Financial Times
From BUSINESS LINE, January 12, 2007 While the development of sustainable and safedrinking water supplies is a global challenge, it is particularly acute in India, given its highpopulation density, space and time variability of rainfall, and increasing depletion andcontamination of its surface and ground water resources. The wasteful subsidy system onlyworsens the crisis. Needed are urgent reforms in water resource management and tariffs, saysNIRUPAM BAJPAI.The UNDP's Human Development Report 2006 rightly focuses on one of the most seriousproblems facing humanity today - the global water crisis. Water supplies are under severestress. More than a billion people have no access to safe drinking water and almost two millionchildren die every year for want of clean water and sanitation facilities. As a result of poorwater resource management, high population growth, rapid urbanisation and increasingdemand from competing uses for drinking, agriculture, industry and energy, the pressure onthis finite resource is mounting every day. Climate change is also affecting the hydrologicalcycle, significantly affecting freshwater production and its distribution.The human development costs of the crisis are immense, with the poor being hit the hardest.They are the first to be affected by water-borne diseases; there has been little improvement inchild mortality rates, and education is a low priority for the girls, who spend most of the daycollecting and transporting water. Even if they do manage to get to the school, they are morethan likely to drop out, as most schools do not have toilets for girls.The provision of safe drinking water has important equity and development implications. Onthe one hand, unavailability of potable water in the desired quantities has implications for thequality of life in terms of the time spent in collecting water and the adverse impact ofconsuming contaminated water on health and productivity.While the development of sustainable and safe drinking water supplies is a global challenge, itis particularly acute in India, given its high population density, space and time variability ofrainfall, and increasing depletion and contamination of its surface and ground water resources.ContaminationIndia, with a sixth of the world's population, faces a rapidly growing water crisis, both in theurban and rural areas. These include wasteful practices in the use of water, particularly forirrigation, water-logging and salinity, and inadequate access to safe drinking water andsanitation. In cities such as Chennai and Delhi, several localities rely on private water tankersfor their daily water needs.Groundwater is the dominant resource that has been developed in rural India to meet thedrinking water needs. But often, the shallower wells are found to be affected by fluoride,arsenic, iron, salt and/or microbial contamination. In many States, especially Punjab, Haryana,Rajasthan, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, this is asignificant concern.Deeper wells typically have cleaner water, but require electricity or diesel and installation of awater tank. The capital and operating costs are significantly higher and, given the highvariability of electricity supply, reliability is poor.While ground-water depletion is a major environmental concern in India, it should perhaps beviewed as part of a much larger agenda in ground-water management, in keeping with thepolicy goals of equity, efficiency, and sustainability.Over-use of pesticides and chemicals in agriculture is the primary cause for groundwaterpollution in the rural areas. A survey conducted in Uttar Pradesh in 2004 revealed that peoplein one region are compelled to drink polluted water with a high fluoride content, leading tolarge-scale dental fluorosis and arthritis.Wasteful SubsidiesWith regard to surface water, low water rates are a major factor influencing both waste andlow accruals to the exchequer. Continued losses on this front tend to impair the ability ofStates to undertake further investments in this field. Revenue from the sale of water does notcover even the operation and maintenance expenditure of the schemes, let alone meetingdepreciation charges and a part of the capital expenditure. In the agricultural sector, water isoften used inefficiently, resulting in soil erosion, nutrient depletion, land degradation, andlower water-tables.This creates a vicious circle of poverty, land degradation and low productivity. In this regard,increased availability of small-scale water management technologies will significantly helpsmall landholder farmers. Community-based watershed development projects have alsodemonstrated excellent results, but need to be scaled up.India continues to be a predominantly agrarian economy, with the majority of its populationdependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Agriculture contributes 27 per cent to thecountry's GDP and employs more than 60 per cent of its workforce.Of the 182.7 million hectares of land used for cultivation, only about 50 million hectares iscurrently irrigated; the rest depend entirely on monsoon rains. Hence, from the agriculturesector's point of view, enlarging the cropped area under assured irrigation is critical for theeconomy. Reforms in agricultural power and water tariffs are needed. Of course, any movetowards greater cost recovery must be accompanied by reliable services that meet the needsof agriculture.India should move away from its current wasteful subsidy system, in which items such aswater and electricity are provided at highly subsidised rates (or for free!), but with most of thesubsidy being taken up by the richer farmers. The result is a very expensive system wheremost of the benefits fail to reach the poor farmers.In place of the wasteful subsidy system, there should be "life-line tariffs," in which all ofIndia's below-poverty-line rural citizens would be ensured a fixed, but limited, amount ofwater and electricity at zero price, to ensure that every family can at least meet its basicneeds. Above that fixed amount, families would be charged a proper tariff.Ground water is drawn from aquifers whose rates of recharge are much lower than the rate ofwithdrawal. here is, hence, a pressing need for the conjunctive use of ground and surfacewaterfor irrigation.Inclusive StrategyAny strategy to enhance water productivity should ensure that it extends to the poor. In India,the revival of traditional rainwater harvesting systems in various ecological zones in responseto the groundwater crisis has demonstrated the potential to generate large returns oninvestment and at the same time to reduce risk and vulnerability.Drought-stricken villages found that those that had undertaken rainwater harvesting and/orwatershed development in earlier years had stored plenty of drinking water and, in somecases, could even irrigate their crops. Hence, community-based rainwater harvesting seems tobe the way to go in rural India.To deal with the problem of frequent droughts and floods and the scarcity of water resourcesfor irrigation purposes in India, one of the schemes put forward is the Inter-Basin WaterTransfer (IBWT) from the surplus basins to deficit basins. Interlinking or networking of riversentails the construction of a large number of dams and canals and connected hydraulicengineering works for mass transfer of water across river basins.Interestingly, China is working on a somewhat similar scheme that envisages a South-Northwater transfer (across more than 1,000 km) to divert more than 40 billion cubic metres ofwater to the industrial and urban regions in the Hai basin. However, the long-term ecologicalconsequences of inter-linking of rivers should be comprehensively evaluated by a team ofexperts before embarking on such a project.NIRUPAM BAJPAI (The author is a Senior Development Adviser and Director, South AsianProgrammes, Centre on Globalisation and Sustainable Development, Columbia University, NewYork.)
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