E-Paper
Panel sounds alarm on ground water
Many states are consuming more ground water than the average annual recharge, writes Anil Anand.
Half a dozen states and union territories are consuming more ground water than the average annual recharge mainly through rains. The natural resource is under serious threat in Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and the UTs of Daman, Diu and Pondicherry where the consumption levels are over 100 per cent.
Catching up fast with these states are Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and UP, whose average consumption is 70 per cent and does not compare well with the all-India figure below 70 per cent.
A water resources ministry sub-committee headed by noted agriculture scientist MS Swaminathan has recommended adoption of water management techniques and new technologies to achieve higher agriculture production through lesser use of water. It has taken a holistic view of the agriculture sector vis-à-vis the water availability impacted by the changing rain pattern due to global warming.
The panel surveyed 5,723 administrative units to gauge the groundwater levels. In the final analysis, 839 units were found to be over-exploited, 226 critical, 550 semi-critical, 4078 safe and the remaining 30 saline.
On the domestic and industrial (use) front, the groundwater draft was over 15 per cent in Chattisgarh, Delhi, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Kerala, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, Orissa, Sikkim and the UTs of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Lakshadweep and Pondichery. The experts found it to be much higher than the accepted national norm of 8 per cent.
Changing rain pattern resulting in the farm sectors’ over dependence on groundwater has been cited as one of the main causes of the fast dipping levels and a resultant fall in agricultural production. Agricultural growth in the last five years has fallen to 1. 5 per cent from 3 to 3.5 per cent over the past two decades. The committee attributed it to “ technology fatigue” in agricultural development.
Increase the water use efficiency to enhance agricultural production, is the committee’s message. This, it feels, has become imperative in view of reduction in agricultural area. The route to more production should be through higher productivity per units of arable land and water.
It has further suggested proactive steps such as taking the weather monitoring network to the Block level to reduce the risk posed by freakish weather changes. These include training experienced farm men and women as ‘Climate Managers’ to convey weather related information to the farmers in their locality. They would be fed the information through a local mechanism to be developed as part of the strategy to convert generic weather related information into a location-specific land use advice.
Further, the Committee has recommended setting up an Automatic Weather Station with a satellite link in every Block. At least 10 strategic locations will be selected in every Block to create a network of rainfall observations.
Accepting the sub-committee’s report, Soz said that Agriculture Year 2007-08 would be declared as the “ Year of More Crop and Income Per Drop of Water”. During the Year participatory action research programmes for farmers would be started with the help of 50 agriculture universities and related institutions. “ The programmes will be designed in a manner that a small water conservation related project leads to a mass movement,” Soz added.
