Every drop counts
By Atul Rawat
“Beta, has the water come, it is already 6 o’clock”, I asked my daughter.
“Papa, you please check it yourself, I am sleeping,” pat came the reply.
I trundled to all the bathrooms and the kitchen and promptly opened the direct water tap to fill the buckets, drums and utensils. This has become the defining ritual of my mornings. In the evening, it is the duty of my wife to do the honours.
“Beta, don’t waste water,” I instructed my son.
“What Papa, all the rules are for me, what about Khanna uncle who washes his car every day, and Seema aunty who gets her driveway washed every day?”
I beat a hasty retreat lest we have a domestic battle over water. Aur bhi gam hain zamane mein.
Over the morning cuppa and the Garhwal Post, I reflected on how water had quietly begun to dictate our daily lives. I recalled my geography lessons, which taught me that India is blessed with abundant natural water resources. After all, the snow-fed Himalayan rivers have sustained civilizations on the subcontinent for millennia, I wondered. Haven’t our dams and canals over the years supplemented these natural sources? Yes, they have, I reasoned. But I must continue to wait for the water to trickle through the municipality assigned timings and modify my daily life around it. I sighed, there is, indeed an Illusion of Abundance.
There is a wide chasm between what appears on paper and what is on the ground. For millions of average Indians, access to water remains an everyday struggle. When water does arrive, the citizens have to contend with the trickle that flows through their taps. Installation of inline booster pumps is the order of the day. The contrast between streets submerged by floods in one part of the country and the non-availability of potted water in another part remains stark.
As per the Central Water Commission (CWC) data, India receives nearly 4,000 billion cubic metres (BCM) of precipitation every year. After accounting for runoff, evaporation and hydrological constraints, India’s average annual water resources are estimated at about 2,116 BCM, and the amount that can actually be utilized remains substantially lower.
According to the Ministry of Jal Shakti’s latest assessment, water availability has fallen from 5,177 cubic metres per person per year in 1951 to around 1,486 cubic metres in 2021, and is projected to decline to 1,367 cubic metres by 2031. Hydrologists classify countries with less than 1,700 cubic metres per person annually as water-stressed and those below 1,000 cubic metres as water-scarce. India has therefore already crossed into the water-stressed category.
In urban areas, it is not uncommon to see citizens and other establishments depend on daily supply of water tankers. On the other hand, in the rural areas, it is a common sight to see women fetching water from the source with water pot on their heads. States such as Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have been fighting each other over water share from the rivers for many years now.
According to the World Bank, this challenge is further magnified by India’s population. Home to nearly 18% of the world’s people, India has only about 4% of its renewable freshwater resources.
It is well known that Agriculture accounts for nearly 80% of India’s freshwater withdrawals, making it by far the country’s largest consumer of water. To make every drop count, our irrigation efficiency should be of the highest order so that no water is wasted. A small percent of water saved in agriculture will have a significant gain at the national level. India also has the dubious distinction of being the world’s largest user of groundwater, withdrawing an estimated 230 billion cubic metres annually—about one-quarter of global groundwater withdrawals. In many regions, groundwater is being extracted much faster than it is naturally replenished.
Besides the quantity of water availability, we observe that the quality of water that is available has also become an issue over the years. The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has highlighted the issue that hundreds of rivers continue to suffer because of untreated sewage, industrial effluents and agricultural runoff being dumped into the river systems. CPCB estimates that a staggering 70% of India’s surface water resources are contaminated to varying degrees.
As India becomes more prosperous, an outcome of this prosperity is greater urbanisation. Consequently expanding concrete surfaces prevent rainwater from seeping into the ground and recharging aquifers. During rains and monsoon, we observe that, because of this concretisation, rain water does not get the opportunity to replenish the groundwater reserves. Additionally, climate change has also contributed to the water stress. India witnesses longer dry spells coupled with intense short-duration rainfall. Consequently, floods and droughts have become more frequent.
India, thus, must seek and adapt the best practices the world over in water conservation. Several nations have demonstrated that pragmatic solutions are possible to make water security achievable. One such example is Singapore. Despite having very limited natural freshwater resources, it has transformed its water security through its ‘Four National Taps‘ strategy—maximising rainwater harvesting, recycling wastewater into NEWater and expanding desalination—thereby greatly reducing its dependence on imported water. Israel is another example. It has become a global benchmark in water management. It pioneered drip irrigation and now recycles nearly 90% of its treated domestic wastewater—the highest proportion in the world—primarily for agricultural use.
On its part, India too has demonstrated what is possible. The Jal Jeevan Mission has dramatically expanded rural tap-water coverage and the Atal Bhujal Yojana has strengthened community-based groundwater management. Several cities like Indore and Chennai have undertaken commendable steps through citizen participation to improve water availability.
While the government will do what it can, the larger question lands on the lap of us citizens. We too must confront uncomfortable questions. Should potable water continue to be virtually free irrespective of consumption? Should unrestricted groundwater extraction remain permissible? Should rainwater harvesting and wastewater recycling be mandatory in every housing society? Overlooking these seemingly small steps has allowed the water crisis to quietly creep into our lives. The water table is falling, borewells are going dry, river flows are shrinking and lakes are getting contaminated.
The challenge is thus not merely to find more water, but also to use what we have more intelligently. The only question is whether we possess the collective wisdom and the political will to protect every drop?
(The author blogs at NotesfromDehradun@Atul Rawat)
