Another lake dries and dies

The sorry state of water bodies across the sub-continent

In ‘hydraulic societies’ state power, suggested Karl Wittfogel, flows from the control of water. His thesis on ‘oriental despotism’ was based on the observation that in many Asian societies rain water had to be collected and made available for irrigation and consumption, often using human and animal power to collect, store and draw such water. Wittfogel believed hydraulic societies, as Max Weber dubbed them, tend to produce powerful bureaucratic and despotic states. So, is too much democracy or too little governance weakening the ability of the Indian state to perform its due role as an administrator of water collection, preservation, utilisation?

Not far from that tragic monument to the centrality of water to human habitation, Fatehpur Sikri, yet another famous lake has dried up. The drying up of the lake at the Sultanpur bird sanctuary in Haryana need not be viewed as an isolated case of degeneration of a water body due to human negligence. It is symptomatic of a trend that has resulted in the death and decline of countless lakes and other types of water bodies all over the sub-continent. In the north, the well-known Sukhna lake near Chandigarh, the Batkal lake in Haryana, the holy Pushkar lake near Ajmer and water bodies at the national park in Bharatpur in Rajasthan are among those whose existence is under threat. Even the famous Dal Lake in Srinagar is reckoned to have shrunk by over 15 km in the past six decades. Similar is the case in the south where tanks and ponds have traditionally been among the most important sources of water. Mega cities like Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru, which rose on the foundation of manmade lake-based supply of water, have experienced a shrinking of such vital sources of water. Most of even those which have survived have seen woeful degradation of water quality due to pollution and discharge of untreated wastes. Such neglect of water resources is untenable, especially considering that vast parts of the country are already water-stressed and the total water demand is projected to double in the next two decades.

Ponds and lakes do not only serve to hold rainwater, but they prevent soil erosion by doing so and facilitate groundwater recharge. They help sustain the vital hydrological cycle. Their drying up, on the other hand, creates bogs, which harbour unwanted sedges and other vegetation, apart from depriving water for gainful use. Besides curbing reckless human intervention in the catchment areas of water bodies, these watersheds need to be meticulously conserved. The realisation that the geographical unit for water development has to be a watershed (the contiguous area that drains into a common depression, creating lakes, streams or rivers) had come way back in the 1970s. This had led to launching of at least 300 national-level schemes in the 1970s and 1980s based on this concept — the Integrated Watershed Development Programmes (IWDP), the Drought Prone Area Programme (DPAP) and the Desert Development Programme (DDP). These programmes have, however, failed to make the desired impact because of implementation lapses. Though these were subsequently sought to be merged into a single programme called ‘Haryali’, to be implemented by the Panchayati Raj institutions, even that does not seem to have made much difference. One of the key objectives of the United Progressive Alliance government’s Bharat Nirman programme was the revival of a million lakes, ponds and water tanks across the country. But not enough has been done to meet this objective. Hopes now rest on the government’s latest initiative to launch a National Water Mission, under the National Action Plan for Climate Change, which has been mandated to ensure integrated conservation, development and management of water resources.