India’s Looming Water Crisis And Urgent Measures To Address It

Context: Water tables have fallen drastically, and we need paradigmatic changes in agricultural practices for resource conservation.

Causes behind the looming water crisis in India

• Overexploitation of groundwater: 
  • In the past 40 years, 84% of the increase in the net irrigated area has come from groundwater, especially through tube wells.
  • At 250 billion cubic metres per year, India is the largest consumer of groundwater, consuming more than China and the US, the next two largest, combined.
• Negative spillovers of Green Revolution policies and practices: Green revolution made India self-sufficient in food but was also the origin of the policy distortions.
  • Biased price support and procurement policies: Near exclusive procurement of wheat and rice (95%) at assured minimum support prices (MSPs).
  • This led to an unscientific cropping pattern: Agriculture consumes 90% of India’s water supply, and of this, 80% is consumed by just three water-guzzling crops: rice, wheat and sugarcane.
• Regulatory gap: Groundwater use is completely unregulated. 
  • The current law (Indian Easement Act) gives landowners the right to extract unlimited amounts of water with their tube-wells, ignoring all externalities and consequences.
  • Competitive water extraction becomes a race to the bottom, accelerating the fall in water tables.
• Environmental degradation: There has been a decline in the annual runoff in many major river basins, not because of any decline in rainfall but because of encroachment and other activities that have damaged catchment areas.

Way forward

• Cropping pattern shifts: There is a need to shift from water-intensive rice-wheat system to jowar, bajra, ragi and oilseeds, other Nutri-cereals, and pulses, etc.
  • Policy intervention is required towards strengthening MSP mechanism for these crops.
• Adapt water-saving practices: 
  • Shift to water-saving seed varieties even in rice and wheat and use of water-saving practices such as rice intensification, conservation, tillage, drip irrigation, land-levelling and direct seeding of rice. 
  • Field trials suggest that these practices can save between 17% (Rajasthan) to 80% (Tamil Nadu) of our blue water compared to conventional practices. 
• Reforms in water regulation: Legislation to regulate the use of groundwater is most urgent. 
  • States can adapt the model Groundwater (Sustainable Management) Bill of 2017 to local conditions and pass their own legislation. 
  • This can be supported by rationing the availability of power to run pumps.
• Environmental interventions: Protective irrigation for conserving green water is another key measure, along with the protection and rejuvenation of catchment areas. 
  • China, Brazil, Mexico and other countries are considering paying local residents to protect catchment areas and keep river basins healthy and green.
  • Micro-level watershed management: Employment of local residents in India for micro-level watershed management schemes, suitably adapted to local conditions, could protect catchment areas and also generate large-scale employment.
• Role of farmers as agents of change: Governments have a crucial role in aggregating such local initiatives and scaling them up, but at the local level, participatory management by farmers is essential.
  • Top-down administrative arrangements can be replaced by participatory, bottom-up systems led by farmer producer organizations (FPOs) along the lines of the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers’ Union. 
  • Women’s self-help groups (SHGs), which have gone beyond collective credit to various agricultural activities in several states, are closely related institutions.