Odisha is bestowed with huge potential of water resources. The State receives 231 BMC (Billion m3) of rainfall annually. The average annual precipitation of Odisha is around 1,500 mm and 80 per cent of this occurs during June to September, due to southwest monsoon.
The State experiences about 70 rainy days during monsoon. Despite all those, it experiences flood and drought quite often. When flood was common in coastal plain, drought was in upper terrain. But, with the changing
scenario, both drought and flood are common in almost all parts of the State. Total 10 districts of Odisha had experienced flood up to 1991 and after 1994 more and more districts figured in the list.
The height is that, in the year 2007, 27 districts out of 30 in Odisha experienced the flood.
Around 80 per cent of population in Odisha depends upon ground water for drinking and domestic purposes. At the same time, due to change in the pattern of rainfall, people have started shifting from rain fed agriculture to seasonal irrigated hi-yielding agriculture.
This is again increasing the consumption of ground water like anything. Massive industrialisation in Odisha is another additional threat to ground water.
The Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) has clearly indicated that the ground water of 24 out of 30 districts in Odisha is depleting. Shockingly, these aquifers have been sucked dry not to provide water for drinking and domestic use, but to meet the demand of agriculture and small industries.
As if all this was not enough, large industries have now joined the race to dry up the ground water aquifers.
The crisis clearly indicates that there is a lack of prudent management of water in the State. When it comes to meeting the demand of water, all the concerned service providers focus on creating and augmenting (increasing the capacity) of “sources”, those yield water – starting from hand-pump in the village for drinking water to motorised deep bore-wells in the agriculture field.
Nobody bothers about the water “resources” those feed the water to the sources. And rain is the major contributor for living of the water resources – starting from surface water bodies to ground water aquifer.
The rainwater causes a lot of health hazards directly and indirectly in the flood and post flood situations, besides the drinking water problem. During the summer (Earlier it was for two months and now it is for almost 6 months), people of Odisha face acute water scarcity due to lack of proper management of rain water during rain.
Most peculiar part is that, despite rainwater management being the key behind addressing flood and drought, both the calamities are being dealt separately, instead of treating both flood and drought as both side of the same coin. Rainwater, being the only means of fresh water for us, tangible step is yet to be taken to harvest that.
Rainwater harvesting may be defined as any human activity involving collection and storage of rainwater in some natural or artificial container, either for immediate use or for use before the onset of the next monsoon.
Rainwater harvesting as defined above was followed both at individual and community levels from times immemorial to obtain high-quality water for domestic, agricultural and other uses. Rainwater harvesting is not a new concept in our State. If we look at the traditional land and water management practices, we can find ancient rainwater harvesting methods of water supply – both for drinking and domestic as well as for irrigation.
However, those declined when the civilised Government took over the self-appointed task of supplying water through tube wells and pipe from long distances extracting the ground water.
Rainwater harvesting can be done either for ground water recharging or for storing the water to meet day to day water requirement and even both the things.
When we talk about ground water recharging, basically focus lies on ensuring sustainability of the sources and augmenting water availability.
Another added advantage is ground water recharging, that is, ensuring the water quality.
Rainwater has been successfully harvested in many States of India and especially in urban set-ups. People are effectively harvesting rainwater to meet the water requirement for the entire year. If we look at the national perspective, rainwater harvesting is mandatory in 11 States and Odisha does not figure in the list.
Despite knowing the benefits of rainwater harvesting, no tangible step has been taken yet to execute the process.
Though the intellectuals’ verdict is that rainwater harvesting is the need of the hour, no such step has been taken to either make it a mandate in urban set-up or to aware the rural community regarding its importance. People those are completely dependent on ground water are yet to know its value.
Though, in urban setups like Bhubaneswar, the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) has made inclusion of rainwater harvesting mechanism in the plan mandatory, but there is virtually no monitoring of the plan execution and follow-up action and there are instances of major violations by builders.
Considering the amount of precipitation, Odisha is receiving and having geographical favourability to harvesting the rainwater to solve the problem and suffice the water requirement. The only bottleneck is the will to go about the task with a firm belief that it is possible.
With the strong belief, a coordinated effort by all segments of Government machinery, along with strong legislation to both execute and monitor the process, can save the State from severe water crisis in future.
(The author works with WaterAid India, Bhubaneswar office. The views expressed are personal)