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dam-l India Today (June 22) water story.
The Drying of India
As politicians siphon off thousands of crores of rupees for unending
irrigation projects and refuse to stop the relentless pumping of
groundwater, a parched future threatens India.
By Samar Halarnkar
<small>This is Anni's secret trove. It's a hole she made in a pipeline
under a dune. </small>
<small>As the rolling banks of burnished sand merge into the muddy,
golden haze of twilight, Anni, 50, crouches over the pool of water
bubbling up from the dune. She quickly fills her earthen pot and
replaces the plug. It's a routine she follows once a week, the only time
water courses through the pipe, as it heads for its official outlet at a
village 8 km away. To Anni, a temple caretaker in this parched corner of
north-western Rajasthan, the pipeline is a godsend. "Life is easier
now," she smiles. No longer is she dead tired, as she used to be,
hauling water 200 feet from the deepening depths of the village well.
Still, every person in the 12 houses in Anni's tiny hamlet of
Nami-ki-Dhani (translated, ironically, as "place of moisture") in Churu
district gets by with just about 5 litres of water a day -- less than
the water that flows out of a tap when you brush your teeth. </small>
<small>The people of Dhanduka laugh mirthlessly when you ask about
water. "Dikri ne banduke devi," they say, "pan Dhanduke naa devi." Give
your daughter to a gun -- shoot her -- but don't give her to Dhanduka
(in marriage). The black humour flows freely around this bustling
gateway to Gujarat's baking northern lands. It's about the only thing
that does. Last week, 35,000 townsfolk waited on tenterhooks for the
golden half hour, once in six days, when water flows from the taps.
</small>
<small>Dhanduka's groundwater aquifers, the veins of water below the
ground, were emptied so drastically that salt water rushed in,
destroying them for good. A disaster is unfolding all over northern
Gujarat. With pipes drying up, the search for water is frenzied; 43 per
cent of Gujarat's electricity goes to power bore wells that go deeper
and deeper into the earth to find water. The first trickles now come up
only at 500 ft, sometimes even 1,000 ft. "Large-scale migration from
north Gujarat is inevitable if the groundwater levels fall like this --
10 ft a year," confesses Narmada Development Minister Jaynarayna Vyas.
Tankers now supply water to 7.5 million desperate people. </small>
<small>In snooty Delhi, the number of water tankers you can summon is a
mark of wealth and power. It's simple: the city needs 770 million
gallons of water a day, but it can supply no more than 600. As the
municipal supply fails, everyone, including public housing authorities,
frantically bore into the earth for water. But these unseen storehouses
are drying up with frightening regularity. Statistics will tell you 85
per cent of urban India has access to safe, piped drinking water.
Statistics lie. "The situation in states like Tamil Nadu and Andhra
Pradesh is critical ... in towns with population less than one lakh, the
piped-water supply situation paints an even grimmer picture," warns a
report of an expert group constituted by the Ministry of Finance (MOF).
</small>
<small>Every person in the cities now gets by with about 71 litres per
day, less than six flushes of an average toilet. Providing 145 litres
(12 turns of the toilet handle) of piped, treated water per day to the
rest of urban India in the next three years will require an astronomical
investment of about Rs 34,000 crore. </small>
<small>Matters are worse in the villages. In 1985, there were 750
"no-source villages", no safe water sources within 1.6 km. Despite the
spread of water projects, a Planning Commission study reveals that the
number of no-source villages has burgeoned to 65,000, primarily because
of contamination, sources drying up and system breakdowns. </small>
<small>And so a great thirst settles over India every summer. But as the
growing desperation of Gujarat, Delhi and countless towns and villages
indicates, we are nearing a catastrophic drying up. The demands on water
-- for drinking, irrigating fields, for a growing population, industries
and power stations -- are skyrocketing. "There are definite pointers to
the fact that we are fast approaching a point of absolute scarcity,"
says S.R. Hashim, member secretary, Planning Commission. "Half of India
is already in crisis," adds R. Rangachari, a water policy expert and
former member of the Central Water Commission. </small>
<small>Much of the blame rests with governments that will not curb the
siphoning of groundwater. Managing groundwater is critical. It is the
source for 85 per cent of rural drinking water and 55 per cent of urban
drinking water. Dependence increases as surface water sources, mainly
rivers, are sullied by sewage and industrial pollution. In rural India,
drinking water projects are severely affected when groundwater is sucked
away by unregulated borewells for irrigation. But irrigation is a cash
cow on which water and money -- desperately needed for drinking water
projects -- is squandered by politicians and technocrats. The reasons:
dubious populism and slush money. As an India Today investigation
reveals, purposeless spending on irrigation -- which uses 80 per cent of
all of India's water -- has leached the Government of crores of rupees.
And if you thought today's shortages are already critical, bear in mind
that in the next two years India will need 25 per cent more water than
it uses today. Apocalypse couldn't be nearer. </small>
<small>APOCALYPSE LOOMING
Pumps, politicians and inefficient irrigation are sucking India dry
</small>
<small>Murugan's home should have brought water to Chennai. For 18
years, he's lived with his parents in a giant pipe, the end result of
the failed Veeranam pipe project. It is symptomatic of the government's
water farce. The inability to plan and finish projects has led to the
massive shortage of drinking water, which has first claim on the
country's pool of water. </small>
<small>Other problems are equally serious: the failure to control
groundwater use or raise water rates; a lack of maintenance that
eviscerates water supply schemes; and the collapse of traditional
community water sources, which could easily supply basic needs and
recharge aquifers. </small>
<small>Since power supplied to run tubewells is generally subsidised or
free, water is sucked out from aquifers like there is no tomorrow.
Similarly, water for irrigation is nearly free. Tamil Nadu, a state
embroiled in an eternal water crisis, hasn't revised its water rates
since 1962. On an average, the cost of supplying water is 91 paise for
1,000 litres. Farmers pay 1.2 paise for paddy and 11.1 paise for
sugarcane (both crops that use water heavily). "There is no way such
rates will ever convey a crisis situation to the user," says a senior
official of the Ministry of Water Resources. Half of Punjab is in a
critical condition. "With the water table falling by 1 ft to 2 ft every
year, panic is slowly but surely percolating among the farmers," says
Raja Narinder Singh, the minister in charge of rural water supply. In
Patiala and Ludhiana, sweet water in the upper soil has been so
exhausted or polluted by industrial effluents that the water coming up
now is about 4,000 years old. It isn't that groundwater is in short
supply: less than 40 per cent of India's reserves -- all of these
rechargeable -- are tapped. But groundwater is steadily being polluted;
more crucial is chaotic, unregulated drilling. India has a million
borewells, the largest number in the world, draining aquifers with no
thought to recharge. Scientists can best estimate how much water to draw
and from where, but no government allows control over this potent
political weapon -- and damn the consequences. </small>
<small>"What are you then leaving for future generations?" asks S.K.
Chaddha, chairman of the Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA), a body
like so many government agencies gathering mountains of data -- on
groundwater in this case -- with little purpose. Disturbed by the run on
groundwater, the Supreme Court now vests the CGWA with the power to
control borewells. So, Chaddha is about to implement plans -- expect
some hell to break loose when he does -- to register every borewell in
India and inform the nation that a new water regulator will watch every
foot that you drill. Draconian? Probably, but the options available are
narrowing. </small>
<small>A model legislation to control groundwater was circulated to the
states a decade ago but only Gujarat and Maharashtra enacted laws. As
for enforcement, it was never done. In Punjab, B.S. Jhanju, director of
the Ground Water Resources Directorate, explains why groundwater
legislation doesn't work. "The overriding compulsion of not annoying the
peasantry by restricting or banning pumping of groundwater is something
a political government can ill-afford to ignore." He's right. Free power
for tubewells has aggravated Punjab's water woes. Astronomical sums are
sunk into getting water to farmlands but recovery is abysmal: less than
25 per cent on investment. Not exactly small change. </small>
<small>In cities and giant irrigation projects, the leakage of water
from poorly maintained and creaky systems is scandalous. In urban areas,
about a third of all water is lost in leaky pipelines, say official
figures, but the real loss may be half of all water piped. Experts
estimate that only 30 to 40 per cent of water from canals, dams and
rural tubewells actually reaches the fields. "The worst problem in the
irrigation sector is the total lack of maintenance," says M.R. Reddy,
former secretary, Ministry of Water Resources. Money for crucial but
wholly unglamorous maintenance has to compete with spending on new
irrigation projects. There is no contest. The breakdown of maintenance
threatens the entire rural water programme. The Accelerated Rural Water
Supply Programme was to bring water to 1.52 lakh problematic villages.
Evaluators of the Planning Commission reported breakdowns in 87 per cent
of the villages surveyed. Only in half of the villages was the reduction
in time and distance of any practical use. </small>
<small>The government has, often unwittingly, reduced self-sufficient
communities to dependence on a water dole. Consider how tank irrigation
collapsed. There are 1.5 million tanks dotting India's vast hinterland
but farmland under tank irrigation has fallen from 4.8 million hectares
to 3.1. The downslide began when ownership of the hills and forests
around the tanks passed from villages into the hands of the government.
Deforestation and soil erosion clogged feeder channels. Tanks are now
managed either by a disinterested Public Works Department or village
panchayats, controlled by local politicians who dole out money for
maintenance to friendly contractors. </small>
<small>CATCHING THE RAIN
Villages and cities must trap the rain when it falls and reduce water
use </small>
<small>Vangathil odi varum neerin mikayal, mayyathu naadukalil payir
seivom (Let us raise grain in central India with the excess water
flowing into the Bay of Bengal). </small>
<small>It was 1919 when the great Tamil poet Subramanya Bharati
philosophised thus. It was a gentler time, when India didn't have a
billion mouths to feed. A plan drawn in 1980 transformed Bharati's
musings into a grand vision of storages, giant linking canals and
waterways: the technical term for diverting the swollen snow-fed
Himalayan rivers to the parched south is inter-basin transfers. Sweeping
across peninsular India, it would make available enough water to
single-handedly take care of a third of India's needs by the year 2000.
It would be one of the greatest water projects in the world -- if it
were ever implemented. </small>
<small>It won't. There will never be enough money and consensus. When
two states can't agree on a piffling stream like the Cauvery, multiple
chains of states -- and countries (it would need cooperation from
neighbours) -- are unlikely to agree to giant canals taking their waters
for a cross-country journey. </small>
<small>Officials and politicians brought up on a staple vision of grand
projects are now reluctantly agreeing that the simple task of collecting
the rain as it falls and letting it percolate down is vital to recharge
depleted underground aquifers. With that in mind, the government will
set up such water harvesting projects in every district. Similarly,
Chennai will now require every new house to collect water on its rooftop
and let it flow into the ground to recharge aquifers. Even if 10 per
cent of the rain that falls over India can be stored in some form, many
areas of scarcity could be transformed. Like Pimparwada. </small>
<small>As the sun blazes down on Maharashtra's Beed district, a gaggle
of children gather around a handpump to cool off from the 42 degree
heat. It's the only source of water for the 2,000 people in this hamlet
in drought-stricken Marathwada. It's a new experience: having a bath in
running water. </small>
<small>It's also a new experience to be here in summer. Like more than
six lakh of Beed's 15 lakh residents, the people of Pimparwada simply
migrated after the water was exhausted every February. "A boy's parents
either had to pay dowry or at least promise to migrate," says Raghunath
Tidke, the village sarpanch. Helped by an NGO called the Rural
Development Centre, Pimparwada's succour has come from the revival of a
simple, traditional concept: store the rain water in bunded tanks
instead of letting it uselessly soak into the ground. </small>
<small>It's a success story that is repeated nationwide. India Today
found previously abandoned villages in Gujarat, Rajasthan and
Maharashtra where NGOs have helped villages revive and re-invent local
traditions of water storage. In Rajasthan, an NGO called the Tarun
Bharat Sangh has helped change the rhythms of life in 550 villages.
Little check dams and ponds, most costing between Rs 15,000 and Rs
40,000, have sprung up everywhere, recharging groundwater, bringing
water for crops and stopping migration. </small>
<small>Water use can be easily cut down in the cities. Municipal
authorities must stop the use of toilets and taps that waste water by
setting standards for conservation. Many American states require houses
and offices to meet conservation standards. Typical Indian toilets use
12 litres of water; a US cistern uses only five. Water-efficient
fixtures could reduce water consumption by 25-50 per cent. </small>
<small>It's also time to reuse waste water. Treating waste water not
only preserves its quality but continuous re-use (US industries, on an
average, use 1 cubic m of water three-four times) greatly relieves
pressure on fresh supplies. In heaving Mexico City, 4 per cent of water
supply -- mainly for gardening and watering public parks -- is recycled
water. And yet a water-starved country like India waters lawns and
washes cars with drinking water. </small>
<small>But everything will fail unless water prices are raised. Experts
state over and over again that the price of water must convey its
scarcity value. In urban India, "water prices reflect neither the
capital cost nor production and maintenance cost ... further, the
subsidised rates encourage inefficiency and wastage", says an MOF
report. Across the nation, the cost of sending water to the home is
anything from three to 10 times the prices charged. And as water-starved
areas show, people are willing to pay between 10 and 20 times the price
of government water -- if they get it. Delhi's water crisis finally
forced a reluctant Government to raise water prices by 40 per cent this
month. </small>
<small>Costlier water is inevitable. International and institutional
funding -- the only source of money now for large drinking-water schemes
-- has frequently been declined to states that refused to raise water
rates. The World Bank recently backtracked on a Rs 713 crore loan for
rural water supply in Punjab after the Government made water and power
free for farms. "Without international aid, we have no means to meet
rural water supply targets," admits minister Narinder Singh. Punjab,
like the rest of India, is being entangled in a watery web that it is
itself spinning.
Promise a dam. Win an election. It doesn't actually have to be built; or
carry water to the fields. India today is littered with nearly 300
unfinished irrigation projects, started because some MP or MLA promised
water -- or simply wanted his or her name on a foundation stone. Many
were started when Jawaharlal Nehru talked of the "temples of modern
India"; they are now unholy monuments to waste and greed. It is a
scandal of gigantic proportions, sucking money faster than a tubewell
depletes groundwater. </small>
<small>The money needed to finish the projects (major, medium and
renovation schemes): Rs 41,272 crore. Some 46,000 crore has already been
spent since the 1950s. No more than Rs 2,600 crore will be available
this year, split equally between the Centre and the states. They could
still be under construction when your great grandchildren grow up.
"Politicians are entirely to blame for this mess," says R. Rangachari,
former member of the Central Water Commission, which has repeatedly
warned against sanctioning new projects. No one ever listened. </small>
<small>"Hamari sabhyata mein pehle shadi tai karte hain, baad mein paise
dete hain (In our culture we first fix the marriage and then give the
money)," an official recalls being told by a former chief minister of
Madhya Pradesh. Consider the Saryu Canal in Uttar Pradesh. It was
supposed to cost Rs 78 crore when work started in 1976. It's incomplete
even today. And the cost: it has gone up 16 times. The state Government
now acknowledges cost overruns of Rs 6,023 crore from construction
delays of 29 projects dating back to the '70s. "The loss occurred
because the projects were never completed," admits state Irrigation
Minister Om Prakash Singh. </small>
<small>Dams are grand political statements, a local village tank or a
tubewell is but an unnoticed aside. Even when dams are built, they are
useless unless the water gets to the user. This is another part of the
irrigation scandal. The official figures for the shortfall in the amount
of land that should be irrigated with the major projects and the land
actually irrigated is nearly 10 million hectares -- the total irrigated
area of Punjab, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. That's because command area
development (the construction of feeder canals, distributaries and the
water courses that finally go into the farmer's field), is ignored and
pauperised. </small>
<small>It's unsaid, of course, that irrigation projects are founts of
corruption. "This is a kamadhenu for politicians and the technocracy,"
says an official of the Ministry of Water Resources. So no politician
talks of minor irrigation, which accounts for half of India's irrigated
area. It costs Rs 12,000 to irrigate a hectare with a tank or tubewell;
the comparable cost with big dams and canals is Rs 50,000, going up to
Rs 1 lakh. When a big dam is constructed, its cost benefits are vastly
exaggerated. The extra funds are systematically siphoned off down the
line. And the farmer? Just promise him another project.</small>