Editorial: Don't water it down

For years now, organisations such as the Centre for Science and Environment have been arguing that industry does not pay for the water it uses, ruthlessly exploiting groundwater resources for free, or for next to nothing. Apart from being unfair in a country with genuine water scarcity, this ensures that industry uses precious groundwater resources in an inefficient manner. Thermal power plants in India use 80 cubic metres of water for every 1,000 units of power produced, compared to less than 10 cubic metres in the developed countries; textile units consume double the globally accepted amount; pulp and paper units consume three times the global best practice ... the list goes on. If the water used by industry were a small proportion of the total used in the country, these variations would not matter too much. But, according to the CSE, industry consumes over 35 per cent of the total water available in the country, while according to the official estimates, industry's share hovers between only 6 and 8 per cent. Even if one goes by the official estimate, the usage patterns in developed countries (where industry consumes well over half the water) tell us that industrial usage is set to climb dramatically. In other words, there is a compelling case for charging appropriate tariffs for industrial water use.

This argument does not get negated merely because the agriculture sector does not pay much for its water use, either. It would certainly be a good idea to charge farmers the correct value for their water, and economists have pointed out for decades that the prevalent water charges are not enough to pay for even the maintenance of irrigation systems, let alone their capital cost. But in defence of agriculture, it can at least be said that the overwhelming majority of farmers are engaged in activity that is simply not viable and hence there can be a case made for subsidised inputs. No such argument can be made for industry.

Especially in the context of the falling per capita availability of fresh water (from 5,177 cubic metres in 1951 to 1,820 cubic metres in 2001, and perhaps no more than 1,340 cubic metres by 2025), it is high time state governments did something to rectify matters. In this context, the Uttar Pradesh government's move to introduce a law to regulate the use of groundwater by manufacturers of soft drink and mineral water deserves to be endorsed. It must be presumed that this will involve setting economic tariffs for water usage, and it should be obvious that this logic should extend beyond the bottled water and soft drinks industry to other industrial users of water as well; perhaps there could be penal water rates for consumption that is over and above any norm that has been shown to work internationally "" as with thermal power stations, textile units and paper mills. This reform package can work precisely because it cannot possibly come up against a political headwind; indeed, farmers will applaud if industries are asked to pay the full economic cost of water and simultaneously asked to become more efficient in the use of water.