Water management in India- Challenges and Policy initiatives

Background

• India is undergoing the worst water crisis in its history. Already, more than 600 million people are facing acute water shortages. Critical groundwater resources – which account for 40% of our water supply – are being depleted at unsustainable rates.
• Droughts are becoming more frequent, creating severe problems for India’s rain-dependent farmers (~53% of agriculture in India is rainfed). When water is available, it is likely to be contaminated (up to 70% of our water supply), resulting in nearly 200,000 deaths each year. Interstate disagreements are on the rise, with seven major disputes currently raging, pointing to the fact that limited frameworks and institutions are in place for national water governance.
• Indeed, if nothing changes, and fast, things will get much worse: best estimates indicate that India’s water demand will exceed supply by a factor of two by 2030, with severe water scarcity on the horizon for hundreds of millions. One of the key challenge levers driving this crisis is the lack of water data.

Data systems related to water in the country are limited in their coverage, robustness, and efficiency. The sector suffers from the following key data problems:

• Limited coverage: Detailed data is not available for several critical sectors such as for domestic and industrial use, for which data is only available at the aggregate level and lacks the level of detail required to inform policies and allocations.
• Unreliable data: The data that is available can often be of inferior quality, inconsistent, and unreliable due to the use of outdated methodologies in data collection. For example, estimates on groundwater are mostly based on observation data from 55,000 wells, while there are 12 million wells in the country.
• Limited coordination and sharing: Data in the water sectors exists in silos, with very little inter-state or centre-state sharing, thereby reducing efficiencies. Such data issues directly impact policy formulation, increase problems in infrastructure maintenance, promote sub-optimal user behaviour, and limit research and innovation.

Governement Initiatives

Despite the worsening water crisis in the country and significant challenges, there is room for optimism, with water management receiving increased policy attention over the past few years. From 2014 onwards, the Indian government has taken several steps to move the country further along the path to effective water governance, with the key policy decisions detailed in the timeline below;

Key policy highlights

• Basin-level Governance: The consolidation of several river authorities into the central Ministry of Water Resources, to enable better decision-making for surface water projects and allocation.
• Groundwater Bill: The drafting and discussion of a model groundwater bill that defines groundwater as being held ‘in trust’ by the government and specifies a decentralized structure for its governance.
• Innovative Irrigation: The renewed focus on micro-irrigation adoption by farmers in the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY) to enable efficient on-farm water use.
• Global Partnerships: The formalization of a partnership with Israel, the world leader in water governance and conservation, to leverage Israeli experience and knowledge for water conservation in India.
• Further, global events and examples have highlighted both the potential implications of water scarcity and the pathways to achieve water security. The worsening water crisis in Cape Town, South Africa, with the city hovering dangerously close to ‘Day Zero’ (when it runs out of water), has caused water rationing and civil strife in the city, and has highlighted the risks and challenges that lie ahead for many Indian cities, including Bangalore.
• These crises, combined with the global examples of countries managing water effectively in a long-term sustainable manner, such as that of Israel , have ensured that the momentum around effective water management has been increasing and that the sector is being accorded a high priority in the national policy agenda.

Building on this policy push, NITI Aayog has sought to establish a ‘Composite Water Management Index’ for the country. This Index is expected to establish a public, national platform providing information on key water indicators across states. This platform will help in monitoring performance, improving transparency, and encouraging competition, thereby boosting the country’s water achievements by fostering the spirit of ‘competitive and cooperative federalism’ among the states. Further, the data can also be used by researchers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers to enable broader ecosystem innovation for water in India.
 

By: Abhishek Sharma