Editorial: Water Issues

Aamir Khan, the celebrity who has played the nation’s conscience-keeper for 12 weeks now with his show “Satyamev Jayate” airing on multiple channels, introduced the country to the water crisis developing in the country. One of the experts in the panel blamed the situation on the British rule of India and the administration it spawned. Unfortunately, the same administrative mindset prevails pushing the nation on the brink.
Some years ago, a specialist on water issues commented that when the British first landed on Indian soil, they couldn’t understand how a country that received barely 100 hours of rain on an average per year could sustain such vibrant civilisations. For someone coming from a country which literally “pisses” [her words] rain all year round, this was definitely a culture shock. Also, the British spread across India from South up and noticed the water reserves of Himalayan glaciers which feed most of India’s rivers much later. In the nearly three hundred years that the British spent in India [some as traders, more than a century as the kingdom-grabbing East India Company and 90 as the Crown], the British tried to set things “right”. Unwilling to accept that the ‘natives’ had a better model for water conservation and sharing, the British administrators dismantled the traditional arrangements and started administering water supply [tourists, for example, would know of the many water tanks, called “kunds”, which remain dry now and receive tourists across the dry belt of India]. The state-people collaboration which managed water in India was dismantled and the State took control of supply. The first casualty was the sense of ownership among the people on their water sources and then was lost the traditional knowledge base on water harvesting and conservation. Climate change and environmental degradation have contributed, but it has essentially been the cultural distancing of people from water sources which has created the water crisis. Images of rural folk walking hours to collect potable water brings to question the intelligence of the people in settling so far away from such a necessity as water. It is obvious that the people were not foolish, it is only that in the last century or so, the water has dried away from them. A water source they nurtured through generations, took less than a century of state control to trickle away from them. What is worrying is that the traditional knowledge base and traditional practices continue to recede further away from public memory.
Take Sikkim’s example. Isn’t it ironic that this land of plenty should have drought prone regions? Well, maybe having drought prone regions is not ironic, but what is ironic is that such regions are also among the more heavily populated. It is obvious that when people settled there, water not as scarce as it has now become. The moment RMDD or PHE pipe water to homes, the need to conserve the local source is no longer directly felt because the responsibility has shifted. Add to this the control Forest Department insists over forests and the traditional practices of forestry, which always ensure balance and conservation [not only of the forest, but also the catchment area of water sources], is lost as well. Before one realises, even Sikkimese, blessed with getting to live so close to nature end up believing in the myth of perennial water sources. There might not be water riots in Sikkim yet, although the rush at tanker supplies when the taps run dry can get quite aggressive, but if the connection between people and water is not returned to its traditional intimacy soon, the crisis will arrive here as well. The Dhara Vikas programme is a positive move towards this end, but for it to succeed, the bureaucracy will have to limit its role to facilitator and allow whatever can be salvaged from the traditional knowledge base to play the initiator.