Punjab Cabinet on Wednesday constituted a five-member sub-committee to assess the groundwater situation in the state and come out with a detailed proposal for conservation of the critical resource.
The Chief Minister suggested that the committee visit Israel to study the methods being used by the West Asian country to minimize the use of ground water and save the precious resource.
The Committee comprises Finance Minister Manpreet Badal, local Government Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, Jails Minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, Revenue Minister Sukhbinder Singh Sarkaria and Environment Minister OP Soni.
The decision to form the cabinet sub-committee was taken after Mission Director Directorate of Ground Water Management, Arunjit Singh Miglani, made a detailed presentation to the Cabinet, highlighting the gravity of the problem.
Miglani apprised the state Cabinet that with 18 percent of world’s population to feed on just four percent of world’s water, India was sitting on a ticking atom bomb. Groundwater extraction in India was more than twice that of US and China, he further revealed.
An official spokesperson said that after the cabinet meeting, the Chief Minister expressed serious concern over the depleting water levels and pointing out that the State would have no water left in the next 15 years unless immediate steps were taken to control the situation.
With the highest rate of decline in ground water level, Punjab has the highest percentage of dark zones in country, he pointed.
Punjab, which has the highest rate of groundwater exploitation, had during 2008-2013 on average withdrew 28.2 Million Acre Feet (MAF) yearly, with yearly average replenishment of only 18.9 MAF, thus causing a severe shortage.
The Chief Minister underlined the need for a Master Plan for conservation of water and suggested including water conservation in school curriculum to create awareness among children about the importance of saving ground water.
The criticality of the situation necessitated urgent steps to check further decline in the ground water levels, said the Chief Minister, reiterating his appeal to farmers to minimize the use of tube-wells and shift to canal-based irrigation in their own interest and in the interest of the state.
Punjab uses 73 percent of its groundwater for irrigation, while only 27 percent of surface water is utilized for irrigation purposes.
The number of tube-wells in the state had gone up exponentially from two lakhs in 1971 to 12.50 lakhs in 2015-16, with 41 percent of the 12.50 wells having availability of water at depth of beyond 60 metres.
The Chief Minister also exhorted the farmers to go for farm diversification instead of sowing water guzzling crops like paddy, which requires 150 cms of watering, even though actual requirement for plant growth is only 60 cms, with the remaining water getting lost in evaporation.
Stressing on the need to incentivize the water conservation, the Chief Minister stressed the need to motivate industries to use more surface water than ground water, which he said would also go a long way in minimizing water pollution too.
The treatment of water should be strictly mandated in order to make its reuse more common, besides enabling use of recycled water for irrigation purposes, he further said.
It was also decided at the Cabinet meeting to launch a massive information and awareness drive by the government on water conservation.
Underscoring the need to go for water conservation techniques, including rain water harvesting, the Chief Minister said that social media should be leveraged to create awareness amongst the masses.
Mass media and social media campaigns should be launched to change the mindset about the need to conserve water, he added.