The Hindu Business Line : A commodity?

In Sonnet CLIV, the Bard sings, "Love's fire heats water, water cools not love." Forget love, because there is every danger that water, or more so the lack of it, can potentially whip up hate and war. For instance, "On Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of local activists, indigenous groups, and representatives from international non-governmental organisations marched to the Zócalo to celebrate World Water Day," reports Judith Joffe-Block in a story dated March 25 on www.eluniversal.com.mx.

Participants in the alternative water conference, `International Forum in Defense of Water,' have released a declaration opposing `any kind of private involvement in water management.' A report dated March 13 in The Mississippi Press is about how `a bill that would create a regional water and sewer authority in Mississippi's six southernmost counties has ignited debate in George County'.

From New Zealand, www.Stuff.co.nz cautions, `New water war looms'. And, according to Fred Pearce, speaking to California Literary Review (www.calitreview.com) , "The first modern water war was, arguably at least, the Six Day War in 1967 between Israel and its neighbours."

What about here? "India faces a turbulent water future," declare John Briscoe and R.P.S. Malik in India's Water Economy, from Oxford University Press (www.oup.com) and The World Bank (www.worldbank.org) . "The current water development and management system is not sustainable." Because the way water is managed by the Government, "India will have neither the cash to maintain and build new infrastructure, nor the water required for the economy and the people."

The authors point out in a section on `groundwater exploitation' how, after 1960, in the wake of the Green Revolution, "Groundwater irrigation developed at an explosive rate while tank irrigation almost disappeared and surface water irrigation grew much more slowly". While such exploitation yielded many benefits, "groundwater revolution has run its course in the most productive agricultural and urban areas".

Two immediate challenges of `plummeting groundwater tables' are: power subsidy and resource availability.

According to estimates, subsidies to farmers account for about Rs 240 billion a year, which is "equivalent to about 25 per cent of India's fiscal deficit, and two-and-a-half times the annual expenditure on canal irrigation". In Gujarat, electricity subsidies add up to a fifth of the state's agricultural domestic product, state the authors.

The second challenge is about the availability of groundwater. In Punjab, groundwater in about 60 per cent of blocks is already overdrawn, and in Haryana and Tamil Nadu, it is around 40 per cent. Shockingly, "in Rajasthan, the proportion of overdrawn exploited blocks has risen from 17 per cent to 60 per cent over the last seven years."

The book offers a dozen suggestions as `rules for reformers' aiming at `principled pragmatism'. The first of these rules is, `water is different,' as Kenneth Boulding notes in his ode: "Water is far from a simple commodity/ Water's a sociological oddity/... Water is far from the pure economical." Public discussion is inevitable, therefore.

A chapter titled `an invigorated Indian water State for the 21st century' discusses the case of Chennai elaborately, for its water initiatives. Chennai surfaces many times in the book, be it about: incipient water markets for the voluntary transfer of water from farmers to the city; purchasing water from Andhra Pradesh; new forms of finance such as through the Sai Baba foundation; and pushing for new forms of inter-State agreements on water, including river-linking.

It used to be believed that farmers were wedded to growing paddy and so would not be interested in giving up water for Chennai. As if to dispel such a myth, "in 2003, 70 per cent of the raw water for the city came from buying water from farmers in the AK (Araniar-Korataliar) aquifer." Were the farmers unhappy? Metrowater said, "Yes, because all the farmers want to sell their water, and we cannot buy from all of them."

A page on www.chennaimetrowater.com/engg/akstudy.htm informs about the study by the United Nations Development programme (UNDP) and the Water Resource Organisation (WRO) of the AK basin.

It is estimated that it has a groundwater potential to the tune of 350 million cum meter/year and that 594 million cum meter/year is available respectively. To assess the sustainable yield from the basin, work of consultancy studies was awarded to Knight Piesold Ltd in 2002...

Useful reading, to achieve `the firm soil win of the watery main,' as Shakespeare pens in Sonnet LXIV.

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