India Emerging by Sandip Sen

Author:Sandip Sen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: null
ISBN: 9789387457942
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

Water Crisis—Why Is Water Use in the Agriculture Sector so Unregulated?

Water crisis across India is a man-made creation and is solvable. It happened in Latur in 2016 and in Shimla in 2018 and could happen in more cities in times to come. In 2015 and 2016, cultivation of sugar cane and soya beans in Marathwada region caused an acute and unprecedented water crisis. The region is dry and traditionally farmers used to plant crops like millet which consumed little water. But, farmers were misled to believe that they could earn more by planting cash crops that fetched better rates. So, despite water shortage, they dug borewells and drew water from sub-surface to feed the water-guzzling cash crops. This resulted in the water table receding and a shortage of drinking water in the town of Latur. In May 2018, I discussed the lessons from the Latur water crisis in the think tank, ORF, in an article titled, ‘If 80% of Water Is for Agriculture, Why Is it so Unregulated and Inefficient?’

More borewells were dug by the local administration to supply water to Latur city dwellers but they too ran dry. Soon water was supplied by tankers through contractors who dug even deeper borewells, accentuating the crisis. On 19 April 2016, railways had to step in and supply 4,00,000 litres of water by Jaldoot Express. The ferrying of water over a distance of 340 km from Miraj to Latur continued for weeks as the government had to send several trainloads of water to meet the water crisis at Latur. In an article for Woman’s Era in 2016, titled ‘India’s Panghats Running Dry’, I highlighted the plight of women when they face water shortage. Indian homemakers face this water crisis almost single-handedly, only because getting water has been traditionally a woman’s duty as she manages kitchen, children and elderly. Indian films have always very graphically depicted this aspect of Indian society, cutting across regions. The politics in a Shekhar Kapur film Paani is not easily forgotten.

A year later, nearly four million hectares of agricultural land faced a water crisis in 2017. This resulted in a reduction of land area for cultivation of water-intensive large farm crops like paddy, sugar cane, pulses, coarse serials and oil seeds. While the government is taking several measures to help farmers, including augmentation of water supply, it would be prudent to take measures to reduce water consumption in India’s farmlands. Not much authentic data is available on the subject and there is little being done to research and authentically report on sector-wise water consumption across India.

A decade-old Central Water Commission (CWC) report states that 85.3% of India’s water was consumed by the agriculture sector in the year 2000. The consumption was expected to marginally reduce to 83.3% by the year 2025. According to CWC, water consumption in other areas like industries and utility sector was less than 5% each. Unfortunately, most of India’s water-conservation efforts are done by the industry and utility sector, where the scope to reduce consumption is low.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.