Beyond the Jal Shakti Abhiyan

NITI Aayog reckons that nearly 600 million Indians are already facing "high to extreme" water stress. The situation is set to worsen as the water demand is likely to double by 2030

For the first time, the government has got its timing right in conducting the rainwater-harvesting drive, the Jal Shakti Abhiyan phase-II. The programme was launched on March 22, the International Water Day, much before the onset of the monsoon, and is slated to continue till November-end. Normally, soil and water conservation measures are taken up during the monsoon season, which is an inappropriate time to do so. Jobs like cleaning, dredging and widening water streams and water-holding ponds, lakes, and reservoirs need to be carried out prior to the onset of the monsoon. The pre-monsoon dry season is an opportune period also for building rainwater collection infrastructure or renovating and expanding the old one. Once the monsoon sets in, work on these projects faces frequent interruptions due to rain.

While inaugurating this campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, gave a very pertinent advice to people. “Do not wait for engineers to draw up a plan for you”, he said, and added, “villagers know very well how to implement water conservation and usage strategies”. If this sane counsel is put into practice, it will make rain conservation a people-driven programme, rather than an officially imposed liability. The PM’s suggestion is significant also because water-gathering and -conservation practices followed traditionally in water-stressed areas are the most efficient. These have managed to sustain life in the semi-arid areas of Rajasthan and Gujarat over centuries and meet water needs of old urban centres like Chennai and Bengaluru. Their key components were water storage structures like Tankis (in homes), Tankas (in villages), Bowlies (step-wells) for communities and lakes and ponds developed at natural depressions in urban centres.

Fortunately, the basic objective of the current Jal Shakti Abhiyan seems to be in sync with the age-old concept of in situ capturing and preserving rainwater. This is reflected in the campaign’s motto: “Catch the rain where it falls and when it falls.” This is essentially the fine-tuned version of the earlier slogan: “Khet ka pani khet mein; gaon ka pani gaon mein”, meaning preserving rainwater falling in crop fields and villages in these respective places. Soil and water experts had viewed this as the best means of storing surplus rainwater to meet off-season contingencies in farms and villages. The scientists had even demonstrated the potential of this approach to augment water availability in low-rainfall areas. Yet, regrettably, only a few states actually put this concept into practice and that, too, only in farms. Financial assistance was used by farmers to build small ponds in their fields to impound surplus rainwater and use it for life-saving crop irrigation. The gains from this move, in terms of growth in crop productivity, were noteworthy. But, this could not be replicated on a larger scale at the village level. Such contrasting responses are not uncommon in the projects to be owned and operated individually vis-à-vis those by the communities.

The urgency for water conservation can be judged from the scary demand-supply projections made by the government’s think tank, the National institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog. It reckons that nearly 600 million Indians are already facing “high to extreme” water stress. The situation is set to worsen as the water demand is likely to double by 2030. About 22 per cent of groundwater has either dried up or is in the critical category. With the business as usual approach, the country might lose nearly 6 per cent of its gross domestic product by 2050 due to water-related factors.

However, the silver lining of this seemingly dismal water profile is that the projected scarcity is largely the result of mismanagement of available water and, hence, can be mitigated through its better handling. Many meteorologists and hydrologists believe that India is not an innately water-deficient nation. It is the indiscriminate splurging of water that has made it so. In fact, India is located in the world’s two highest rainfall zones — the equatorial belt and the monsoon region. The country’s annual area-weighted average rainfall is 117-120 cm, against the global average of 100-110 cm. But the bulk of the rainwater, around 88 cm, comes in the main monsoon season of just four months (June to September). Only a small portion comes as winter rainfall and snowfall in the rest of the year. This amount of water, if managed prudently, should be able to meet the country’s genuine water needs.

At present, no more than 10-20 per cent of this water is captured and safely stored in surface or underground aquifers for use in the off-season. The rest runs off wastefully to the oceans, causing floods, eroding soil and increasing sedimentation in water bodies in its wake. The need is to substantially step up the level of trapping, suitably conserving and efficiently utilising the available rainwater. Occasional water conservation drives, such as the current Jal Shakti Abhiyan, would not suffice. This campaign would need to be sustained over years to achieve enduring results.

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surinder.sud@gmail.com