Water v industry: where is the question?

Some hundred people, men and women, were gathered on the hill. Many more, I could see, were trudging up. Their faces were resolute. I asked why they were opposing the cement plant.

What monsoon means

There is one being-Indian-thing, which spans the urban-rural and the rich-poor divide: our annual watch and wait for the monsoon. It begins every year, without fail as heat climbs and the monsoon advances. The farmers wait desperately because they need the rain at the right time to sow their crops. The city managers wait because by the beginning of each monsoon period, the reservoirs that supply water to cities are precariously low.

Single drops of water make the mighty economy

The 2009 Southwest monsoon has finally arrived in many parts of the country--with a vengeance in several places--leading to flash floods and loss of lives. With images of rain and news of reservoirs getting filled up pouring down TV sets, our macro-economists are seemingly clueless about the damage the delayed and deficient monsoon will cause. Agriculture plays a marginal role in the nation's gdp numbers and so, even if the crops fail, it will not make a dent in the growth rate, they say. Then the stock market is going up, all growth fundamentals are sound.

Rain or no rain

Last fortnight a dominant image on TV screens was drought. This fortnight, vast parts of the country drowned in water. An uncertain, unpredictable and variable monsoon is still impacting us. Late rain has delayed or jeopardized sowing; or intense rain has thrown life asunder and flowed away rapidly, creating months of (future) scarcity. Regional variations are huge, too. So there is drought in otherwise moist northeast and in paddy-growing Punjab and Haryana. A different monsoon, perhaps signalling the climate-changing times ahead.

It's raining GDP

This is the fortnight of India's budget. Pink and white papers scurry around for comments on what the finance minister will do for India's economy, completely missing the bigger questions. What will happen if the Indian monsoon fails--or fails in the critical period when farmers sow the kharif crop? What will happen if reservoirs--holding water for drinking or electricity--do not get their supply from the sky? Will we have water to drink in cities? Will we have water and power to operate industries?

The laboratory of development

How will vast regions of India, where highly unreliable rainfall makes the difference between famine and sustenance, cope with climate change? Over 85 per cent of the cultivated area in this country is either directly dependent on rain or depends on rain to recharge its groundwater. Seasonal rain provides water for irrigation, drinking and household needs. It provides water to livestock and is necessary to grow fodder for animals. The question is how will these regions cope as rainfall becomes even more variable with climate change?

Bottled water costs us the earth

The botted water industry is global in nature. But it is designed to sell the same product to two completely different markets one water rich and the other water scarce. The question is whether this industry will have different outcomes in these two worlds. Or will we, for two opposite reasons, agree that their business costs us the earth and that it is not good for us?

When markets do work

Some innovations change lives. A favourite of mine is the village milk collection system, a cooperative model. There's a dairy in the village, people bring in milk, the dairy in-charge places a sample on an instrument, checks the fat content, prints a receipt that tells the seller the fat content and the price.

The politics of inefficient irrigation technology

Call it is one of the unknown Indian ironies. Over many years, the Indian state, through its public irrigation agencies, has systematically taken over the management of surface water systems. It has taken over the job of building irrigation systems--dams, reservoirs and canals--then maintaining these and supplying water. This has meant that over the years it has taken over water resources from the hands of village communities. The irony is that even as the state has vested this power in itself, people have taken water under their control.

Moving nimbly beyond

People who understand water management will tell you that India is a traditional water economy and that it has to make the transition to a modern water economy. In other words, the water sector has to become part of the formalised economy. As with any feel-right challenge, this is normally accepted to be true.