Focus on water quality & demand management

The third in a series of weekly articles on the new National Water Policy

The new National Water Policy (NWP) argues that limits are now being reached on possibilities of solving India’s water problem from the supply side. The policy proposes a shift in focus towards the long-neglected demand-side management of water. The most important reform needed here is in irrigation, which takes up 80-90 per cent of India’s water use. And just three crops — rice, wheat and sugarcane — consume 80 per cent of this water. Without a radical change in this pattern of water demand, basic water needs of millions of people cannot be met. Water-intensive crops are grown even in relatively water-short regions mainly because these are the only crops for which farmers are assured a steady market, thanks to government procurement operations for wheat and rice and purchase of sugarcane by sugar mills. Hence, crop diversification without endangering national food security is the single most important step in resolving India’s water crisis.

To enable this, the policy suggests diversifying crop procurement operations to include nutri-cereals, pulses and oilseeds, in line with local agro-ecology. As proposed under the 2018 PM-AASHA (Annadata Aay Sanrakshan Abhiyan), at least 25 per cent output of these crops could be procured, going up to 40 per cent if they are part of the public distribution system (PDS). This will incentivise farmers to gradually diversify their cropping patterns, resulting in huge saving of water. The largest potential outlets for these procured crops are the Integrated Child Development Services, Midday Meal Scheme and PDS. Creating this link would additionally become a powerful weapon in India’s battle against the twinned syndemic of malnutrition and diabetes, given the far superior nutritional profile of these crops compared to rice and wheat.

Highly water-consuming, high-cost and high-risk chemical agriculture has become unviable for many farmers, whose net incomes have started to turn negative due to both diminishing returns and rising input costs. Harmful chemicals from fertilisers and pesticides transported into the body via food and water are having a grave impact on health. Agro-ecological farming, which reduces use of chemical inputs at the right pace, could lead to massive saving in water, since it needs much less irrigation and enables greater retention of soil moisture through improved soil structure. Water use can also be reduced by incentivising the System of Crop Intensification, drip and sprinkler irrigation, and water saving seed varieties based on the local germplasm, of which India has a rich repository. Reserving some land for diverse biomass production systems comprising trees, shrubs, creepers and fibre-producing plants, with multi-year life cycles and multi-tiered root systems and canopies, reduces water use and increases resilience, being less sensitive to variations in rainfall.

Urban areas must also move decisively towards demand management of water. Reduce-Recycle-Reuse should become the core mantra of integrated urban water supply and wastewater management, with treatment of sewage and eco-restoration of urban river stretches as far as possible through decentralised wastewater management. All non-potable use, such as flushing, fire protection, vehicle washing, landscaping, horticulture etc must mandatorily shift to treated wastewater. More efficient water-using appliances and location-specific water-efficient sanitation alternatives need to be adopted. Urban local bodies must explore revenue generation through efficiently treated effluent and waste.

India’s industrial sector is also suffering the consequences of not addressing the demand side, given its excessively high water footprint. Over the last decade, industrial shutdowns due to water shortage have become increasingly common. Indian industry is currently excessively dependent on fresh water and tends to dump its untreated waste into rivers and groundwater. Thermal power plants take up the highest proportion of industrial water. Converting them from once-through open-loop to closed-cycle cooling systems using recycled water can save about 65,000 million litres per day of fresh water. The NWP suggests comprehensive water audits, with companies providing details of water footprints in their annual reports, as also steps they are taking to reduce water demand in production processes, lower effluent generation and higher industrial value added per unit of water consumed. All of these technologies and investments have a very short payback period. A growing market for treated wastewater is an additional incentive.

The new NWP considers water quality as the most serious unaddressed issue in India today. It proposes that every water ministry, at the Centre and states, must include a Water Quality Department, run by a team of multi-disciplinary professionals. The policy advocates adoption of state-of-the-art low-cost, low-energy, eco-sensitive technologies for treatment of sewage. No less than 26,000 tonnes of plastic waste is generated every day in India, of which 10,000 tonnes ends up in water. Thus, the policy proposes a national action plan for phase-wise replacement of plastics by green alternatives. Widespread use of Reverse Osmosis (RO) has adverse consequences for water quality and health. A large proportion of input water is wasted and reject water from ROs has a high concentration of contaminants. Hence, the policy suggests that RO units be discouraged if the Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) count in water is less than 500mg/L.

The "polluter pays principle" has at times almost served as a licence to pollute. Thus, the NWP argues that payment for violations must be high enough to have a deterrent effect on polluters as “extended producer responsibility”. Licences of polluting units must be temporarily suspended in case of repeated violations, till corrective actions are taken. The policy also suggests that the Government of India form a Task Force on Emerging Water Contaminants. Recent studies indicate uranium and manganese beyond safe limits in groundwater in some areas. Climate change could also produce unexpected, often interlinked, consequences. The release of certain pathogens due to permafrost melting is only one such example. The Task Force needs to anticipate these dangers and prepare mitigation and adaptation plans to keep the country as safe as possible.

The writer is Distinguished Professor, Shiv Nadar University. He chaired the Committee to draft the new National Water Policy set up by the Ministry of Jal Shakti in 2019