India is facing a severe water crisis. Around 54 per cent of the country has been turned into a water-stressed dust bowl with many rivers rapidly drying up. Our record in managing this essential resource is riddled with shortcomings
We have always noticed news regarding rivers especially when a flood or drought takes place. But this time rivers are in the news because their existence on earth is threatened.
India is facing severe water crisis. Around 54 per cent of the country has turned into water-stressed dust bowl with many rivers rapidly drying up. The founder of Isha foundation, Padma Vibhushan Sadguru has launched a campaign “Rally for Rivers” to save the dying rivers of India. Though rivers are an integral parts of human civilisation, our record in managing these essential resources particularly over the past hundred years has been riddled with short-sightedness.
Progress of civilisation, growing urbanisation and apparent decline in direct dependence of human being on river systems has contributed to changing the perspective of use of river resources. Interfering within river’s domain has a long history, perhaps as old as human civilisation itself. Today, many of the rivers and catchments are degraded due to severe human impacts including damming, diversions, storages, clearing of vegetation and habitat removal and pollution.
In urban dominated areas, mediums like municipal drainage, industrial effluents, sewage discharge, waste water flow, increased impervious surfaces and infrastructural constraints on river channels have led to the injection of chemical pollutants, river flow modification and system instability. Besides, there are excessive sand mining from river bed and increasing withdrawl of water for various purposes. All these actions together caused irreparable damage to the riverine ecosystem.
Climate change is expected to intensify the situation by altering the weather pattern and water cycles around the world, causing drought in some areas and flood in others. The damaging effects to aquatic ecosystems through these changes have long been known and demonstrated and it is now globally well recognised that the rivers are under stress. Now the situation has been so alarming that river restoration is considered as an important task to be accomplished urgently with due care.
India is blessed with 100 large and small rivers which is spread across the country. Various rivers of the country are always in the news for the never ending disputes for the sharing of water between different states. The three Himalayan river basins falling within India in parts are Brahmaputra, Ganges, and the Indus. They account for 1,183 BCM out of the total annual surface water potential of India which stands at 1869 Billion cubic meters (BCM). These three rivers have an annual utilisable flow of 553 BCM when compared with India’s total annual utilisable flow of 1122 BCM.
Thus, the Himalayan Rivers provide about 50 per cent of the total utilisable flow and carry about 72 per cent of the annual surface water potential of India. Thus, in meeting any future requirements of water in India, the Himalayan Rivers have a great importance. The water of the Himalayan Rivers has supported several great civilisations of India.
A more recent but widespread human intervention in the Himalayan rivers of India has come in the form of hundreds of hydropower plants which are either functioning or at under-construction stage or at the planning stage.
The hydropower potential of the Ganges basin is officially projected at 20,711 MW, while installed and under construction plant capacity is about 6100 MW. The rapid expansion of dam construction, especially on the Himalayan Rivers of Ganges and Brahmaputra, brought in an important dimension to the debate.
The issue of environmental sustainability and flows of the river became a significant element in the debate. Thus, the awareness of environmental flows in India was more a result of the discontent over risks associated with large dam projects on the Himalayan Rivers, as opposed to the question of pollution in these rivers.
Under the river linking project, there should be inclusion of environmental management part in terms of environment or social impact assessment and landscape management. Thus, there is a need for taking a holistic view on the assessment of environmental flows of the Ganges and other riverine system. Ministry of Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation has sanctioned 12500 crore rupees under Namami Gange mission to rejuvenate the Ganga river.
The Government is pushing more funds, more infrastructures and more technology following the trends of the past three decades, but there is no improvement in the status of Ganga. An inclusive effort is necessary from all the sections which include policy makers, administrator, social activists, academicians and common masses to save this precious commodity.
(The author is a research scholar in the School of Environmental sciences, JNU)