What is the issue?
- The NITI Aayog’s water management index was released recently. Click here to know more.
- This, along with a NABARD sponsored study on water productivity of different crops depicts the country’s increasing water stress.
What are the highlights of NITI Aayog's report?
- The current water crisis in the country is said to be the worst in history.
- NITI Aayog maintains that about 600 million people face high to extreme water scarcity.
- This is almost half the population of the country.
- About 200,000 people die every year due to lack of safe water.
- The crisis will escalate with the water availability dwindling to merely half of the effective demand by 2030.
- Groundwater resources (40% of total water supply) are also predicted to deplete rapidly.
- This may accentuate water paucity in both rural and urban areas.
- Some 21 cities, including Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, will almost run out of groundwater by as soon as 2020.
- If these come true, around 40% of the population will lose access to water.
- Also, the gross domestic product (GDP) will take a hit of about 6%.
What does NABARD's study reveal?
- It holds the overuse of water in the agricultural sector responsible for the present adversity.
- Over two-thirds of the nation’s available water is consumed in the farm sector.
- In this, about 80% goes just to three crops — rice, wheat and sugarcane.
- The most intensive cultivation of these water-guzzling crops is high in water-stressed regions.
- E.g. sugarcane in Maharashtra, rice and wheat in Punjab and Haryana.
- The report attributes the water crisis to unsustainable cropping trends.
- This in turn is attributed to ill-advised incentives
- liberally determined minimum support prices
- assured marketing through open-ended procurement
- subsidised or free supply of water and power
What are the possible solutions?
- The largely academic suggestions mooted in these reports to remedy the situation include the following:
- Effective pricing for water and power.
- Greater marketing support for water-efficient crops in water-constrained areas.
- A general shift from price support to cash transfer to let the actual crop prices to be determined by market forces.
- Dis-incentivising the cultivation of water-intensive crops in states like Maharashtra, Punjab and Haryana.
- Shifting these crops to water-rich eastern and north-eastern regions.
What is the way forward?
- It is to be noted that present water crisis is largely man-made.
- India is not an inherently water-starved country.
- It receives annually about 2,600 billion cubic metres (BCM) of water through rain and snow.
- However, only around 258 BCM (or less than a tenth) can potentially be stored in available water reservoirs.
- Measures such as rainwater harvesting to conserve water have to be taken.
- The efficient use of water in farming through micro-irrigation should be ensured.
- This would be more sustainable than changing the cropping patterns in order to withstand the water crisis.
Source: Business Standard
