Water recklessness worsening drought
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI - India's current dry spell, brought on by an errant annual monsoon,
is rapidly turning into a full-fledged drought as a result of reckless
exploitation of groundwater resources for farming, experts say.
According to the Agriculture Ministry, 246 of India's 626 districts have now
been officially declared as facing a "drought-like" situation. Monsoon rains
account for 75% of India's annual rainfall. Officials at the Indian
Meteorological Department say this year has seen the scantiest season in seven
years.
Water levels in the country's 81 major reservoirs are now down to about 38% of
normal levels and offer no margin for comfort, government data show.
"India's vulnerability to droughts whenever there is a slight
deviation in the monsoon pattern has grown over the years because of excessive
groundwater withdrawal to support intensive farming, particularly in the
northwestern states of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan," says Devinder Sharma,
internationally known agriculture and food security expert. "At present rates
of withdrawal, by 2025 all groundwater will have been exhausted."
Sharma, who chairs the independent New Delhi-based collective, Forum for
Biotechnology and Food Security, says the situation is especially grim in the
state of Punjab, where groundwater mining has for years exceeded natural
replenishment. "Punjab, which provides nearly 50% of the country's food
surplus, is paying a price for playing the role of granary to the nation," he
told Inter Press Service.
Of Punjab's 138 administrative blocks, 108 have been officially categorized as
"dark zones", where 98% of underground water has been overexploited.
Satellite images released in August by the National Aerospace and Space
Administration (NASA) of the United States show depletion of groundwater
storage in Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana during the 2002-2008 period.
NASA's images indicated an average drop in groundwater levels of four
centimeters a year, with about 110 cubic kilometers of groundwater lost during
the six-year period that was studied.
If the current level of unsustainable over-consumption, mainly for agriculture,
continues, India could face severe water shortages, NASA scientists caution.
"Groundwater is extremely valuable as a resource which stores water during the
wet years and makes it available in the dry years, so that people and farmers
can survive droughts, whether part of the natural variability or related to
climate change," said Matthew Rodell, a NASA hydrologist and lead author of the
study, in the SciDev.Net portal. "However, groundwater must be managed
sustainably, or in time this capability could be lost."
Rodell said 95% of groundwater withdrawal from the region was for irrigation,
mainly for rice, wheat and barley. "If farmers shift away from water-intensive
crops such as rice, and also implement more efficient irrigation methods, that
would help," SciDev quoted him as saying.
NASA's projections, based on tracking by twin Gravity Recovery and Climate
Experiment (GRACE) satellites, show that 54 cubic kilometers of groundwater are
lost every year in the Indo-Gangetic plains, the world's most densely populated
and heavily irrigated region.
GRACE satellites make detailed measurements of the Earth's gravity to
facilitate discoveries about the Earth's natural systems.
The depletion rate has been estimated to be 70% faster this decade than in the
1990s. Withdrawals have been mainly for irrigation, although urbanization and
industrialization seem to be playing an increasing role.
The NASA data roughly tally with estimates from India's Ministry of Water
Resources based on a simpler and cheaper method of drilling holes and measuring
water levels four times a year. This water-level fluctuation method helps
assess both how much rainwater is contributing to underground aquifers and
reservoirs, and how much is being used.
A report released in June by hydrologists Rana Chatterjee and Raja Ram Purohit
at India's Central Ground Water Board corroborates the over-exploitation of
groundwater in northwestern, western and peninsular India. The hydrologists
estimate that Indians use 231 billion cubic meters of groundwater each year,
92% of it for irrigation.
"Despite the dismal consequences of the irrigation policy, the fascination of
the planners for costly projects has not diminished," laments Sharma.
"Traditional water harvesting and rain-water collection practices do not find
favor with policymakers and planners for the simple reason that they do not
need investment and budget allocations," says Rajendra Singh, leader of the
Tarun Bhagat Sangh, a well-known non-governmental organization which has been
promoting simple check dams and traditional water conservation methods in arid
Rajasthan, India's largest state.
Singh, winner of the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, said
that, even now, planners continue to overlook simple ways to conserve natural
water bodies and underground reservoirs, although they are the only way to
drought-proof the country.
"As traditional forms of water storage and harvesting disappeared and rural
irrigation was taken over by inefficient government machinery, ground water
began to be exploited indiscriminately," said Sharma.
Sharma believes that water shortages for farming can be resolved, at least
partly, by following cropping patterns that are linked to water availability
rather than pushing for greater yields through the use of hybrids developed by
scientists.
"At present, drylands are increasingly being brought under hybrid crop
varieties that have high yields, but several are water-guzzlers,'' says Sharma.
"There is no sense in encouraging farmers in a desert state like Rajasthan to
grow sugar cane. In fact, all kinds of hybrid crop varieties that require large
quantities of water, such as rice, sorghum, maize, cotton and vegetables, are
promoted in the dryland regions."
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