Conserving the last drop:-
This editorials is part of 6 series essay that explores the issues of water scarcity and provide few good case studies.
Here are the 6 parts :-
- Drilling for their Lives
- Telengana’s Tanker economy
- Drinking water, sipping Poison
- Interlinking, an idea with flaws
- Scarcity in Mettur’s vicinity
- Conservation – lessons form ancient India
Part 1- Drilling for their Lives
The summer of 2016 has seen vast tracts of the country wilting under a scorching heat wave and water availability has been the first casualty. Regions such as Marathwada, Bundelkhand, Telangana, and northern Karnataka are reeling under drought-like conditions.
The situation was already grim in late 2015, when 57 per cent of the control wells across the country monitored by the Central Groundwater Board saw a fall in water levels relative to the year before.
Given that the last year’s monsoon presented a 14 per cent shortfall and was the worst since 2009, this year’s drought-like conditions are taking a serious toll on the water table.
Parched villages and cities, driven to desperation, have plunged headlong into a borewell-digging spree. From Mumbai to Hyderabad, borewell operators are frenetically drilling, sometimes against municipal regulations and bans, to below 400 or 500 feet, yet not always hitting water.
In most of these parts a vicious cycle has taken root, where deeper borewells are driving water even further beneath the ground. In part this is because in the Deccan area, unlike the Gangetic plain, there is less alluvial soil but there are more rock formations that are not conducive to water table recharge.
A warm sun baked the parched land as Harishchandra Yerme trudged towards a far corner of his farm to take stock of the livestock feasting on a patch of vegetation, the leftover from the vagaries of a poor monsoon. It had been a cruel summer. The fruit farmer stopped in the shade of a tree to rest and scoffed at the expanse in front of his eyes.
The view alternated dry vegetation with dozens of ugly pipes, a painful reminder of two consecutive seasons of drought that forced Yerme to sink 12 borewells, some as deep as 800 feet into the arid land. “This was filled with over 3,000 sweet lime trees, before these [borewells] came up in an attempt to survive the drought,” he said with a faraway look in his eyes.
At last count, as many as 63 borewells dotted Yerme’s fruit farm in Jagalpur village of Jalkot taluka, Latur district, where an extended drought has devastated crops of several farmers.
Even a local panadi, or water diviner, brought from nearby Osmanabad district to conduct a customary ritual could not change Yerme’s fortune. “He spun coconuts and sticks to identify two spots across the field, but the water never came of out of it. I swore never to depend on [borewells] for irrigation. That was the last time I dug any,” he said with a wry smile.
The rules permit the digging of only five borewells every one square kilometre with a depth of not more than 200 feet. With the total district area of 715 sq km, the number of borewells in Latur should ideally not cross 3,575.
Yet there are 90,000 borewells here even as the official count of the ground water survey authority stands at a measly 34,778, experts said. The groundwater levels have sunk in so rapidly that people have dug borewells as deep as 1,300 feet to fetch water, destroying the deep aquifers which take years to refill.
In Marathwada, it is estimated that 10,000 new borewells are sunk every month, with most people suffering from a ‘drought mentality‘ that urges them to store water even when not needed. As a consequence the average fall in the groundwater levels last five years has been around 5.56 metres.
Warnings have also been sounded against over-extracting groundwater in Latur and Osmanabad for irrigating water-intensive cash crops such as sugarcane, banana, grapes and oranges. Even where farmers knew the disadvantages of borewell irrigation — low dependability of yield, low discharge and recuperation rate — they still opted for these crops.
The government has undertaken schemes like Jal Yukta Shivar to artificially recharge depleting water bodies and make 5,000 villages drought free every year. But its impact will only be known after a good monsoon.
In Marathwada, the scant monsoon culminated in low storage capacity in dams and water bodies even as water brought lots of silt along with it. The state should have better extended at the village and taluka level an outreach programme to remove silt from the water bodies, that never happened,” said Director of Central Ground Water Board, P.K. Jain.
The indiscriminate exploitation of ground water, poor maintenance of water bodies, construction of new check dams and storage tanks at an indiscriminate pace also restricted the natural flow of water in recharge, storage and discharge areas of the Marathwada terrain, experts believe.
In Latur, the groundwater levels in the eastern regions of Jalkot, Udgir and Ahmedpur have dipped alarmingly compared to the greener west, where the water from major dams and barrages keeps the land replenished.
“The indiscriminate construction of artificial water bodies and check dams by the government made matters worse,” said BG Dhokarikar, water consultant and former Director of State GSDA (1988-1991).
But this could change soon if lessons are not learn fast.
Part -2 will be published tomorrow.
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In a diverse country like India, where each State is socially, culturally, economically, and politically distinct, measuring Governance becomes increasingly tricky. The Public Affairs Index (PAI 2021) is a scientifically rigorous, data-based framework that measures the quality of governance at the Sub-national level and ranks the States and Union Territories (UTs) of India on a Composite Index (CI).
States are classified into two categories – Large and Small – using population as the criteria.
In PAI 2021, PAC defined three significant pillars that embody Governance – Growth, Equity, and Sustainability. Each of the three Pillars is circumscribed by five governance praxis Themes.
The themes include – Voice and Accountability, Government Effectiveness, Rule of Law, Regulatory Quality and Control of Corruption.
At the bottom of the pyramid, 43 component indicators are mapped to 14 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are relevant to the States and UTs.
This forms the foundation of the conceptual framework of PAI 2021. The choice of the 43 indicators that go into the calculation of the CI were dictated by the objective of uncovering the complexity and multidimensional character of development governance
The Equity Principle
The Equity Pillar of the PAI 2021 Index analyses the inclusiveness impact at the Sub-national level in the country; inclusiveness in terms of the welfare of a society that depends primarily on establishing that all people feel that they have a say in the governance and are not excluded from the mainstream policy framework.
This requires all individuals and communities, but particularly the most vulnerable, to have an opportunity to improve or maintain their wellbeing. This chapter of PAI 2021 reflects the performance of States and UTs during the pandemic and questions the governance infrastructure in the country, analysing the effectiveness of schemes and the general livelihood of the people in terms of Equity.
Growth and its Discontents
Growth in its multidimensional form encompasses the essence of access to and the availability and optimal utilisation of resources. By resources, PAI 2021 refer to human resources, infrastructure and the budgetary allocations. Capacity building of an economy cannot take place if all the key players of growth do not drive development. The multiplier effects of better health care, improved educational outcomes, increased capital accumulation and lower unemployment levels contribute magnificently in the growth and development of the States.
The Pursuit Of Sustainability
The Sustainability Pillar analyses the access to and usage of resources that has an impact on environment, economy and humankind. The Pillar subsumes two themes and uses seven indicators to measure the effectiveness of government efforts with regards to Sustainability.
The Curious Case Of The Delta
The Delta Analysis presents the results on the State performance on year-on-year improvement. The rankings are measured as the Delta value over the last five to 10 years of data available for 12 Key Development Indicators (KDI). In PAI 2021, 12 indicators across the three Pillars of Equity (five indicators), Growth (five indicators) and Sustainability (two indicators). These KDIs are the outcome indicators crucial to assess Human Development. The Performance in the Delta Analysis is then compared to the Overall PAI 2021 Index.
Key Findings:-
In the Scheme of Things
The Scheme Analysis adds an additional dimension to ranking of the States on their governance. It attempts to complement the Governance Model by trying to understand the developmental activities undertaken by State Governments in the form of schemes. It also tries to understand whether better performance of States in schemes reflect in better governance.
The Centrally Sponsored schemes that were analysed are National Health Mission (NHM), Umbrella Integrated Child Development Services scheme (ICDS), Mahatma Gandh National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SmSA) and MidDay Meal Scheme (MDMS).
National Health Mission (NHM)
INTEGRATED CHILD DEVELOPMENT SERVICES (ICDS)
MID- DAY MEAL SCHEME (MDMS)
SAMAGRA SHIKSHA ABHIYAN (SMSA)
MAHATMA GANDHI NATIONAL RURAL EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE SCHEME (MGNREGS)