NY Times, September 30, 2006
Thirsty Giant
India Digs Deeper, but Wells Are Drying Up, and a Farming Crisis Looms
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
TEJA KA BAS, India Bhanwar Lal Yadav, once a
cultivator of cucumber and wheat, has all but
given up growing food. No more suffering through
drought and the scourge of antelope that would
destroy what little would survive on his fields.
Today he has reinvented himself as a vendor of
what counts here as the most precious of commodities: the water under his land.
Each year he bores ever deeper. His well now
reaches 130 feet down. Four times a day he starts
up his electric pumps. The water that gurgles up,
he sells to the local government 13,000 gallons
a day. What is left, he sells to thirsty
neighbors. He reaps handsomely, and he plans to
continue for as long as it lasts.
However long it runs, it runs, he said. We
know we will all be ultimately doomed.
Mr. Yadavs words could well prove prophetic for
his country. Efforts like his multiplied by
some 19 million wells nationwide have helped
India deplete its groundwater at an alarming pace over the last few decades.
The country is running through its groundwater so
fast that scarcity could threaten whole regions
like this one, drive people off the land and
ultimately stunt the countrys ability to farm and feed its people.
With the population soaring past one billion and
with a driving need to boost agricultural
production, Indians are tapping their groundwater
faster than nature can replenish it, so fast that
they are hitting deposits formed at the time of the dinosaurs.
What we will do? wondered Pavan Agarwal, an
assistant engineer with the state Public Health
and Engineering Department, as he walked across a
stretch of dusty fields near Mr. Yadavs water
farm. We have to deliver water.
He swept his arms across the field, dotted with
government wells. This one, dug 10 years ago, had
already gone dry. In that one, the water had sunk
down to 130 feet. If it were not for the fact
that electricity comes only five hours a day,
every farmer in the area, Mr. Agarwal ventured,
would be pumping round the clock.
Saving for a Dry Day
If groundwater can be thought of as a nations
savings account for dry, desperate drought years,
then India, which has more than its share of
them, is rapidly exhausting its reserve. That
situation is true in a growing number of states.
Indian surveyors have divided the country into
5,723 geographic blocks. More than 1,000 are
considered either overexploited, meaning more
water is drawn on average than is replenished by
rain, or critical, meaning they are dangerously close to it.
Twenty years ago, according to the Central
Groundwater Board, only 250 blocks fell into those categories.
We have come to the worst already, was the
verdict of A. Sekhar, who until recently was an
adviser on water to the Planning Commission of
India. At this rate, he projected, the number of
areas at risk is most likely to double in the next dozen years.
Across India, where most people still live off
the land, the chief source of irrigation is
groundwater, at least for those who can afford to pump it.
Here in Jaipur District, a normally parched area
west of New Delhi known for its regal palaces,
farmers depend on groundwater almost exclusively.
Across Rajasthan State, where Jaipur is situated,
up to 80 percent of the groundwater blocks are in danger of running out.
But even fertile, rain-drenched pockets of the country are not immune.
Consider, for instance, that in Punjab, Indias
northern breadbasket state, 79 percent of
groundwater blocks are classified as
overexploited or critical; in neighboring
Haryana, 59 percent; and in southern tropical Tamil Nadu, 46 percent.
The crisis has been exacerbated by good
intentions gone awry and poor planning by state
governments, which are responsible for regulating water.
Indian law has virtually no restrictions on who
can pump groundwater, how much and for what
purpose. Anyone, it seems, can and does
extract water as long as it is under his or her
patch of land. That could apply to homeowner, farmer or industry.
Electric pumps have accelerated the problem,
enabling farmers and others to squeeze out far
more groundwater than they had been able to draw by hand for hundreds of years.
The spread of free or vastly discounted
electricity has not helped, either. A favorite
boon of politicians courting the rural vote, the
low rates have encouraged farmers, especially
those with large landholdings, to pump out groundwater with abandon.
We forgot that water is a costly item, lamented
K. P. Singh, regional director of the Central
Groundwater Board, in his office in the city of
Jaipur. Our feeling about proper, judicious use of water vanished.
The Politics of Water
With the proliferation of electric pumps, he
added, it took only 20 years for Rajasthans
groundwater reserves to sink to their current
levels. Twenty more years of the same policy could be catastrophic.
The central government has been coaxing states to
require the harvesting of rainwater, for instance
by installing tanks or digging ponds, so the
water will seep into the earth and recharge the aquifers.
Other solutions are politically trickier. Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh has warned of the
consequences of free or cheap electricity and
urged state officials to crack down on pumping.
But state officials, attuned to potential backlash, have been slow to respond.
Tighter restrictions would in any case run up
against one of the governments top priorities,
one that India has long considered vital for its
independence: the goal of growing its own food.
The fear now, among those who study Indian
agriculture, is that without a careful review of
water policy and a switch to crops that use less
water, India stands to imperil its food production.
Here in the dust bowl of Rajasthan, desperate
water times have already called for desperate water measures.
On a parched, hot morning not far from Mr.
Yadavs home, a train pulled into the railway
station at a village called Peeplee Ka Bas. Here,
the wells have run dry and the water table fallen
so low that it is too salty even to irrigate the fields.
The train came bearing precious cargo: 15 tankers
loaded with nearly 120,000 gallons of clean, sweet drinking water.
The water regularly travels more than 150 miles,
taking nearly two days, by pipeline and then by
rail, so that the residents of a small
neighboring town can fill their buckets with
water for 15 minutes every 48 hours.
It is a logistically complicated, absurdly
expensive proposition. Bringing the water here
costs the state about a penny a gallon; the state
charges the consumer a monthly flat rate of 58
cents for about 5,300 gallons, absorbing the loss.
A Parched Village
The growing water shortage has transformed life
in Peeplee Ka Bas. Its men left long ago to seek
work elsewhere. The women remain to spend the
blistering summer mornings digging ponds in the
barren earth, hoping to catch monsoon rains.
Where farming once provided a livelihood, now
digging puts food on the table. For a days
labor, under this public works program intended
to help the poorest families, each woman is paid
the equivalent of 40 cents, along with 24 pounds of wheat.
It was not always this way. Once farming made
sense. Many of the women digging on a recent
morning remembered growing their own food peas,
tomatoes, chili peppers, watermelons and
selling it, too, at the nearest town market.
Year by year, the wells began to run dry. And
there were several years of little to no rain.
Meera, a mother of three who uses only one name,
who is lucky enough to come from a landowning
family, still watched her husband leave the
village to find work in a cement factory.
There were times, she acknowledged, when it
became difficult to feed the children. Now she
finds herself digging ponds for a bag of wheat.
And praying for rain. Our life is not life,
Meera said. Only when it rains, theres life.
A half-hours drive along a narrow country road,
just next door to Mr. Yadavs water farm, live a
pair of brothers, Nandalal and Jeevanlal Chowdhury.
They have so far resisted following Mr. Yadavs
lead in selling what water is left under their
land, mainly because it requires a hefty
investment to buy pumps. This year, the water in
their well dropped to 130 feet, twice as deep as 10 years ago.
Only millet grows here now, a crop that takes
relatively little water, and cattle fodder. Their
last vegetable harvest was five years ago.
They know they will not go on farming forever.
The water will not last. They will search for
other work, elsewhere. Jeevanlal Chowdhury was
vague on what prospects the land would hold for his children.
We are close to the finishing point, he said.
His daughter, a sixth grader, listened intently
to the conversation. The water is almost gone.
