“Effective water management” let it be a Groundwater or Surface water resources is a much more a complex challenge in a democratic country like India. Here there are many a competing interests at the political, administrative, and also at basin levels with competing users for agriculture, Industries and Drinking water supplies. The water based and water oriented industries are thriving on a larger scale in many a states of India. Likewise, water intensive crops are cultivated in water starved regions of many a states in India, as it has been practiced from historical past. The futuristic predication says a huge gap between water supply and demand will exist up to more than 25% by year 2030. This will be most acute in water scare states; unless a better water management practices are adhered too.
The upcoming process on water and food security is a vicious cycle, where in the food Security will be a question mark at the expense of many multinational water based companies exploiting the precious commodity. Hence, it may pose a 'wicked challenge' in the years to come.
The existing line Department in many a states of India is a complex mix of expertise in hydrology, Hydrogeology, engineering, constitutional, legal, political, social, inter-sector, institutional, and agriculture etc and each department work out as a separate entity with vested interests. There is no uniformity and common consensus approach as far as the safe up keep of the water resources are concerned.
In India, ownership and user rights, as well as responsibility for the management of water are largely a vested interest in the hands of the state governments and Union Territories. The role of the central government is limited to Trans-boundary issues between states or across national boundaries. Thus, basin wide water conflicts between states are more prevalent and the conflict continuous for years without any solution for the problem quoted.
The prime factors which may pose a setback towards water and food security in India are:
Vested Interest of Government.
- Increasing political Influence.
- Weak Institutional capacity.
- Non- coherence of strategies and approaches among various line department concerned.
- Decision making processes are very slow and ambiguous.
- Community are not taken in the decision making process.
- No concerned Department is willing to take up the responsibility, accountability, prompt implementation of projects and positive outcomes.
- The process of sustainable agriculture and water management is carried out without proper interface of Agriculture, CGWB, or other concerned department.
- The Draft National Water Policy has been published in June 2012 and the government has also announced its 12 five-year plan to redress past weaknesses. The draft water policy is contributing to active debate on the appropriate balance between centralized and decentralized approaches to water management and governance in India and the debate process still goes on without any outcome. The extent to which India will be able to provide decisive and common consensus direction between state and Central Government, developing nested multi-level solutions, and implementation of the same with a common goal/objective in an effective, efficient, rapid, and sustainable way through democratic process is a big question mark and carries a lot of turbidity in it.
The effective and efficient water and food security can be ensured provided:
Good Interdepartmental interaction and derivation of common consensus and well defined plan of action with all political support at micro to macro level.
- Community members are to be considered as one of the stakeholders and their ideas and thoughts are also to be valued.
- Better, more reliable and transparent information on the changing nature of hydrological condition needs to be available on a common platform without any restriction so that, the decision makers and implementation agencies can have a sound back up support for more deriving a sustainable plan for water utilization.
- Awareness raising, information, and advocacy campaigns among people and decision makers at all levels to develop consensus on the seriousness of the water challenge. This is an essential ingredient in developing effective solutions that are to be effectively and efficiently implemented.
- Also, various primary and secondary data related to soil, agriculture, groundwater and surface water status, socio-economic profile of various regions, Environment set up, identified issues and problems of the regions, contact officials etc can be published in a public domain and the data are to be constantly updated for any implementing agency or decision makers to promptly rely up on beyond doubt.
MURALI KOCHUKRISHNAN.
SR. MANAGER, PROJECTS( HYDROGEOLOGY)
IL&FS ENVIRONMENT, MUMBAI.
Murali Kochukrishnan