coming decades does not become a reality.

(The Indian Express, dated 15th April, 2005)