India's water crisis

Cherrapunji, a small town in North Bengal, India, has been famous the world over as the wettest place on Earth. It receives an average of more than 11,000 mms of rainfall per annum. Today, Cherrapunji is facing a severe water crisis. During the monsoon it rains continuously for days, even weeks sometimes. But the water runs off taking with it soil, trees, plants and even animals. The residents depend upon the pipeline which is supposed to supply them drinking water. It is ancient and overburdened. Modernisation would be costly. People are not prepared to pay for water. Instead, during the drought months, women and children trek miles all day to fetch water. This unparalleled irony highlights one of the most important issues for the poor of our planet-an issue, which has now come centrestage globally. In the year 2000,1.1 billion people did not have access to clean drinking water and 2.4 billion people to a safe and respectable sanitation facility. The deprivation of these two fundamental human needs impact on every facet of their existence-their health, dignity, environment, livelihoods and indeed the sustainable development of their societies and consequently their nations. Diarrhoel disease kills 6,000 children everyday apart from millions who are debilitated because of water-borne diseases which hinder their education and impair their ability to a decent livelihood in future. The irony is severally compounded. Although almost three-fourths of the Earth?s surface is water, the estimated volume of freshwater in our rivers, underground sources, snowfall and ice cover is only about 2.5 per cent-the rest is comprised of sea or salt water. Most of the freshwater-about 69.5 per cent is in the form of ice or snow in the Arctic and Antarctic regions while 30 per cent is below the earth?s surface in deep basins, acquifers, soil moistures and the like. The total useable freshwater supply to ecosystems and the human population from river systems, lakes, wetlands, soil moisture and sub-surface groundwater is less than 1per cent and 0.01 per cent of all water availability on Earth. According to WHO estimates only 0.0075 per cent of all water is readily available for human consumption. And, yet we are unable to manage our water resources with any degree of rationality leave alone wisdom. Freshwater is not only precious and scarce but also a finite resource which is unevenly distributed. In Africa 40 per cent of the population is still without access to water which is 20 per cent in Asia and 15 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean. This is not an issue in the North. The US and Australia have a hundred times more storage than Ethiopia. North America and Europe have already developed 70 per cent of their hydropower potential whereas in Asia it is only 30 per cent. Whatever it?s form, every drop of water is locked into the global hydrological cycle. Human actions modify the hydrological cycle and often seriously pollute available freshwater. Climate change is also affecting the hydrological cycle significantly thereby affecting freshwater production and its distribution. Population growth, urbanistion and increasing demand from competing uses for drinking, agriculture, industry and energy, the pressure on this finite resource is mounting every day. And yet there is a false sense of complacency that not only is water an infinite resource but that it also has to be available at no cost resulting in waste, inefficient usage and pollution. Water users barely pay for even the operating costs. There is absolutely no contribution to capital outlays which are met by domestic governments and external assistance by way of aid or loans. Irrigated farming is generally heavily subsidised placing a severe burden on the budgets of local authorities. As a result of the profligacy in water usage, the per capita availability of fresh water is declining all over the world. If the present consumption patterns continue, two out of every three persons will be living under 'water stressed? conditions by the year 2025.In India, for instance, the per capita average annual availability of freshwater has reduced from 5,177 cubic metres in 1951 to 1,869 cubic metres in 2001 and would fall further to 1,341 cubic metres in 2025. In India, water seems to be everybody?s turf but nobody?s responsibility. Drinking water for the villages is the responsibility of the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) while drinking water for cities and towns belongs to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (MoHRD). The Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR) is concerned with surface and underground water for irrigation and now also with the supra project for the inter linking of rivers. But problems of irrigation are equally a concern for the Ministry of Agriculture, which runs programmes for drought proofing (DPAP) and desert development (DDP). Mega hydroelectric projects are the responsibility of the Ministry of Power (MOP) while development of the micro and mini hydel potential has been entrusted to the Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources (MNES). In recognition of the importance of natural resource management for the environment, the Ministry of Environment and Forests has a long standing grants programme for watershed management which is now matched by similar programmes in the Ministries of Rural Development and Wasteland Development respectively. The total financial allocation for all these very well intentioned efforts runs into billions of rupees but all of them are about water, a finite resource that impacts on the everyday life of the local community in a village or watershed or river basin .Two questions arise: are all these efforts synchronized and to what extent does the community have a voice in the management of this resource. A sharper awareness of the downward spiral in the degradation of the natural resource regime, of the limited effectiveness of the state in managing this regime and of constraints in delivering essential services to the community has promoted a significant shift in public policy towards the recognition of the need for a more integrated and participatory system of natural resource management. This, in turn, has led to a wide range of innovations and diverse institutional structures such as water user associations, watershed development committees, self-help groups and the like depending upon the source of the programme initiative. SWAJAL is the most recent rural water supply and sanitation programme launched at the national level in with support from the World Bank. It has the following main objectives: To assist the State Government to identify and implement an appropriate policy framework to promote the long term sustainability of the Rural Water Supply and Environmental Sector To deliver sustainable health and hygiene benefits to the rural population through improvements in water supply and environmental sanitation To improve rural incomes through time saving and income opportunities for women To test alternatives to the existing supply driven delivery mechanisms and To promote sanitation and gender awareness. A study conducted of the SWAJAL projects in five villages of two districts in the newly formed hill state of Uttaranchal between December 2000 and February 2001 by PRIA a prominent NGO has brought some extremely interesting and significant results about partnership, management of water and local governance. Apart from the World Bank which provided financial assistance and the State Government which is responsible for the policy framework, the four key stakeholders were the District Project Management Unit (DPMU) a bureaucratic group, the Support Organisation (SO) a locally based activist NGO, the Village Water and Sanitation Committee an elected body and the community at large. After a rigorous and transparent process the DPMU selects the SO which conducts pre-feasibility studies to select villages on a set of criteria like demand (willingness to share 10 per cent of the capital cost and pay 100 per cent of the O&M costs), need (insufficient water supply or poor water quality) and technical feasibility (adequate water source). Once the villages are selected, the so mobilizes the community to elect the VWSC which must have 20 per cent representation of the lower castes and 30 per cent of women. The good news is Delivery of water supply and sanitation services has been achieved to the satisfaction of the community in two out of the five villages with the active participation of the community In these villages the water supply systems are functional and people are paying the charges determined by the VWSC The VSWC is perceived as a representative body working for the interests of the community and is looked upon to take initiatives in improvements of roads and providing employment opportunities Women have started a drive for using latrines and eliminating the use of polythene bags Levels of awareness have generally increased The not so good news is Water reached the community in only two out of the five villages within the prescribed timeframe. In two others work was delayed while in the fifth it came to a halt because of a local conflict. The respective roles of different stakeholders are not easily definable particularly in a differentiated community with low levels of education and awareness. The full involvement of the community could not be sustained even after the delivery of service stage as it requires effective management in revenue recovery, maintenance of transparent accounting systems and technical back up. There is a traditional belief that water is a free resource and therefore an innate suspicion about new systems. And yet there is no hesitation to pay if the delivery system is effective. Thus capacity building albeit with relatively simple and innovative tools at the local level is critical. This raises an important question whether the existing formal institutional infrastructure is equipped to meet the requirements of an emerging rural community that is far more aware of its needs. Wherever participation of women has been effective, the aspects of environmental health and hygiene are given much greater importance and leadership skills have been enhanced yet, the process of building up the strength of women?s empowerment is treated as a separate activity rather than linked organically linked to the mainstream project activity. There is no doubt that the concepts and philosophy underlying an initiative like the SWAJAL programme is very significant steps in the direction of strengthening partnerships towards sustainable management of an essential resource like water. Nevertheless we still have to address the question of legitimacy in an open society and a democratic polity. In India the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution have provided statutory authority to popularly elected bodies at the sub-national level right down to the village. These institutions like the Panchayats in rural areas and Municipalities in towns are the legal custodians of all matters that affect the well being of the community. There is clearly a common consensus that this decentralized structure is the only effective and fair way to provide good governance to a large, amorphous, diverse nation like India. It could well be argued that, in fact, this would apply with equal validity to any nation however small, as is the case in many parts of the world. However, in the case of India, this also raises serious issues for equitable and sustainable development that can neither be wished away nor trivialized under the twin mantras of decentralization and devolution. The hard social and political realities and conflicts at the cutting edge, particularly as they impact on the poor and underprivileged have got to be faced and indeed resolved in order to come up with an acceptable road map. This is well demonstrated by the study of water and sanitation that I have been referring to earlier. Whereas, the positive and negative lessons are important indicators for making corrections in programme design and project management, there is also a very fundamental question of governance that needs to be squarely addressed. One of the reasons for the lack of success in two of the villages was the conflict that arose between the Panchayat, a constitutionally elected body and the VWSC also an elected body but a user group without any statutory mandate. In one of the villages the VWSC accepted it?s role as a sub-committee of the Panchayat, a but in another village this led to an unresovable conflict situation resulting in the denial of water to the entire community. It is therefore essential to build conflict resolution mechanisms into partnerships right from the initial stage. And this becomes even more important when dealing with the ownership, use and management of natural resources in a developmental scenario.