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| GROWING WATER CRISIS | | | KHUSHWANT S RANIAL | 6/17/2011 9:21:57 PM |
| Life without water is unthinkable .It is one of the most valuable elements for the sustenance of life on the earth .It is essential for satiating the basic requisites of human being namely health, food production, energy and maintenance of regional and global ecosystems. Over 70% of the human body is made up of the water .An individual can survive without for several days but without it is difficult to survive for a fairly good number of days. The 21st century has to deal with the good supply of water and management in solving the issues pertaining to food, health ,sanitation, environment ,cities or energy products etc. As per the rough available data ,it is estimated that nearly 120 crore people spread across 45 nations do not have an access to safe water and 240 crore lack adequate sanitation services .Over the next 25 years ,the world’s population will accentuate from present 6.5 billion to an estimated 7.5 billion whereas the average supply of the water is expected to fall by one third. And the hardest sufferer will be the poorest.
The main cause of the water crisis are unchecked population explosion, climatic change ,over use or the misuse of the available water resources .Irrigation accounts for the two third of the global use of the fresh water. Farmers use water less efficiently and withdraw more water to compensate for the water losses .In developing nations, nearly 60% of the water is misused or wasted as the result of which most of the water tube wells, reservoirs are suffering reduction in the storage capacity . On an average one percent of the storing capacity of the reservoirs is being lost annually.
As far as India is concerned there are 24 river basins in which the country has been divided .Annual mean flow in the river basin is reckoned as water resources of the basin. Central water Commission has estimated the total water resources of the country at 1953 cubic kilometre .The water resource of Ganga –Brahmaputra-Meghna is estimated at 1200 cubic kilometre which is 60 percent of the total water resource while the basin occupies 33 per cent of the geographical area.
Safer water in purity is essential for the survival of healthy life .It is needed in the household for drinking ,cooking and cleaning besides bovine and horticulture needs .Almost 100 per cent of coverage in both the water supply and sanitation is yet to be achieved. Progress to extent of 90 percent urban water supply and 50 percent for urban sanitation is reported to have achieved .The coverage ,however, varies widely both in class 1 and class 2 cities. The variation in the per capita water supply ranges from nine to 584 Ipcd in the urbanl areas and five to 70 in the rural areas. The ninth five year plan to have the 100% coverage in the sustainable water supply ensuring adequacy in terms of minimum per capita norms is yet to be translated in the true sense. Generally it is observed that there grows widespread dissatisfaction in the states like Rajasthan, Delhi, Maharashtra ,Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh . Its origin all owes to the improper and ill managed water supply systems where people are forced to resort to alternate means or supplementary resources for the collection of the water through private tube wells or tankers at the considerable costs. It is so because 188 to 455 of the water losses does take place through leakages in the mains, communication and service pipes and leaking valves etc. So to arrest the decline of the water at the ground level, means of artificial recharge and rain water harvesting have to be encouraged.
Water requirement for the industries in India when compared to the demand for other uses like agriculture creates problems by the creation of point loads on the available resources.Water use in industries is mostly of non consumptive innature and with suitable treatment can be recycled and reused by process industries for their requirements of processing ,cooling ,boiler feed and other miscellaneous purposes.Cost effective strategies have been demonstrated and should be adopted by industries.
The Union Government had launched a National Water Policy in the year 1987 and it was further revised in the year 2002 which offers guidelines for the judicious use of the water in India, treating river basin as units for planning for development and management . The policy gives top priority to drinking and domestic needs, followed by the irrigation and industry and so on. Under the policy it has been stressed for the states to adhere to the floated norms but at the state levels such floated norms have been flouted badly to oil the crisis more. Unless there is enactment passed by the parliament ,there seems no ray of hope of any change in the plight of the common man. In addition to these policies ,there are two more acts to resolve the state water conflicts which have been formulated in the year 1956 in the name of the Water dispute act ,and the other is River Board’s Act passed in the year 1957 .As far as the first act is concerned ,it resorts to solve disputes by establishing tribunals among states and as far as the second is concerned ,it has garnered dust more than lending any rescue and is running in the rough weather.
Still despite all such pitfalls we see a ray of light as the central government has conceived river linking schemes to connect all the major river across India and panacea lies upon such successful operational connection and functioning to curb the crisis of the water faced by the public in the country. Let we hope that in the near future no one in this country shall be deprived of the drop of the water but the judicious use of the water by every citizen also can do a wonderful job because natural resources in any form are the national treasures and not someone’s personal assets to be misused at will.
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