Act on water management under study

Inaugurating the two-day Water Summit-2003 being organised by the Confedaration of Indian Industry (CII) here, the minister called for public-private partnership in providing safe drinking water as the effort needed huge investments.

Vadde Shobhanadrishwar Rao, the Andhra Pradesh minister for agriculture, admitted that the efficiency levels in water utilisation in the country as a whole was very low when compared with that of China. He explained the steps being taken by the state government in water conservation and ground water recharge.

Sanjay C Kirlosker, the chairman of Water Management Council of CII, said in his theme address that the pressure on water resources was very high in India as it held 16 per cent of the world population while having only 4 per cent of water resources.

Tuahaar Sha, the principal researcher of IWMI, said that the increasing demand for water by all sectors was posing a strategic challenge at the national-level.

Earlier, delivering the key-note address on 'Water/energy: A call to Action,' John Armstrong, the vice-president of PA Consulting Group, painted a very gloomy picture of the Indian waterfront with immediate reference to Andhra Pradesh, saying that the utilisation pattern and the quality of the pottable water needs drastic change.

"Andhra Pradesh depends more on ground water than surface water for agriculture. No country in the world pumps as much groundwater as India does. India has over 21 million water pumps and the number has been increasing by one million every year," was the cryptic response from Armstrong.

"The growing economic dependence on ground water is leading to more subsidies on energy front besides poor water management of surface resurces," he added.

He observed that most of the rivers in Andhra Pradesh were polluted with 37 million new episodes of diorrhea among children under the age group of four resulting in 49,000 deaths per year.

He also informed that 40 per cent of the population in Andhra Pradesh were exposed to unsafe water.