India’s rapid urban growth is putting pressure on its already crumbling base of public service arrangements — especially its management of water and sanitation services, whose safe and reliable availability proved to be the first line of defence against the scourges of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). It holds potential to support the country’s preparedness against the incipient challenges of changing climate.
An appalling confusion grips our policy makers and planners. While the supply-demand gap is expected to widen by 50 per cent by 2030, many are still left without access to safe and sustainable water and sanitation services.
At least five Indian cities are already reported to have joined the list of world’s 20 largest water-stressed cities. A case in point is the metropolitan regions of Bangalore and Chennai, which source their waters from a distance of 95 kilometres and 200 km, respectively.
This organisation of infrastructural arrangement not only puts a heavy burden on the states’ exchequers by demanding exorbitant amount of funds for their design, installation and operation, but also languishes the residents of these cities dependent on a single source of water for a bulk of their daily demands to the whims of inter-regional conflicts over water sharing as well climate-related shocks.
If we look at the present portfolio of water resources management for other cities, it will not be wrong to claim that many more will soon become qualified for joining this infamous list.
Exploring the complex problems
Water availability in India remains on the mercy of erratic patterns of precipitation. The southwest monsoon alone accounts for 70-75 per cent of the total precipitation falling in India, especially in regions along the west coast, the north-eastern states, West Bengal and Odisha, which are characterised by patterns of heavy rainfall events within limited time duration.
It is estimated that India receives its total precipitation within a limited time duration of 100 hours out of 8,760 annual hours in total.
With temperatures postulated to rise owing to changing climate, precipitation patterns can only be expected to become more capricious in their operation. Nowhere will these uncertainties and incidental challenges be more pronounced than in our burgeoning towns and cities, which are already facing water shortages during the summer months and at time, experiencing floods during monsoon.
A World Bank (2018) study expounded that by 2050, annual average precipitation will increase to 1-20C under climate-sensitive scenario and 1.5-30C under carbon-intensive scenario.
Such changes are expected to increase precipitation, which will come in the form of reduced rainy days but more days of extreme precipitation events.
Combined with this peculiarity in the evolving unpredictability of precipitation patterns over the Indian subcontinent, the way Indian cities have sprung and continues to develop also pose a risk to their future sustainability.
Concretisation of urban landscapes, symbolic of modern town planning imaginaries as to what an exercise in urban development should produce, is found to be increasing flood peaks from 1.8-8 times and volume of flood by up to six times.
Storm water drainage systems, installed to allay the threats of urban deluge, are still designed for rainfall intensity of 20-25 millimetre per hour duration. It is, therefore, not unnatural that the carrying capacities of these drains easily get overwhelmed during the incidences of heavy precipitation.
Illegal encroachment along storm water drains and urban rivers also aggravates the situation, not least by opening up spaces of active political contestation and negotiations.
A paradigm shift needed
As an extension of India’s colonial history, management of water, not unlike other key services, was bundled as part of the prerogative claims of post-independent public institutions with public participation programs designed later on to serve only a placatory function.
While this lead to systematic exclusion of public’s opinions in informing the design and implementation protocols of large public schemes, water management had, as a discipline, become a constituency building tool. It allowed public authorities to appropriate the commissioning and management of large-scale and costly engineering arrangements to maximise control and legitimacy of their rule over its subjects.
Guided by the underpinnings of this hydraulic paradigm, an inevitable boost in the development of behemoth engineering projects was witnessed in the 20th century. It took the form of multi-purpose dams, irrigation canals, public water distribution systems, etc.
Despite such an extended spree of building large dams and infrastructures, India has now become a ‘water-stressed’ country, with only about 6-8 per cent of installed water storage capacity, growing incidences of water pollution, falling freshwater biodiversity and prevailing inequities in water supply and sanitation services distribution.
To make matters worse for the proponents of supply side management approach, their arguments lobbying for continuing with this strategy are quickly losing credence in the wake of growing concerns over environmental degradation, involuntary displacement of local population, stringent land acquisition policies, complexity of transboundary negotiations for risks and benefits sharing, and huge cost escalation and time lags that are characteristic of these projects.
Rising national empathy for river rejuvenation, watershed conservation and active public participation has, on the other hand, already started scripting a new paradigm for India’s water management. It prompts decision-makers to look for solutions in the collective efforts of the citizens in managing their issues locally.
But is this really a new paradigm for us? Does the annals of Indian history provides another form of legacy that somehow can provide a moral thrust to this growing momentum?
Yes, indeed. Our Vedic ancestors, in their appreciation of the timeless bounty of water, always offered timely obeisance to water’s eternal gifts to mankind. Their reverence to water can be found in the hymns and prayers offered to Varuna and Indra — Vedic Gods associated with water — to riveting architectural gems and literary delights, each underscoring the centrality of water in our cultural revelries.
However, with the advent of modernist’s ideology of taming the nature, we did lend ourselves in to following an exploitative relationship with nature, weaning away from a reverential one which our ancestors had so meticulously developed over the course of history.
It is time our policies are re-designed to reflect these values.
Rooftop rainwater harvesting: A simple tool to empower people
Rooftop rainwater structures are perfectly poised to engender a transformative wave of public engagement in water management, thus, as a corollary, making water management an exercise in nurturing democratic routines.
To ensure that public enthusiastically purchases this concept, a country-wide behavior change campaign can be launched along the lines of Swachh Bharat Mission that can improve people’s ‘ability’ and ‘motivation’ to romantically welcome these structures in their private premises.
It is generally observed that the actual design, construction and maintenance of these structures are left with the individual households and local masons with little or no regulation and monitoring from the concerned urban local bodies.
This does not bode well for the quality and performance of these structures. Local authorities should, therefore, accord explicit attention to the designing and management criteria in their respective byelaws and work to strengthen the enforcement thereof.
Local non-profits and private stakeholders can be roped in to build area specific water conservation plans in partnership with local residents outlining what can work and what cannot according to the area based hydrogeological and prevailing social conditions.
There are several people who have been fervently advocating for the cause of water harvesting. They should be supported to build an arsenal of local champions who can then effectively mobilise the mood of communities in and around their regions for installing roof top rainwater harvesting systems.
They will be a key to promote a ‘do-it-yourself’ model of engagement.
The discipline of water management is now situated at the precipice of change; it has opened its traditionally closed and ‘elite’ routines to the democratic practices of dialogue, inclusion and transparency.
Adoption of rooftop rainwater harvesting practice provides just the right opportunity for our water managers to leverage this wave of change that is effectively about breaking the boundaries between experts and non-experts.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.