A water crisis is brewing in the agriculture sector worldwide, resulting from its over-use and climate change—and India is no exception. Farmers around the world are on an agitation path. In Europe, they raise issues such as falling prices, rising costs, heavy regulation, domineering retailers, debt and cheap imports. Climate change is also a matter of contention. While extreme events such as floods and droughts have become a huge burden for farmers, they also protest the environmental regulations put forth by the European Union seeking to ameliorate the impact of climate change.
The Indian farmers raise demands such as minimum support price, debt waiver, scrapping of the Electricity Amendment Bill 2020, withdrawal from WTO agreements and enhancement seed quality. Their concern for other marginalised communities is reflected in their demand for protection for land, forests and water sources belonging to tribal communities. That said, equally important is the rapidly depleting groundwater reserves across India that will have a deleterious impact on overall agricultural productivity, which finds no mention in their demands.
Take the case of Punjab—a key state for agricultural productivity. Out of the state’s 138 water blocks, more than 100 have already reached a critical stage for over-exploitation—some blocks exceed groundwater extraction by 200 percent, a few even over 400 percent. Since the Green Revolution in the 1960s, groundwater has played a vital role in irrigating water-hungry crops such as rice to feed the country’s growing population. But this was conditional on the overuse of fertilisers and over-dependence on groundwater. Reduced availability in India due to groundwater depletion and climate change could threaten the livelihoods of more than a third of the country’s 1.4 billion people.
Groundwater meets about half of the world’s drinking water needs, 40 percent of irrigation, and the rest is used by the industry. One of the important functions of groundwater is to maintain the base flow of streams. Globally, many aquifers are being impacted, including India’s river basin aquifers in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana and Delhi. Studies suggest that excessive groundwater depletion has led to salinisation and land subsidence. India extracts 75 billion cubic meters of groundwater annually, approximately a third of the total groundwater mined globally. According to NITI Aayog, 40 percent per cent of Indians may have no access to drinking water by 2020 and warned that several major cities run the risk of dry aquifers.
Over the past three decades, India has been grappling with rapid depletion of groundwater, driven by erratic climate and over-extraction. It is estimated that groundwater use in India has increased from 10-20 cubic km to 240-260 cubic km in the last 50 years. Matthew Rodell, a researcher from the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory in NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, estimates that groundwater in northern India is being depleted at the rate of 19.2 gigatons per year. A recent study based on satellite observations reveals that some parts of the north-western states including Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab are sinking at the rate of 1 cm per year, caused by groundwater withdrawal.
A University of Michigan-led study finds that if the current trend of usage continues, the rate of depletion could triple in India by 2080, further threatening India’s food and water security. At the macro level, experts have identified the rise in population, an expanding middle class and climate change as the major drivers of water shortage. At the micro-level, water pollution, theft, leakages, lack of management and neglect exacerbate the problem. In a performance audit in 2015-16, 14 states scored below 50 percent on water management. These ‘low performers’ are concentrated across the populous agricultural belts of north and east India, and the north-eastern and Himalayan states.
The contamination of groundwater has also reached alarming levels in many parts. India ranks 120th among 122 countries on a global water quality index and composite water management index 2018. Parts of Odisha, Bengal, Rajasthan and Gujarat are affected both by geogenic as well as anthropogenic contamination. The situation is expected to worsen with the rural population facing lower productivity and income from their agricultural lands leading to exodus to the cities and overcrowding of urban spaces which are also reeling under sufficient availability of water. The rise in the urban population has added to the strain on the resource base. India happens to lead the world in the projected growth in urban population between 2018 and 2050.
Ground studies also indicate increased salinity and nitrate contaminants in the lower reaches of the rivers. A study of water samples collected from wells in Rajasthan shows widespread contamination of fluoride, nitrate and uranium. The arsenic toxicity river basin in Bengal has become a serious problem. Large-scale pumping transfers the arsenic present in the deeper levels to shallow depths and the pumped water consequently contaminates the soil and accumulates in paddy grains. Much of the contaminants, except uranium, can be removed from water. However, the country lacks technological remedies to treat both wastewater and potable water.
Most of Indian megacities lack treatment plants for wastewater treatment. Kolkata, for example, generates about 750 million litres of wastewater and sewage daily. The core area of the city does not have a single sewage treatment plant, with the sewage finally ending up in the East Kolkata Wetlands. The key issue here is not just building such structures, but developing a long-lasting support system including legislation for maintaining them.
The water crisis is spiralling out of control primarily due to poor management, inadequate or unclear laws and corruption. A national water policy should involve a holistic approach to watershed management with a participatory role for local citizens in monitoring the hydrological cycle with the help of hydrologists, engineers and biologists. The policy should include effective aquifer management and facilitating the regulation of usage. Farmers should be taken into confidence in this exercise to help devise plans for efficient usage of water for irrigation. The government has little control over the usage of wastewater and should devise imaginative re-use programmes.
(Views are personal)
(cprajendran@gmail.com)
Adjunct Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru