Water is a cross cutting element for economic development.
The ecosystem’s water requirement needs to be met.
Water is strategically important and is highly influential to other sectors like health, education, etc.
ASTONISHING STATISTICS
Almost 60 crore Indians facing water stress
Annually 2 lakh people die because of inadequate access to safe water.
According to few independent organizations, approximately 70% of the water resources in India are contaminated.
In India, 16% of the total geographical area is drought prone whereas 13% of the total geographical area is flood prone.
CURRENT SITUATION
The water availability/supply is constant whereas the rapid rise in the population is leading to ever increasing demand for water.
The major loophole is “Ineffective water Management” that has led to the unfortunate current water crisis situation.
GOVERNMENT’s STEPS TO TACKLE THIS ISSUE
ATAL BHUJAL YOJANA
PRADHAN MANTRI KRISHI SINCHAYI YOJANA
Above schemes aim to bridge the gap between IPC(Irrigation potential created) and IPU(Irrigation potential utilised).
REPORT BY NITI AAYOG
NITI AAYOG has released “Composite Water Management Index” recently in its report on water management in various states of India.
The index aims at sparking healthy competition between the states to manage water effectively.
The outcomes of the report were: –
Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh proved to be most efficient out of all the remaining states.
Telangana performed well because of missions like “Mission Bhagirathi”, etc.
However, the report is being equally criticised on the following grounds: –
It neglects various important themes like water conservation, environment management, resources like rivers and other water bodies, etc.
PROS
The government has been successfully implementing the modern techniques like flood forecasting that can inform about the floods 72 hours prior to its occurrence.
India is blessed with an average annual rainfall of about 1.3m, but sadly its effective management has been a never-ending issue.
CONS
India’s water usage efficiency is one of the lowest in the world.
Bad treatment of waste water.
Water crisis is mostly faces by common people or the lower strata and not the larger organizations and the upper classes of the society. Therefore, there is bias in the scarcity.
85-90% of the contaminated water from industries, etc flow into the rivers untreated.
WAY FORWARD
India needs to maintain a good water account.
Work needs to be done at following 3 levels: –
Villages: Empower communities to work together. For example, Anna Saheb’s Ralegan Siddhi village of Maharashtra.
Need to map aquifers better: National Aquifer management plan has bee launched by ministry of water resources.
Intelligent river basin management.
Handle the urban water crisis with measures like rain water harvesting and rural water crisis with measures like alternate cropping pattern, etc.
Work diligently towards handling the climate change and issues related to it.
