Padma Prakash: Problems of plenty?

MOOT POINT

It might seem a bit absurd to be writing about water shortages and water conflicts in this season of excess. Or is it?

Let us take a look at the now familiar elements of the issue of water. First the rainfall. Belying the impression of plenty is the Met Department data that point to monsoon rainfall over India having decreased by 5 to 8 per cent since 1950. While there are contradictory predictions of longer-term rainfall decrease as well as increase, due to any number of factors, it would be safe to assume that rainfall, and especially the southwest monsoon system, which contributes 80 per cent, will be behaving much more erratically in the decades to come, even if the world's efforts at minimising greenhouse gas emissions and their effect on climate change succeed.

Second is the creeping expansion of drought-prone regions in the country, bordering often on desertification and resulting in the growing scarcity of drinking water in cities and villages. One-third of the country is always under the threat of drought.

According to the Central Public Health Engineering Organisation studies and several other estimates, 88 per cent of the urban population have access to potable water supply and only a small proportion of the villages are without drinking water. The overall water availability in 1990 was 1,953 cubic metres; but this does not tell you that in real terms this is not available to large sections of the population, in cities and villages. Other than small community-based studies, we only have patchy information on water usage and its adequacy. For example, patterns of water usage have changed dramatically over a generation with changing water availability. At one level, there have been lifestyle changes brought about because of forced conservation of water and that might be leading to poor health outcomes. But there is also a trend towards excessive use. While plastic buckets in the slums and villages are going empty, sparkling new bathroom taps and bath tubs in middleclass homes in the metros have water in plenty. Taps may run dry elsewhere, but not in the Jaguar contraptions in marbled bathrooms. This latter scenario is part of the middleclass dream that is increasingly becoming a reality. Inevitably, urban development is tapping out groundwater, without making any attempt to recharge it.

As schoolchildren, we thought that it was pretty foolish of the powers that be not to use the water excess of the monsoons to ensure adequate water supply through the year everywhere. Unfortunately, almost half of the rainfall continues to drain into the oceans through river runoffs and drought persists. India uses only 10 to 20 per cent of its rainfall as either groundwater or surface storage.

The biggest effort at addressing the water issue is an old one--that of tapping rivers. Ironically, this has contributed to a third element that has begun to make its ugly presence felt, water-related conflicts, essentially because the underlying philosophy of such intervention has been to deprive one to provide for another. For example, big dams do that in contrast to smaller dams. Interestingly, the channelling of river waters has led to the abandonment of older ways of conserving water. In the areas around Jamnagar in Gujarat, lined water ponds to collect rainwater used to be a familiar feature a few years ago. With the coming of the Narmada pipeline, these are all being built up.

In some cities the municipal authorities have made it mandatory to construct water-recharging arrangements in all building projects. But so poor is the knowledge base of those who implement it and so high the potential for corruption here that it is sufficient to show a couple of sumps and a designated water drain to obtain the necessary certification. Without such features large building project areas become channels for water to flow into streets, hugely increasing the outflow in storm water drains that cannot take these flows.

In India social tensions relating to water are usually related to scarcity. Now increasingly, excess water, in the form of floods, too is becoming a point of tension. In both cases, part of the solution lies in larger investment and better planning. While there has been much debate on private investment in water supply, it is interesting that a recent UNESCO report analysing the origins of water-related unrest in urban areas posts a second look at the future of what it calls "municipalism", calling for an expanding role to municipalities. It points out that "municipalism" allowed the channelling of the savings of upper and middle classes into the financing of systems and services, sometimes with the participation of the private sector, "without privatising the actual infrastructure".

The bottom line is this: the problem of providing adequate water, especially potable water, in an equitable manner can be resolved only by addressing all issues of usage and supply comprehensively. This will encompass water use education and information dissemination; legislation covering water use and to prevent pollution of sources and its stringent implementation; and adequate investment in public systems. Most importantly, we need the elusive "political will" to create policy and programme bodies that can take independent and knowledge-based decisions.