India & Rain Harvesting

India: Rainwater harvesting begins to take root New Delhi, Apr 23 (IPS/Ranjit Devraj) -- After spending a lifetime building the irrigation canals that brought prosperity to the Punjab region that now straddles India and Pakistan, M L Sood believes that the future lies in rainwater harvesting rather than in big dams, irrigation canals and other grand civil engineering schemes.

"The rivers are all drying up and if we don't begin intensive water-harvesting now the subcontinent is doomed -- the days of the irrigation canals are over," the octogenarian engineer told IPS.

There are few people left alive in either India or Pakistan who can claim to have theexperience and knowledge of Sood. He graduated in 1927 from Roorkee Engineering College, which was set up by the British colonial government in 1847 and enjoys the distinction of being the oldest engineering institution in all of Asia.

Sood is happy to show visitors the dense lawns and greenery in and around the Panchshila Park neighbourhood of Delhi, saying these are the visible signs of what water harvesting can do.

"All this is the result of willpower and civic sense rather than large funding. The 3,000 odd U.S. dollars that the whole project cost was raised through the Residents Welfare Association of Panchshila Park rather than from the government or outside sources," he said in an interview.

India's national capital has been hit by severe water shortages as a result of the withholding of some water in the river Yamuna by upstream Haryana state for its own needs.

Against this backdrop, this city of 14 million people is beginning to pay heed to Sood and other experts who have been warning of the steadily depleting water in the snow-fed rivers of northern India. "This year, the Yamuna's flow has been reduced by almost 50% of normal availability and the trend is toward greater and greater shortages," said R K Garg, Haryana's chief irrigation engineer.

Water shortages have already led to hostile words between authorities in Delhi and Haryana. This is an echo of other disputes over river water in this part of the world most notably between Sindh and Punjab provinces of Pakistan over the waters of the Indus river.

Worse, there are ever louder demands that the 1960 World Bank-mediated Indus Water Treaty between India and Pakistan, which apportions waters in the five tributaries of the Indus river between the two countries, be redrawn.

According to Uttam Amar Mishra, a researcher with the influential non-government organisation Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI), the only way Delhi can avert a looming water disaster is by resorting to rainwater harvesting in a truly intensive way.

"At the moment, more than 50% of the rain that Delhi receives during the peak monsoon season in July and August ends up in the Yamuna and actually causes it to flood," Mishra said.

The monsoon rain during the two months accounts for 70% of India's water resources. It is not that the government is unaware of the seriousness of the situation. In 2001, prodded by NGOs, authorities issued
a public notice making it compulsory for all new housing societies, schools, hotels and industrial establishments to install 'Roof Top Water Harvesting Systems'.

Such systems involve building tanks on flat rooftops to collect water that can be directly used or allowed to seep into simple ground storage structures filled with gravel and river sand. These structures have nothing more sophisticated than a cement slab at the bottom to ensure water retention.

The notice to install the water harvesting systems said the measure is being taken since the city's water table is rapidly receding. Likewise, there is increasing salinityas a result of overextraction of water through the use of tubewells, which continued to be bored in spite of a ban on new ones since 1998.

The flouting of this ban surreptitiously forced the Delhi Jal (water) board to begin a programme of licensing existing tubewells from February this year. Levies are being charged for the operation of tubewells and unauthorised ones are being plugged.

Delhi has about 100,000 registered tubewells and about 250,000 unauthorised ones. The board's officials estimate that they could generate at least $300 million in revenues each year if they can recover the levies.

"We plan to regulate the use of groundwater and have a rational tariff structure for all users," said Tripathi, adding that a price on groundwater would deter misuse and overextraction.

Tripathi said all tubewell users would also be required to install rainwater harvesting structures that would help recharge the ground aquifers. Across India, 18 states are now experiencing rapidly depleting water tables and salinity, thanks to the indiscriminate boring of tubewells. These tubewells were once considered the only reliable source of water for agriculture and other purposes since neither the monsoon rains nor water supply through irrigation canals were dependable.

The Indian states afflicted most by the phenomenon of receding groundwater include northern Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, western Gujarat and Rajasthan and southern Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

''Rapid urbanisation and population growth have led to higher consumption of groundwater and if this is not checked, the problem can only get more acute,'' said Gauhar Mahmood, professor of civil engineering at the Jamia Milia Islamia university in the capital.

Estimates made by the Central Groundwater Board say that underground aquifers will dry up completely by 2025 in as many as 15 Indian states if water continues to recede at the present rate of 20 centimetres from the surface.

According to K C Pant, one of India's chief economic planners, one reason for rapidly depleting groundwater in India is electricity subsidies. These allow cheap pumping and readily available agricultural credit for the boring of tubewells, which many governments resort to as a populist move.

''These subsidies are politically difficult to remove. But they must go since roughly 30 percent of electricity generated in this country goes into extracting scarce groundwater,'' Pant said.