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Water is commodity that has always been scare in India. Since a long time, water as a resource has eluded a major section of the Indian population. And in the recent years, the problem has been compounded due to the unviable methods implemented by all sectors of the Indian machinery. Ground water has been driven deeper and deeper into the ground as people look for more of the precious resource. The surface water that is available to each one of us has been polluted and degraded, thanks to all the industries which pour their effluents in water bodies, thanks to the agricultural drain-offs that are released into rivers and lakes, and thanks to all sorts of waste that is dumped by people and subsequently degrades water quality. India being primarily an agricultural economy, the agriculture sector has had a huge role to play in water pollution, especially in the North of India, in states like Punjab and Haryana. Industrialization and Urbanization too have contributed to the excessive use of surface and ground water, leading to its depletion. A lot of data and statistics are available that verify these theories.
http://qz.com/353707/india-is-already-facing-a-water-crisis-and-it-is-only-going-to-get-worse/
http://thewaterproject.org/water-in-crisis-india
On top of this water scarcity, India now faces a new challenge that has inflated the bubble around the issue of water scarcity – climate change. With change in the hydrological cycle and weather patterns, there has been a marked change in how India faces the problem of water scarcity. Severe droughts have become more frequent across the whole country. India, as told earlier, is primarily an agricultural economy, and its agricultural sector relies on rainfall to a large extent. With most regions experience huge downfalls in the amount of rainfall, farmers as well as Governments are in a fix.
The Governments of the various States as well as the Union Government have taken extensive measures to combat this problem. Government of India has launched National Water Mission with the objective of conservation of water, minimizing wastage and ensuring more equitable distribution both across and within states through integrated water resources development and management. One of the objectives of the Mission is to increase the water use efficiency by 20%. Certain other schemes like Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme (AIBP), Command Area Development & Water Management (CADWM) and Repair Renovation, and Restoration (RRR) of water bodies are also being run. To arrest decline of ground water levels, Central Ground Water Board has implemented demonstrative projects on rain water harvesting and artificial recharge. Besides these measures, Central Ground Water Board has been taking steps for regulation of ground water development and for promoting rain water harvesting and artificial recharge. Necessary measures to check pollution of ground water resources due to man-made activities are undertaken by the Central/ State Pollution Control Boards.
So, a series of steps have been taken by the Government to arrest the problem of water scarcity. But the efficacy of these projects is still up for discussion. Although it wouldn’t be right to dismiss all their efforts as unsuccessful, we can go to the extent of saying that the Government has been able to deliver on all of its promises. And so, it is quite clear that the Government needs to revamp its policies and rethink on all aspects of Water and Climate Change is absolutely essential for India to make headway in addressing this issue.
