Every drop counts

There were fears until June this year that unless there was a miraculous heavy unseasonal rain north India would face a summer of acute discontent. The water situation was reportedly bad even in north Pakistan and was likely to worsen through the wait for the monsoon’s break in late June.
On April 16 while returning from a trip to the mountains I was appalled to see that the level of water in the Ganges at Garhmukteshwar was the lowest I had seen in 20 years. Worshippers were able to stand chest deep in the depleted channels.
With the virtual failure of winter rains, the situation in other northern rivers like the Yamuna and Sutlej had also been just as bad. That was the situation in mid-April. Now the monsoons have broken. Even as I write this Delhi has been drenched. The Punjab has been receiving torrential rains. The pass of dense, humid, hot air has given away to the famed ‘puruvaiya’ or the easterly wind.
Year after year nobody is taking the rapidly deteriorating water situation seriously enough. John Houghton gave a thought-provoking presentation on global warming at a seminar in Delhi early this year.
He reported that sea level temperatures had increased by 3.7 degrees Celsius during the past 20 years. This rate of change was equivalent to half an ice age in less than a 100 years, he added grimly.
There are, unfortunately, no signs that the world is seriously doing anything to reduce global warming. Higher temperatures will cause higher evaporation from the seas and water bodies, so there will be more rains, floods and cyclones in the high rainfall areas.
Paradoxically this increased heat will simultaneously cause more severe droughts in drier areas. The weather last year had been totally unpredictable all over the world.
Houghton ominously predicted that when these temperatures reach mid-ocean levels, the thermal expansion and melting icecaps could cause oceans to rise about seven metres.
So the fate of Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangladesh, Maldives and the rest of the islands and low-lying areas of the world can be well imagined. As the situation worsens people will scream at their governments to do something, but if none of the states have water to share they will only scurry around looking for scapegoats.
However, there is one important thing that they can do, and must do, now. They need to crack down, on a war footing, on every household to make them much less wasteful of the water that they so carelessly consume.
Apart from water leaking from broken pipes, there need to be curbs on using water from open taps. People are used to running water and just do not realise just how wasteful they are. The example of our small guest house in the hills is, I think, worth mention.
We found that a five-minute shave under an open tap needed about 15 litres of water and that a 10-minute shower took about 40. So last summer we closed all the taps in our four bathrooms though we provided our guests with as much water as they needed but in buckets to be used with mugs.
We already had two-stage flush tanks but we asked our guests to try to use them sparingly. The results were astonishing. Our 1,000-litre overhead tank, that earlier needed to be filled every day from our rain water harvest tank, now lasted four to five days.
Open taps or running hoses to water the gardens or to clean cars are very wasteful. It is an effort to use buckets or watering cans, but considerable water can be saved that way. Cars need not be washed every day and can be washed with just one bucket of water.
Every citizen needs to be motivated to change old habits and people should immediately report broken or leaking pipes or taps. Children in every home can be powerful influencers.
Before schools close for summer, children could be encouraged to do a mini crusade as they had earlier so successfully done to curb firecrackers. In rural areas, free or cheap electricity enables farmers to draw excessive water that results in a lowering of water tables, soil salinity and over-production of grains.
In July, the normally dry Punjab plains will suddenly become one of India’s largest freshwater lakes with 2.6 million hectares of paddy fields covered by 22 cm of water.
Only 30 per cent of this water will come from monsoon rains; about 23 per cent will come from rivers and canals and the rest from tubewells pumping up water from the rapidly depleting underground aquifers.
This situation in many states is not sustainable. This is a matter that concerns everyone. Government will not achieve much by laws, rules, seminars, inquiries or inspections. Instead of words it needs to act.
It must immediately introduce an awareness campaign to make every citizen in urban and rural areas actively participate in campaigns to reduce wasteful water consumption.
- By Murad Ali Baig
The writer is a columnist,
THE TIMES OF INDIA