Water: New weapon of mass conflict

A classified US report listed India’s three major river basins — Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra —among the world top 10 water conflict zones in ten years from now. Chetan Chauhan reports. Water dynamics

Updated on: Mar 27, 2012, 10:01:16 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A classified US report listed India’s three major river basins — Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra —among the world top 10 water conflict zones in ten years from now.

The report based on National Intelligence Estimate on water security said the chances of water issues causing war in next 10 years were minimal but they could disrupt national and global food market and cause tension between states.

“Beyond 2022, use of water as a weapon of war or a tool of terrorism will become more likely, particularly in South Asia (India), the Middle East and North Africa,” the report said.

An insight on where India stands on water crisis is available in the recent household census data for 2011.

The per capita availability of water for a household has reduced with increase in number of households from 24.1 crore in 2001 to 33.1 crore in 2011.

As a result around 3.8 crore women travel on average more than 500 meters to fetch drinking water — an addition of 1.2 crore women in this water fetching women club. Their collaborative effort means covering 47 times the distance between earth and moon every day.

More and more water conflicts have been reported from Haryana-Punjab in north to Arunachal Pradesh and Assam in north-east to Tamil Nadu and Kerala in southern India. “Such conflicts would rise further if we fail to improve efficiency in our water management,” said a plan panel member Mihir Shah.

Over 1,000 water-related violent conflicts have been reported since 2008.

Even as the nation battle with scarcity of water, another problem that is becoming acute is the quality of water. India records world’s highest per capita water borne diseases even more than some of the world’s least developed nations.

“The source of drinking water in most cities is directly from ground which may be contaminated,” said Sunita Narian, director-general of NGO Centre for Science and Environment.

The problem will aggravate with India's population in cities expected to rise from 340 million by 2030.

Indicating impact of such migration, the US intelligence report said solving water scarcity through negotiations will become tough.

The US report predicts that upstream nations — more powerful than their downstream neighbours due to geography - will limit access to water for political reasons and that countries will regulate internal supplies to suppress separatist movements and dissident populations.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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