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'Delhi rain is enough to quench India's thirst'

Amberish K Diwanji

When R K Behl set up his residence in Lajpat Nagar, Delhi, over four decades ago, he dug a tube well into the ground for water. Going barely eight feet deep, he struck clean water. Today, the tube well has gone below 100 feet, and is still going deeper in search of water to keep the Behls' water tanks full as the earlier dug wells run dry.

If today parts of India are reeling under a severe drought, the fault is not the displeasure of the rain gods but of us people who have over the years failed to conserve the rains that lash the country every year and feed the ground water.

"Today, India's biggest danger is that the ground water is disappearing, and if this trend continues, there will be no water left at all," warns Indira Khurana of the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, in an exclusive interivew to rediff.com.

Khurana specialises on water resources, and she paints a scary picture about the way India is going. "Let us take the case of Rajasthan. Western Rajasthan (the Barmer region) is under a severe drought but northern Rajasthan (the Alwar region) has just witnessed a revolution of sorts when five dried up rivers were submerged under water once again, after many years.

"It is ultimately a case of conserving our rain water, which simply runs off the soil and back into the sea," says Khurana.

Not conserving rain water has major implications, as Khurana points out. The single biggest danger is that it prevents the ground water from getting replenished.

"Year after year we have been using up our ground water to meet the needs of our people, especially for drinking water and other purposes. And yet, year after year, we have not allowed the same ground water to be replenished by rain water, its natural replenishment source. How long can such a situation go on?" asks Khurana.

Not replenishing ground water means that every year Indians dig deeper into the ground for water, which is getting scarcer and more difficult to find. In Bombay, India's largest city with a population that is nearly touching 16 million, tube wells have gone as deep as 1200 feet!

Yet, ironically, Bombay receives one of the highest rainfalls of any city in India (an awesome 1800 mm), but most of it simply runs off into the Arabian Sea that washes its western side.

To give another mindboggling statistic: it is estimated that if all the rain water that falls in Delhi alone is harvested, it can provide drinking water for the whole of India for one year!

Delhi, with an area of 1,483 square kilometres, receives only 611 mm of rainfall every year (much less than other parts of India). "If this alone can quench the thirst of all Indians, think of all the rain that India receives and how much water goes to waste every year," says Khurana.

Khurana is convinced that the recent drought is nothing more than water mismanagement by the Indian authorities. What is worse, she fears, is that in the desperation to meet the immediate requirement, long-term solutions and dangers are lost sight of.

For instance, right now the governments of Gujarat and Rajasthan are busy digging more tube wells and digging existing wells deeper. "They are borrowing from the future because sooner than later these wells will dry up. Then what are they going to do?" asks the concerned environmentalist.

Khurana has the answer, and it is in harvesting the rain water that falls upon India every year. In fact, it is the failure to harvest rain water that leads to perpetual droughts.

"Can you believe it but Cherrapunji, which receives the maximum annual rainfall in the world (10,800 mm) actually faces a drinking water shortage during the non-rain seasons. The reason is because the rain water is not conserved and harvested, hence it can't be utilised in the lean season," she points out.

Khurana points out that traditionally, Indians used to harvest rain water to last them for the entire year, or even years in case the rains failed in a particular year. "It was the British who changed everything. They wanted that the state should provide water and, therefore, went about the business of tube wells," she said.

What the British started, the Indian bureaucracy perfected. Today, India boasts of huge dams which are supposed to provide water to the villages, except that they often run dry.

The government's response is more concrete. The latest proposal doing the rounds of the government, according to government sources and Khurana, is the Inter-River Basin Transfer. This scheme, whose minimum cost is estimated at Rs 300 billion, is to link up the major rivers of India through canals so that excess water from one area can be moved to the water deficient areas.

"If the Sardar Sarovar Project (popularly called the Narmada Dam) had been completed by now, then Saurashtra (western Gujarat) would not have had this drought," claimed an official in the water resources ministry.

However, Khurana hotly challenges this concept. "The government has spent crores on the Narmada dam and yet there is little to show. If on the other hand, they had spent a few lakhs on water harvesting schemes there would have been no such drought," she said.

Water harvesting schemes involve ensuring that water percolates from the surface down to the ground water. Concrete structures and tarmac roads prevent the water from percolating through the earth, one reason why cities face a perennial shortage of water. "The need is for open areas, more trees so that all the rain water can be collected and trapped. There are many ways of doing it," adds Khurana.

Deforestation is one major reason for rain water running off rather than percolating down (the reason Cherrapunji has a water shortage is linked to the massive deforestation in that region of Meghalaya). "It is like pouring oil on a bald man and on a person with hair. On the bald man, the oil will run off while the man with hair will soak it up. Thus, to soak up water, we need vegetation!" exclaims the CSE member.

Khurana points out that any scheme such as connecting river basins is unworkable because of the huge costs involved. "The need of the hour is to involve the people directly, a practice the British and present Indian bureaucrats don't believe in. Wherever the people have been involved, such as in Alwar, there is no water shortage, and where the government is active, there is drought," she said.

Khurana warns that unless the people are involved in projects to conserve and harvest rain water, India will continue to face droughts every year. But is anyone from the government and the bureaucracy listening?

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