What is the issue?
- The small-scale bottom-up water conservation movements have only helped locally.
- There is need for non-invasive large-scale schemes to address India’s huge water problems.
What is the looming threat?
- Building artificial infrastructure eventually kills natural infrastructure.
- Forests, rivers, mountains, aquifers and soil are being lost at an alarming rate.
- Notably natural infrastructure is a result of ages of evolution and cannot be engineered in short span.
- India now is in the midst of a suicidal water crisis as urban and rural landscapes go thirsty.
What were the measures?
- Over the years, various stakeholders have been working on bottom-up schemes.
- There have been efforts to revive and rejuvenate lakes, wetlands, streams and other small water bodies.
- These movements have brought about a significant change at the local level.
- But the scale of India's water problems is much larger than these local efforts.
What are the concerns?
- Demand - Cities are now the centres of rising demand for water, food, energy and other resources.
- High densities of cities do not allow for water harvesting to fill the gap.
- Schemes like dams to service these large cities and the huge needs of agriculture have caused extreme ecological devastation.
- Market - Natural resources are living evolutionary resources that are constantly renewed by natural cycles.
- They provide perennial value as long as they are used with natural wisdom.
- But products and services derived from natural infrastructure have often led to terminal loss of the source itself.
- The global free market and the resultant scale of human intervention exceed the scale of the planet.
- So loss of forests, mountains, floodplains and rivers are in most cases long-term loss for short-term gain.
What are the possible sustainable measures?
- River floodplains - Floodplains are formed over millions of years by the flooding of rivers.
- These are formed by deposition of sand on riverbanks and are exceptional aquifers.
- So any withdrawal of water is compensated by gravity flow from a large surrounding area.
- Some floodplains, such as those of Himalayan rivers, contain up to 20 times more water than the virgin flow in rivers in a year.
- This could potentially be conserved and used as a source of providing water to cities, and can be a self-sustaining aquifer.
- E.g. the Delhi Palla floodplain project on the Yamuna
- Piezometers and a control system have been installed.
- These help monitoring water levels and other parameters, to ensure sustainable withdrawal.
- Besides, it provides huge revenue to the Delhi Jal Board.
- Requirement - Preserving the floodplain in a pristine condition is essential for this scheme to work.
- Land on the floodplains can be leased from farmers in return for a fixed income from the water sold to cities.
- The farmers can be encouraged to grow orchards/food forests to secure the ecological balance of the river ecosystem.
- Natural mineral water - Forested hills sit on a treasure of underground aquifers.
- Rains falling on the forest seeps through the various layers of humus and cracked rock pathways.
- In the course, they pick up nutrients and minerals and flows into underground mineral water aquifers.
- The natural mineral water could be a better alternative for the mineral water currently brought from faraway mountain springs.
- The huge pressure that this puts on the mountains could be avoided.
- Water in underground aquifers is comparable to several international natural spring mineral waters.
- With a proper scheme, a forest like Asola Bhatti in Delhi could be sustained as a mineral water sanctuary.
- Likewise Aravalli forested hills can provide mineral water to all major towns of Rajasthan.
- Quality natural mineral water can be provided from a local forest tract for 20 times less than the market price.
What is the way forward?
- These non-invasive, large-scale ‘conserve and use’ projects should become part of the living scheme.
- These schemes can
- provide perennial supply of water to large populations in cities and towns
- engage the natural landscape
- sustain ecological balance
- have major economic and health benefits
- Unlike large-scale dams, these projects work with nature rather than against it.
Source: The Hindu
