Today's Edit: No Politics over water

Centre, States must combat crisis together 

There is nothing new about politicians milking tragedies to enhance their politics. So, it was perhaps only to be expected that some would seek to score brownie points from the ongoing water crisis that has crippled life in large parts of the country. Still, the silly game of one-upmanship between the Union Government and the State Government of Uttar Pradesh over the so-called water train for drought-hit Bundelkhand, strikes a jarring note. This past Wednesday, the Railways Ministry sent the train to Jhansi, but Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav refused to accept the assistance.

According to him, there was enough water in the reservoirs of Bundelkhand and only tankers were needed to transport that water across the region by road. This prompted a discussion on the optics of the water crisis. The water train, which made headlines when it was first pressed into action for latur  since then, some two dozen trips have been made — has now come to embody a saviour of sorts in these parched times.

Some have spotted an element of power play in this, wherein the Centre is seen as coming to the rescue of the State. The poll-bound Samajwadi Party Government in Uttar Pradesh seems to have been one of them. Unwilling to be seen as accepting aid from a BJP-led Government at the Centre, Chief Minister Yadav sent back the train and made sure that everybody knew he had done so. later, it was also reported that the water train was empty; that it had been sent to Jhansi so that the UP Government could fill it with water from its reservoirs and take it to the parched areas. This then became a debate over whether railways or roadways were the more efficient means of transporting water while the actual issue of lack of cooperation between the Centre and the State on water distribution was ignored, and the common man continued to suffer as before.

Thankfully, both Governments have since sought to make amends and put together a better coordinated and more comprehensive strategy. Chief Minister Yadav met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday and the two reportedly had a productive discussion. Yadav reiterated his Rs11,000 crore drought relief package demand while Modi assured him that the money would be cleared without delay. Notably, the Centre has already released about Rs934 crore to Uttar Pradesh under the National Disaster Response Fund. It has also released Rs506 crore as Central share in the State Disaster Response Fund for 2015-16 and an additional Rs266 crore as the first installment of SDRF for 2016-17.

However, as is almost always the case, it isn't the access to or availability of money that is the issue; the problem lies in its ineffective utilisation. On his part, Yadav underlined the State's plans for the revival and restoration of 78,000 water-bodies and the creation of 1,00,000 new water-bodies, using funds available under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana. These are the long-term measures needed to deal with the water crisis, which will only get worse in subsequent years as human pressure on natural resources increases and extreme weather conditions intensify due to climate change.