Anil Sasi
The Indian Express
January 17, 2013
The national water framework law proposed by the Union government could not be more timely. Even as the onerous task of persuading state governments to accept the idea remains unfinished, the proposed framework, as an overarching statement of general principles that lays down the broad contours within which the Centre, the states and the local bodies can exercise their respective powers on exploiting water, is a comprehensive step in viewing water as a national resource.
That we have a problem on our hands is evident. India is among the most water-stressed countries on the planet, as is clear from the global water demand and availability data mapped by the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States.
A North-South stratification is visible in the graphic, both in terms of the physical supply of water and the access of populations to the resource. The entire southern hemisphere is water-stressed, in sharp contrast to the entire North, which has enough to meet its demand for the time being. The problem for the southern hemisphere countries is accentuated by their inability to mitigate the problem of lower availability of water by way of adequate storage provisions. India’s per capita storage capacity, for instance, is significantly lower than that of other countries, with the quantum of water that can be stored as a proportion of average river runoff pegged at just 50 days. This number subsumes wide variations — from 220 days in the Krishna, to just two days in the Brahmaputra/ Barak basin. The comparable figures for the Colorado River Basin and Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin are 900 days, while the figure for South Africa’s Orange River Basin it is 350 days.
Erratic precipitation patterns, which are becoming more the norm than the exception, add to these woes. This year, with the southwest monsoons below normal, and the northeast monsoon about 20 per cent deficient till end-December, the storage positions in key reservoirs in India is currently way below the adequate limits. South India has been the worst hit, with water-storage levels at their lowest in a decade. According to the Central Water Commission, with data updated till December 20, the overall storage level in the 82 major reservoirs of the country at 93.282 billion cubic metres (bmc) was 60 per cent of the full reservoir level of 154.421 bmc. During the same time last year, the level was 66 per cent. In addition, key aquifers are being overpumped in most states as electricity is offered way below cost to farmers.
While the need for drinking water is key, the latest OECD forecast indicates that in the coming years, global domestic consumption will be dwarfed by other industrial uses of water. Even the demand for agricultural consumption is estimated to decline. The demand from the manufacturing sector and from power generation (especially from water-intensive renewable solar and thermal generators) is estimated to form nearly half the global demand for water by 2050.
Without new policy interventions, by 2050, freshwater availability will be further strained, with 2.3 billion more people than today (in total over 40 per cent of the global population) projected to be living in river basins experiencing severe water stress, especially in North and South Africa, and South and Central Asia.
In India, Bihar and West Bengal have the lowest per capita length of rivers and canals — less than four centimetres — one of the primary reasons for the non-availability of water for irrigation purposes and the falling agriculture sector in these states. Nearly all states, except Karnataka, have been found to be suffering from the problem of deficient and scanty rainfall in their region. The worst affected are Delhi, Sikkim, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.
In terms of groundwater levels, the situation is critical in Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. According to the data released by the Central Ground Water Board in September 2012 as part of the country’s first-ever exercise at firming up an aquifer atlas, there has been a sharp decline in groundwater levels in several parts of Delhi, west UP, Haryana and Rajasthan over the years. The atlas, prepared on a 1:250000 grid map scale, covers 14 principal and 42 major aquifers.
So, along with the challenge of recharging the aquifers and harnessing river runoffs, the other key intervention could come in the form of economic pricing of water. While this does present a challenge in a country where people have been used to free or minimal pricing of water, one way out could be to look at the increasing block tariff (IBT)-based water pricing for consumer-level water supplies in bigger towns and cities, as against the uniform rate pricing followed currently. In the former, the unit prices increase progressively at higher consumption slabs, whereas in the latter, allocation is at a single unit price, irrespective of consumption. IBT has a clear appeal in terms of keeping the scales tilted in favour of the poor, who presumably use less water and would thereby come under the lower tariff bracket, effectively being cross-subsidised by the rich, who would typically consume larger amounts.
