Thirstproof

Go back to the basics: that’s what experts tell the Indian cricket team when the team is not performing. Exactly the same advice is relevant for the huge challenge that India’s water sector faces

Himanshu Thakkar Delhi

Consider the contours of the future water demands for a population that could be anywhere between 1.4 billion and 1.65 billion in 2050. Demand for food grains will be going up to 450 million tonnes per annum (84 per cent of water use is in agriculture sector today). Per capita water demand will be going up everyday, and the demand for industries and cities will be increasing almost on a daily basis. More rivers and groundwater aquifers will be getting polluted day after day, and power demands (every major option of power generation requires water) are likely to be four times than what they are today, while half of the households remain without access to electricity.

This will be accompanied by looming climate change, making rainfall (the primary source of water), droughts and floods more destructive and more frequent and at unusual places and times. Add to this the real possibility of diversion and damming of our rivers in the upstream by China and the challenge could not be more daunting.

Now consider the responses the various governments have come up with. More big dams. Bigger hydropower projects. More long-distance water transfer, interlinking of rivers and desalinisation on a large scale.

The response cannot be more off the mark, for it shows governments have learnt nothing from the experience and have wilfully decided to ignore the realities about our resources, the nature of the nation’s needs and the infrastructure and options available. In short, the governing establishment has chosen to ignore the basics.

Ignorance seems to be bliss for the decision makers. This was transparent when Union Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz said on December 13 that the government will go ahead with the gigantic river-linking plan and the Ken-Betwa link is a success story. The truth is that even the detailed project report of this ‘success story’ is yet to be done and the differences between Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh seem difficult to resolve. The minister also said that the Polavaram dam project is good and the government should go ahead with it. This, despite the fact that the Central Water Commission is yet to give final clearance to the project and Orissa and Chhattisgarh are yet to agree to the project, while there is a strong protest movement taking shape.

Remember, India has the largest irrigation infrastructure in the world, but, as Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram said in his last Budget speech, performance of that infrastructure is possibly the poorest in the world. The World Bank’s report card on India’s water sector, in June 2005, (interestingly titled India’s Water Economy: Bracing for a Turbulent Future), said, "The cost of replacement and maintenance of India’s stock of water resource and irrigation infrastructure would be about $4 billion a year, which is about twice the annual capital budget in the Five-Year Plan." Needless to add, we do not allocate even a tiny fraction of that amount for the maintenance of existing water infrastructures.