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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[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]2021 WEF Global Gender Gap report, which confirmed its 2016 finding of a decline in worldwide progress towards gender parity.
Over 2.8 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men. As many as 104 countries still have laws preventing women from working in specific jobs, 59 countries have no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace, and it is astonishing that a handful of countries still allow husbands to legally stop their wives from working.
Globally, women’s participation in the labour force is estimated at 63% (as against 94% of men who participate), but India’s is at a dismal 25% or so currently. Most women are in informal and vulnerable employment—domestic help, agriculture, etc—and are always paid less than men.
Recent reports from Assam suggest that women workers in plantations are paid much less than men and never promoted to supervisory roles. The gender wage gap is about 24% globally, and women have lost far more jobs than men during lockdowns.
The problem of gender disparity is compounded by hurdles put up by governments, society and businesses: unequal access to social security schemes, banking services, education, digital services and so on, even as a glass ceiling has kept leadership roles out of women’s reach.
Yes, many governments and businesses had been working on parity before the pandemic struck. But the global gender gap, defined by differences reflected in the social, political, intellectual, cultural and economic attainments or attitudes of men and women, will not narrow in the near future without all major stakeholders working together on a clear agenda—that of economic growth by inclusion.
The WEF report estimates 135 years to close the gap at our current rate of progress based on four pillars: educational attainment, health, economic participation and political empowerment.
India has slipped from rank 112 to 140 in a single year, confirming how hard women were hit by the pandemic. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two Asian countries that fared worse.
Here are a few things we must do:
One, frame policies for equal-opportunity employment. Use technology and artificial intelligence to eliminate biases of gender, caste, etc, and select candidates at all levels on merit. Numerous surveys indicate that women in general have a better chance of landing jobs if their gender is not known to recruiters.
Two, foster a culture of gender sensitivity. Take a review of current policies and move from gender-neutral to gender-sensitive. Encourage and insist on diversity and inclusion at all levels, and promote more women internally to leadership roles. Demolish silos to let women grab potential opportunities in hitherto male-dominant roles. Work-from-home has taught us how efficiently women can manage flex-timings and productivity.
Three, deploy corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds for the education and skilling of women and girls at the bottom of the pyramid. CSR allocations to toilet building, the PM-Cares fund and firms’ own trusts could be re-channelled for this.
Four, get more women into research and development (R&D) roles. A study of over 4,000 companies found that more women in R&D jobs resulted in radical innovation. It appears women score far higher than men in championing change. If you seek growth from affordable products and services for low-income groups, women often have the best ideas.
Five, break barriers to allow progress. Cultural and structural issues must be fixed. Unconscious biases and discrimination are rampant even in highly-esteemed organizations. Establish fair and transparent human resource policies.
Six, get involved in local communities to engage them. As Michael Porter said, it is not possible for businesses to sustain long-term shareholder value without ensuring the welfare of the communities they exist in. It is in the best interest of enterprises to engage with local communities to understand and work towards lowering cultural and other barriers in society. It will also help connect with potential customers, employees and special interest groups driving the gender-equity agenda and achieve better diversity.