Saving water: India needs a balanced management template to avert crisis

India could be staring at a severe water crisis this summer with snowfall on the Himalayan-Hindu Kush range reaching a 23-year low for a third consecutive year, according to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development’s latest “Snow Update” report. “Snow persistence”, or the time the snow remains on the ground, is almost 24 per cent below normal. This means that water levels in the subcontinent’s major river systems — the Ganga, Brahmaputra, and Indus — will be running low since snowmelt in April, May, and June typically accounts for a significant part of the annual river flows. Such low levels will, in turn, impact irrigation and power generation, and Indians’ access to water. In these circumstances, increasing dependence on groundwater resources is a given. But groundwater resources too are rapidly depleting, with the NITI Aayog estimating that nearly 600 million Indians currently face high to extreme water stress. With climate change likely to worsen the situation, India’s challenge is to create a water-management template that balances the needs of its population without catastrophically depleting its water reserves.   

Addressing this demands a relook by both the Centre and states at decades of policy choices that have encouraged indiscriminate usage without rational water-management strategies. The Green Revolution legacies of promoting water-intensive crops such as paddy and sugar in water-scarce states by providing free or heavily subsidised water have seen the water table dropping dangerously. A study by the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar shows 450 cubic kilometres of groundwater was lost in northern India between 2002 and 2021. As a result of agricultural overexploitation, growing urbanisation without commensurate water-pricing policies, and the steady pollution of rivers and water bodies with industrial and agricultural effluent, some 60 per cent of India’s districts are projected to suffer critical water shortages within two decades.

  Though big dams such as the Sardar Sarovar and pipe-building programmes such as the Har Ghar Nal Yojana seek to address the issue of access, the real challenge is ensuring balanced water ecology. There is, however, no single solution to the problem but a combination of myriad initiatives. Some of these initiatives demand political courage, such as aligning the pricing of both irrigation and urban water supplies to its scarcity value, which could act as an automatic check on usage and wastage as it does in Europe, for instance. De-incentivising paddy cultivation in the stressed northern belts would be another solution.  Meanwhile, the discharge of industrial effluents into rivers urgently demands a tougher deterrent regime. At the same time, urban planning needs to address the endemic practice of concretising natural rechargers such as lakes and water bodies, the cause of Bengaluru’s water crisis last year. Cheaper and less technical options also work. Water-harvesting projects, for instance, have been shown to make an appreciable difference in recharging groundwater. Such projects are increasingly mandatory in new constructions but the rule is observed in the breach. In rural and semi-rural areas, aquifer-recharging check dams, which have demonstrably helped in drought-prone areas such as Bundelkhand, need to be established in larger numbers. The advantage of these simple solutions is not just their low-cost, high-impact nature but also the possibility of greater community participation, making water conservation an effective ground-up participatory enterprise rather than a government-imposed obligation.