A Panel Discussion was held on Lok Sabha TV at 1 PM and 4 PM on the 24th of January 2020 to discuss provisions for Water in Ms. Nirmala Sitaraman’s Budget Session in Lok Sabha due on 1st February. The Program was anchored by Parakram Singh Shekhawat. The panelists were Arun Tiwari, Manohar Khushalani and Himanshu Thakkar. They all went into their expectations from the budget with respect to Budget Provisions for Jal Shakti – Water. 

The anchor began the discussion with a small introduction of the Ministry of water resources (Jal Shakti Mantraley), Mr. Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, the troubled state of water quality and availability through the country, and its ever arising complications. Mr. Arun Tiwari elaborated on our lack of efforts in successfully harvesting rainwater and sustaining groundwater levels, highlighting the lack of regulations surrounding these harvesting methods. The importance of sustainability was highlighted as well unless groundwater is recharged, regulated and the focus needs to be shifted to Sustainability. 

The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Ministry of Water Resources and Ganga Rejuvenation have been merged into the Jal Shakti Ministry under the second term of the Modi government and the Jal Shakti Ministry was allocated Rs 28,261 Crore, an 8% increase. A 10 pointer vision for the next decade was listed out by the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. She elaborated that the Jal Shakti Ministry will manage the country’s water resources and water supply in an integrated holistic manner, and will work towards supplying all rural households with water supply by 2024. In the LSTV discussion, Manohar brought forward a set of important points such as the minimal increase in the budget allocated, the unsanitary sewage system, and lack of stormwater drains. He also insisted that along with budget allocation, our national lakes need to be taken care of efficiently and resurrected, and the need for the development of rural handicrafts and the need for a River Basin Authority, for the systematic distribution of water. 

The Atal Bhujal Yojna, is a scheme, also known as ‘Atal Jal’ will promote panchayat-led groundwater management and behavioral change with a primary focus on demand-side management. The scheme is aimed at

• doubling farmers’ incomes,
• promoting participatory groundwater management,
• improving water use efficiency on a mass scale,
• improving cropping pattern and
• promoting efficient and equitable use of groundwater resources and
• behavioral change at the community level.

Official estimates state that over INR 9 crores (90 million) toilets were constructed from 2014 when the Swacch Bharat Mission was launched under the Modi government as one of its flagship schemes. Yet, a government survey in 2017 showed that 6 out of 10 toilets built under the Swacch Bharat Mission did not have water supply, and were hence unusable.

The chemical fertilizer farming is allocated INR 80,000crores, while the green revolution farmers are allotted INR12,000crores but the Organic manure farming is allocated only INR 2 Crore, Manohar Khushalani pointed out, the obvious lack of financial support to organic farmers led to Cancer and other diseases in the cities of Punjab and Harayana, he insisted on the importance of WaterShed Management, an initiative taken by Anna Hazare previously. 

The discussion shed light upon various important aspects of Budget allocation for water conservation and also examined the various areas where more efforts are required for sustainability.

You can watch the informative debate here.

You will find more details on the next debate on LSTV on the topic of Atal Bhujal Yojna, Please find the entire debate here.

NDTV 24×7 conducted a live debate on 18th June 2019 from 8.30 to 9 pm. The Program was titled Reality Check. It was anchored by Vishnu Som. The panelists in the discussion were S Muralidharan, Prof. Manohar Khushalani and TKS Elangovan.

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NDTV has conducted a survey in chennai asking the general public about various problems that they are facing related to water. The residents then told the channel that they have to wait for hours in line to collect some water for every 2 days. Some of them even said that they don’t get enough water to bath. 

According to a london-based risk analytics firm, Chennai is facing “the most extreme risk” of water stress and that this situation could be the new normal for millions of people.  Chennai, he said, gets an average of 54 days of rain per year, yielding an average rainfall of about 140 centimeters (55 inches). Its failure to collect the rain that falls, especially during poor monsoons such as that of last autumn, leads to what he called a “man-made” crisis of scarcity. Less than four years ago, Chennai saw devastating floods that took at least 422 lives in Tamil Nadu and caused up to $14 billion in damages. But most of that rainwater flowed into the sea, lost forever to Chennai’s parched groundwater reserves. As the coastal city anticipates its upcoming autumn monsoon season, residents and experts have criticized authorities for failing to rehabilitate a notoriously mismanaged water supply.

Unless we capture the rain that falls in those monsoon days, we will run out of water

Manohar Khushalani stated that the big factors that have led to this crisis in Tamil Nadu are deforestation and mining, in other words construction of buildings for development is in the process.. These types of constructions have halted the recharge of lakes and reservoirs that  supply water to the households, and since the recharge has stopped, the major lakes and reservoirs have gone completely dry. Even the amount of rainfall has been declining and that amount was not enough to recharge the lakes.

Water tankers are being called into most of the areas of Tamil Nadu which are facing drought. However, government tankers can take up to a month to appear after requested, so some families, wealthy residents, and business owners have opted to pay for costly private water tankers. The poor who live in slums do not have this option; a family in Chennai’s slums may receive as little as 30 litres (7.9 US gallons) of water every day compared to an average American household which uses 1,150 litres (300 US gallons) of water a day.

S Muralidharan mentioned the fact that Tamil Nadu contains 6 percent of India’s population and it covers 4 percent of India’s land area but still the state only receives 2-2.5 percent of the water provided. This tells that Tamil Nadu has already become a dry state and is facing water crisis currently.

What steps have been taken to improve the situation?

The Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewage Board, which is responsible for the city’s water supply, has pushed for lakes to be desilted, allowing them to be used for water storage. The state government said in response it has begun to set up 270 water purification centers and has recently begun construction on Chennai’s third desalination plant, after which the government said the city will no longer have to rely on monsoon rains.

Under former Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa, who served in the role for over 14 years, Chennai made rainwater harvesting compulsory, requiring every building to install a water catchment system on its rooftop and pour the collected rainwater into the ground. However, when a survey was conducted regarding this, only 40 percent of the buildings were found to be complying with this law. The following three years brought heavy rains and, he said, dramatically raised the groundwater level, filling dry open wells for the first time in decades. Though the 40 percent compliance rate was a good start, it wasn’t good enough for the state to come out of the water crisis.

The city already has two desalination plants with capacity of 210 million litres a day that service the northern suburbs. A third 150 million litre plant costing nearly Rs 1300 crore would be ready next year. 2 new recycling plants are also being built which will have a capacity of 120 million litres a day. This will free up domestic drinking water supplies and reduce the reliance on the already stressed ground water resources.

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Manohar Khushalani was one of the panelists who appeared live on NDTV for a panel discussion on the water crisis faced in India. This video gives an insight into the problems faced by Indians when it comes to water as well as some expert opinions on this matter. Some of the other panelists are Raghav Chadha, VK Madhavan, Medha Patkar, Dr. Vaman Acharya, and Arunabha Ghosh.

India is facing a major water crisis. People are facing drought-like situations and running out of tap water in major cities like Bengaluru, Chennai and even in the capital, Delhi.

Raghav Chadha started the discussion by giving facts such as, the water availability has increased in Delhi in the last 4 years from 50 percent of the population receiving usable water to 80 percent. He also said the government is planning to rejuvenate lakes and also create new lakes as resources for freshwater. He also mentioned that the condition of south delhi districts, which earlier faced the problem of clean water and also improper sewage treatment, has now been fixed and will be provided with usable fresh water in the upcoming months.

Prof. Manohar Khushalani mentioned the fact that India as a country consumes more groundwater than any other country. He also stated that water should now be treated as a subject for the central government instead of being treated as a state subject. The states do not have enough coordination and are busy in handling the inter-state water disputes while the residents are still suffering. He also mentioned the fact that there needs to be more research put into methods for getting water from rivers and other sources.

VK Madhavan then gave some key perspectives such as, that the water crisis is caused not only due to excessive use of water but also improper distribution and conservation of water. He argued that the source of tankers that provide water to communities is uncertain, and there are still major areas that don’t have assured access. At a later stage of the discussion he also mentioned that cities are largely dependent on groundwater but do nothing when it comes to implementation methods like drip irrigation to conserve water. India receives a huge amount of rainfall which doesn’t necessarily seep into the ground and thus should be stored and filtered in an efficient manner.

Medha Patkar emphasised on the fact that the current structures and working of dams and related buildings are destroying the rivers. She also highlighted that the government should be focusing more on mini and micro water shedding instead of macro water shedding. She also said that the government’s main strategy should revolve around controlling the access to water on a per house basis and that for major changes the community itself should play a big role.

While water scarcity in India as an issue has not been discussed as topmost important matter, it is high time the people should focus on this subject, or else it’ll be too late to realise and it will affect India and its people way more than it is doing today.

Chennai, the fourth largest city in India, is the worst hit city when it comes to water crisis. Chennai city officials declared that the day when almost no water is left, had been reached, as all the four main reservoirs supplying water to the city had run dry. Two years of deficient monsoon rainfall, with a rainfall deficit of 55 percent, particularly in late 2017 and throughout much of 2018 had led to this crisis. This has impacted millions of people who are left with inconsistent access to water. This is said to be the case of current developed states like Karnataka and Maharashtra in the future. Karnataka has very small amounts of resources left and soon will be piling their hopes on Maharashtra to receive water. On the other hand, Maharashtra because of its size and location, is under immense pressure to provide not only to its residents but also neighbouring states. The rainfall in these 2 states has also started declining in the past few years which only has caused more problems.

Some of the other valuable points that are mentioned by the panellists are; controlling the use of water in the agriculture industry. Sugarcane, which is a crop that depends on water heavily, is grown in parts of the country that have a scarcity of supply. This reduces the availability of water for the people for their personal use; recycling and recharging should be the topmost priority of any water management organisation, i.e. filtering out the water received by rain and distributing that water to the households that don’t have access to groundwater; the yearly monsoon pattern shows that the rain is declining in most parts of India and this also should be a major concern; even though the government is planning on making new residential buildings for development, they are not checked about proper water consumption levels and are sometimes specified with uncertain sources of water so as to receive license to build those structures.

Professor Manohar Khushalani was invited on a panel discussion on ABP News with the anchor Romana Israr Khan on the segment ‘Samvidhan Ki Shapat’, on Monday, the 18th of November at 5 PM. 

The panel began with an introduction about the political twist in the heated pre-election environment on the report on the quality of water in Delhi released by Ram Vilas Paswan, the Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public distribution. The claims of terrible water quality were refuted and questioned by Arvind Kejriwal, of the Aam Aadmi Party. 

(Professor Manohar Khushalani with Mr. Harish Khurana, Mr. Haroon Yusuf, Mr. Raghav Chaddha and the anchor Romana Israr Khan)

Along with Professor Manohar Khushalani, the ex-director of National Water Academy, Mr. Harish Khurana, the spokesperson for BJP, Mr. Raghav Chaddha, the spokesperson for AAP and Mr. Haroon Yusuf, the spokesperson for INC were present in the panel debate.

The debate opened with Mr. Chaddha claiming that Mr. Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, the Minister of Jal Shakti had previously reported in September that the quality of Delhi’s water fared even better than the water quality in Europe and that Mr. Manoj Tiwari had agreed to the claims. AAP refuted the claims saying the samples were selectively chosen and misconstrued to present a defeating image, citing political reasons.  It is important to remember that the World Health Organization states that 80% of India’s groundwater is contaminated by various organic and inorganic pollutants and that India is ranked 20th out of 122 countries in WaterAid’s water quality index.  Mr. Khurana refuted the previous report by Minister of Jal saying his statements are being distorted to suit a narrative and the state of India’s water quality is grim and unfortunate. This discussion revolving Delhi’s water quality is of immense importance as approximately 2439 people have lost their lives in 2018 alone to various water-borne diseases such as Chlorella, Typhoid, Hepatitis amongst others. Mr. Manohar elaborated on the technicalities behind report finding and lauded the authenticity of the Bureau of Indian Standards but went on to state how 11 reports alone weren’t enough to gauge the quality of water, especially citing the lack of information surrounding the report.  A very significant point was bought to notice by Mr. Manohar who reminded us of the importance Air and Water quality holds to the residents of every area, how previously our surface water was clean and the storm-water drains created during the British era were perfectly functional. But with the advent of covered up drains and Unauthorized colonies, Chemical farming, usage of fertilizers has led to a decrease in the quality of water and improper sewage system has caused our water to pollute. 

The extremely heated and informative discussion ended with anchor divulging into the importance of Air and Water quality to the standard of living of the citizens of the country, and how it is important that the politicians look beyond the politics and genuinely improve the quality for the people. You can watch the entire discussion and find more information here- Panel Discussion on water

This OneVorld video talks about National Water Mission which is affiliated under the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC).

National water mission was launched in 2009 in India which aimed at developing a framework to increase water use efficiency by 20%. The overall objective is ”conservation of water, minimizing wastage and ensuring its more equitable distribution both across and within States through integrated water resources development and management”. The mission aims at the recycling of wastewater using modern techniques.

This project will be organized through Inter-Sectoral Groups in India including related Ministries, Ministry of Finance, The Planning Commission, Experts from industry, Academia, and Civil society.

The development of the overall framework includes recycling of wastewater, low-temperature desalination technologies, basin-level management strategies, new regulatory structures, expanding irrigation, recharging of underground water sources, drip, ridge and furrow irrigation.

Based on the famous story from the Indian epic, Mahabharata, wherein Arjuna, with his arrow, draws a water fountain from the ground to quench the thirst of his Guru, Bhisham Pitamah, ITV launches its Water Conservation campaign, with a creative cartoon

Ahead of the World Environment Day, experts say that traditional knowledge methods seems to be the only way to counter the approaching national water emergency
Large number of water bodies built by women include step-wells, tanks and even ponds such as the world heritage site of Queens Step-well (Rani Ki Vav) in Patan, Gujarat, and the Rani and Padam Sagar in Jodhpur. There is the mention in a Kaifiyat (an early colonial document on land holdings) of a Devadasi building a tank in Yagati, and Nagamandala in Karnataka adds Navina Jafa in Hindu

Read on….

https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/art/drops-of-wisdom/article27298044.ece

CHENNAI: While homeowners and residents associations across the city are busy squabbling and haggling with water suppliers, ever since an acute shortage in supply began this summer, those living in an apartment complex in Kazhipattur have been able to keep away from this these troubles.

The 160 families residing at Akshaya Adora have not bought water in the last two years. Instead, they put together a robust water harvesting and recycling system that takes care of all their needs. Water drawn from borewells and an open well at their premises is recycled, eliminating the question of shortage.

Close to 1.5 lakh litres of water used by the residents on daily basis gets treated and harvested.

Read more….

http://www.newindianexpress.com/good-news/2019/jul/20/how-one-apartment-in-chennai-beat-water-crisis-2006540.html