Jhabua late 1980s. This tribal and hilly district of Madhya Pradesh looked like the moonscape - all around me were bare brown hills. There was no water. No work. Despair all around. I can still see the faces of people, crunched on the side of the broken dusty road, breaking stones. This was what drought relief was all about - work in the scorching sun to dig pits for trees that did not survive; repairing roads that got damaged each year or building walls that went nowhere. It was unproductive work. But it was all that people had to survive this cursed time. What was also clear then was that the impact of drought was pervasive and long term - it destroyed the livestock economy and put people in a spiral of debt. One severe drought would set back all development work for years.
I write this as the country once again reels under crippling drought. But this drought is different. In the 1990s, it was the drought of a poor India. This 2016 drought is of richer and more water-guzzling India. This classless drought makes for a crisis that is more severe and solutions more complex. But it is also clear that drought in India is not a new phenomenon, nor is it going away soon. The fact is that the severity and intensity of drought is not about lack of rainfall, it is about the lack of planning, foresight and criminal neglect. Drought is man-made. Let's be clear about this.
In the decade of 2000, there was rain - years of deficiency were fewer - and there were government programmes designed to build water structures across the country. Under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Scheme (MGNRES) millions of checkdams, ponds and other structures were even constructed. But as the intention was not to fight against drought, only provide employment, the impact of this labour has never shown up in the country's waterline. The structures in most cases were holes in the ground - that quickly filled up with soil by the next season.
But this is not the only reason for today's water desperation: the fact is that India has prospered over these decades. This means that there is more water to be used and even less to be saved for times of scarcity.
In today's India, water demand has increased manifold. Today, cities drag water from miles away for their consumption. Industries, including power plants, take what they can from where they can. The water they use is returned as sewage or waste water. Then farmers grow commercial crops - from sugarcane to banana. They dig deeper and deeper into the ground to pump water for their irrigation needs.
This modern day drought of rich India has to be combined also with another development: climate change. The fact is that rain is becoming even more variable, unseasonal and extreme. This will only exacerbate the crisis. It is time we understood that as drought is man-made, it does not have to stay. It can be reversed. It can be managed. But then we really need to get our act together.
What needs to be done is as follows: First, do everything we can to augment water resources - catch every drop of water; store it; recharge groundwater. To do this we need to build millions more structures, but this time based on planning for water and not just employment. This means being deliberate and purposeful. It also means giving people the right to plan where to locate the water body and the right to manage it for their need. Today, invariably, the land on which the water body is built belongs to one department and the land from where the water will be harvested and channels from where the water will be brought belong to another person or even another government department.
Second, revise and update the drought code. It is not as if the richer parts of the world do not have droughts - Australia and California have gone through years of water scarcity. But their governments respond by shutting off all non-essential water use from watering lawns to hosing down cars and much more. This is what is needed in India.
Third, obsessively work to secure water in all times. This means insisting on water codes for everyday India. We need to reduce water usage in all sectors - from agriculture, urban to industry. This means benchmarking this use and setting targets for reduced consumption year on year. It would mean doing everything from introducing water efficient fixtures to promoting water-frugal foods. It means making our war against drought permanent. Only then will drought not become permanent.
The writer is at the Centre for Science and Environment
sunita@cseindia.org
Twitter: @sunitanar
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
