Water literacy and people’s participation in groundwater management
Date :22-Mar-2020
By Dr Prabhat K Jain :
Groundwater is the backbone of India’s agriculture and drinking water security. It is a common-pool resource used by millions of farmers across the country and remains the only drinking water source in most of India’s rural households. It also supports industrial water demand in many cases. The scarcity of water resources and ever-increasing demands placed on the resource underline the importance of identifying, quantifying, and management of groundwater to offset the problems of over-extraction and contamination and to obviate the consequent economic loss or environmental damage while balancing the demand for various uses.
The understanding of water resources is important for its sustainable and equitable management. The precipitation in the country is estimated at 4,000 BCM by taking the annual normal rainfall of 1,197 mm, which transforms into various surface, sub-surface, and groundwater sources. The surface water annual flow in the country is estimated at 1,869.35 BCM and annual replenishable groundwater is 433 BCM. As per the assessment of the groundwater resources and categorisation of assessment units in the country (as on March 31, 2017), out of the total of 6,881 groundwater assessment units, 1,186 units have been categorised as ‘Over-exploited’, 313 as ‘Critical’, and 972 as ‘Semi-Critical’.
The report of the Expert Group on Groundwater Management and Governance of the Planning Commission (2007), states that even in 2004, 28 per cent of India’s blocks were showing high levels of groundwater use. The assessment carried out by Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) in co-ordination with the States as on March, 2017 indicated more than 30 per cent of the assessment units were under ‘Over-exploited’, ‘Critical’, and Semi-Critical’ category. In addition to quantity related issues like inequitable distribution of groundwater resources and overuse/ underuse of the available potential in sustainable way, many parts of the country have reported water quality problems, causing drinking water shortage.
There has been a paradigm shift from ‘groundwater development’ to ‘groundwater management’. Therefore, an accurate and comprehensive micro-level picture of groundwater in India through aquifer maps for different hydro-geological settings is needed. This will enable us in preparation of robust groundwater management plans at the appropriate scale and will also help in achieving drinking water security, improved irrigation facility, and sustainability in water resources development in large parts of rural India, and many parts of urban India as well.
The effective result of implementation of Ground Water Management Plans cannot be achieved without people’s participation as it is common-pool resource. People’s participation will require a co-ordinated effort involving Government departments, research institutes, Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs), civil society organisations and stakeholders at village-level who will guide collective sharing and use of groundwater based on a careful understanding of storage and yield capacity of different aquifers that exist in their village/areas. Thus, groundwater management is possible only through collaborative approach amongst above-mentioned entities and the local community by forming regional/local Water Users’ Associations (WUA).
The stakeholders include farmers, landless farm workers with appropriate SC/ST and women’s representatives. Social audit should be in-built within the participatory groundwater management. For separating implementation and monitoring processes, members not involved in implementation process may conduct these audits. Gram Sabha can be the final arbiter in case of disputes and for establishing some basic regulatory norms under PRI system. A national-level independent authority/ agency/ consortium has to be identified for evaluating the project. Serious endeavour should be made towards building capacity, skills and imparting knowledge to groundwater users. Further, identification of suitable youth, women, etc., should be made so that they can be provided with advanced skills to act as facilitators, trainers and data managers.
Water literacy and capacity building are pre-requisites to participatory groundwater management by providing training on various aspects/issues/factors controlling availability of water and groundwater in various physio-climatic and hydro-geological conditions, collection of data, compilation and interpretation, skill and knowledge to make informed decisions to manage water/ groundwater resources. Capacity building will be required for the personnel from Central and State organisations, PRIs, NGOs, block-level volunteers/ persons identified for this purpose and end-user, etc. Mass awareness drive is also needed to make stakeholder/end-user aware of various aspects of water conservation, augmentation, water budgeting, and resource management beside the adoption of water use efficiency measures. All aspects of water literacy drive will not only educate the common masses on efficient management of yearly available water resources but also help in protection of environment.
WUA includes farmers and other owners who pull together their financial, material and technical resources to improve agricultural productivity of farming through equitable distribution of water and efficient use of irrigation ensuring optimum utilisation. WUA will be responsible for scientific and systematic development of irrigation infrastructure, augmentation of groundwater resource, maintenance of water conservation and artificial recharge structures and also promotion of water use efficiency measures for sustainable water supply. WUA will also hold the responsibility of collection of data on rainfall and water level for yearly groundwater budgeting depending upon occurrence of rainfall to recommend suitable cropping based on water allocation.
Besides, WUA should also resolve local conflicts with common consensuses or within the legal provisions provided by the Government. Collective efforts of the Government along with people’s participation will certainly help in achieving drinking water security, improved irrigation facility and sustainability in water resources that will ultimately result in socio-economic development of the area. (The author is Joint Secretary, Indian Water Works Association, Nagpur.)