Date | Jan 22, 2017:
After iron ore mining and sand extraction, now it is ‘water mining’ that is delivering a heavy blow to the earth and it will lead to water wars between States, experts have said.
The session on National Water Policy on the second day of the Sahitya Sambhrama on Karnatak University campus here on Saturday saw water and legal experts analysing the impending threats due to water mining, which they said, had pushed the water table further down.
The session saw experts such as Rajendra Poddar, V.P. Huggi and C.S Patil emphasising the need for bringing in a law to protect ground water.
“Commercialisation and corporatisation have resulted in a three-fold increase in the demand for water for daily use and for agriculture in the last two decades. As per the World Health Organisation, each person should get 1,700 cubic mm water per capita/per year. In India, each person got 5,000 cubic mm a year during the pre-Independence period and after Independence, it came down to 3,000 cubic mm. It had further gone down to 2,000 cubic mm per year in the last 16 years and it is likely to go down to 1,500 cubic mm per year in the next decade,” Prof. Poddar said.
He said that packaged drinking water industry was doing business worth Rs. 60,000 crore in the country. Borewells were being drilled on private land and water was being sold at exorbitant rates to the industries. While businessmen were minting money, the water table was getting depleted, he said highlighting the need for separating land and water rights and enforcing a Ground Water Regulation Act.
He also stressed the need for promulgating the National Water Act on utilisation of water by each State according to its share.
Mr. Huggi referred to the ongoing Mahadayi water sharing row and objected to the Karnataka government’s claim for only 20 tmcft of water instead of its actual share of 40 tmcft, which he said, was its actual share. On linking the Ganga with the Cauvery, Mr. Huggi said that linking of rivers was just a myth and was not implementable. However, he said that water could be transported to one basin to other to meet the deficiency.
Prof. Patil, acting Vice-Chancellor of Karnataka State Law University, said that despite tribunals being formed to address water sharing grievances, disputes could not be resolved through law as politics and livelihood were involved in it. He said, “As per law, water is a public trust and the tribunals have been adopting equity distribution policy and not equality distribution policy,” he said.
Summing up the discussion, moderator Lohit Naikar said that 89 per cent of people in India were landless and allowing land owners to use the water available on their land would be disastrous and lead to commercialisation.
(Source: http://www.thehindu.com/)