Sunita Narain: Looking for rainmakers

Good water-management policies are needed to cope with flood-drought cycles

Good water-management policies are needed for India to cope with flood-drought cycles, often in neighbouring areas.

Last fortnight, the dominant image on TV screens was drought. This fortnight, it was vast parts of the country drowned in water by the rains. An uncertain, unpredictable and variable monsoon continues to have a great impact on us. Late rain delayed or jeopardised crop sowing; the intense rain threw life asunder and, as it flowed away rapidly, it created the prospect of future scarcity. The regional variations at the national and local level are huge too. So there is drought in large parts of the otherwise moist northeast and in the paddy-growing areas of Punjab and Haryana. In all, a different monsoon, perhaps signalling the climate-changing times ahead.

Last fortnight, I said these changes had to be heeded for the future. We must learn, fast, how to reinvigorate our water policy while keeping in mind the two big changes — more variable rainfall and desperately growing water needs. What should we do?

Let me lay out elements of the future water policy: An agenda for change.

One, we need a water-knowledge mission — with a difference. This mission, while using the most sophisticated water-measuring devices — satellites and groundwater sensors — must be targeted at informing the people affected by water-change. It must be designed so that information that is generated can be distributed quickly, to each farmer or household. What we need is the world’s biggest weather forecasting system with the biggest communication footprint.

Two, a plan for water utilisation for each village, city and factory. What’s going on in the groundwater aquifer must be made public. Although the central and state groundwater boards do measure depth of wells, this data is not made available for public perusal. The last I heard, computerising groundwater data had become a horrific spend. Armed with World Bank money, the government launched a national programme to feed groundwater-levels data of each state into its new software — built by a private vendor. The software did not work in some places, in others people were not trained to work with it, the computers failed and finally the government and the vendor fell out over the costs of the annual maintenance contract. Now the old data does not exist, and the new one cannot be tracked. This needs to be fixed. But this is still not good enough. In the age of variability, there is no alternative to the option of turning each village water-literate.

Three, the village water security plan must become the basis of all future development expenditure. Substantial funds under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and rural drinking water programme need dovetailing into a five-year water security plan. Everyone likes to talk about a decentralised system for catching every drop of water, desperately. Now, it’s time we started working on it.

Four, we must work on managing our demand, and not just be focused on supply. This is crucial. Most government estimates are not worth the paper they are written on and miss the fact that, if indeed there is a water surplus, it is in the basins of the Ganga and Brahmaputra — so difficult for the country to access, let alone those in their own backyards.

So, the fifth area is to rework water and waste-management in our cities. Here is a real opportunity. Today, cities pull in water from further and further away. The cost of bringing water is high and distribution losses huge. The city can afford to supply to a few and not all — reinforcing a policy, and a cycle, of scarcity and augmentation. But turn the issue on its head. The issue is not that of supply, but distribution to all. If cities had a single agenda to ensure minimum water to all equally, it would have driven policy — they would meter each point of bulk supply, charge prices based on consumption and cost for sewage that comes out from every household. Once the rich in our cities begin to pay the ‘real’ costs of their consumption, policy would work to drive down costs, making water supply and distribution more affordable. This, in turn, would make the city value its local water bodies and groundwater recharge systems, for these would cut costs and losses of piping and pumping.

Six, the agenda has to be to reuse and recycle every drop of water. Instead of spending on expensive options, say turning seawater into drinking water, we should turn every litre of sewage and industrial effluent into usable water — treated for use in agriculture or treated further to turn it into drinking water.

Finally, water — its scarcity, its availability and its use — has to be a national obsession. I suggest the Prime Minister become the first water warrior: He cuts his own water use, harvests his own water, makes his bills public and does a public water audit of his own establishment. The agenda should be single: How do we secure India’s water future? The answers should be determined and direct. For now, we are running out of time, if not out of water.