INCREASING DEMAND FOR WATER TO ESCALATE CONFLICTS
: AJIT SINGH
Increasing competition for water
in agriculture, industry, domestic and environment uses is already
manifest in inter and intra-sector basin, state, district and
village level conflicts. These will escalate further as the country’s
annual per capita water availability goes below water scarce threshold
of 1700 cubic meter in the next two decades, said the Union Agriculture
Minister, Shri Ajit Singh while inaugurating the meet on "Forward
Thinking Policies for Ground Water Management" here today.
The Minister said that in six of the country’s twenty major river
basins, water resources are under stress and depleting. By the
year 2025, five more basins will become water scarce and by 2050,
only three basins will remain water sufficient. Shri Ajit Singh
Said that supply of irrigation will have to keep pace with the
targeted annual agricultural growth rate of over 4% in the 10th
five-year plan. To achieve this growth rate, the irrigation sector
should grow by at least 5% annually, he added.
Speaking about relationship between
groundwater management and energy use policies, Shri Ajit Singh
said that the supply of power to agriculture which is vital for
successful irrigation, is in grave condition adding that supply
is neither reliably available nor is of the steady quality required
to avoid damage to irrigation pumps.
The Minister said that the ease,
flexibility and comparative reliability of the ground water resources
have resulted in its over-exploitation. He said that as a large
part of supply to agriculture is un-metered, Electricity Boards
can under-report the system’s actual distribution losses. As a
result of over-estimating agricultural consumption and using flat
rates, actual unit tariffs to agriculture are higher than nominal
tariffs and non-technical distribution losses are higher than
reported. The minister said that it is estimated that agricultural
consumption of power now constitutes 30% of total consumption
in the country, however, in reality the agricultural consumption
may be much lower. As a result, Shri Singh said the subsidies
that are expected to benefit poor farmers, in fact benefit the
other sectors of the society and pilferers of power, many of them
not farmers. Sharp fluctuation in voltage frequently burn-out
the meters of the pumps resulting in loss of production. To prevent
such troubles, many farmers over-invest in horse powers. The Minster
said that unreliable power supply and flat rate that most farmers
are charged, encourage them to pump more water than conserve it,
whenever they can and in whatever volume possible, resulting in
over extraction and declining water table. He said that there
is an immediate need to make suitable reforms in the power supply
for agriculture adding that a possible entry point could be the
implementation of an integrated approach to supply and end-use
efficiency. The Minister said that there is a requirement for
significant improvement in the quality of power supply to agriculture
through rehabilitation of electricity generation and distribution
network, effective deduction in non-technical losses, use of more
efficient pump sets for conservation of energy as well as water
resources.
The four-day meet has jointly been
organized by the Indian council of Agricultural Research, International
Water Management Institute and the Colombo Plan Secretariat and
is being attended by Scientists, Technologists, Managers and Policy
Makers from 15 developing countries.
