At a time when water levels in most of the country's reservoirs have plummeted below their 10-year average, the Union government still seems to be on the high it got from last year's monsoon-propelled 8 per cent-plus gdp growth. A normal monsoon has been predicted for this year, too; that it can be effectively harnessed hasn't sunk in yet.
For the week ending March 26, water levels in 51 of the 71 major reservoirs in the Indian river basins were less than their corresponding average storage for the past decade. In 36 of these 51 reservoirs, the amount had dipped even below last year's drought-induced levels. Indicating that just one more normal monsoon won't be enough to tide over the crisis, a Union government official said off the record: "We need more than one successive good monsoon to bring reservoirs to safe levels."
According to the India Meteorological Department (imd), there is a 95 per cent chance of a healthy monsoon this year. But the government appears to be too deeply involved in the hurly-burly of election --where it is hard-selling its river networking dream -- to exploit the likely normal monsoon for individual river basins. "There is some planning and economists are looking at the monsoon predictions to extrapolate economic growth," said an official at the Union ministry of water resources. "However, there is nothing concrete in the pipeline to look at regional imbalances in the monsoon and its consequences," he added.
The official was alluding to the expected shortfall in rains in Tamil Nadu, where water scarcity is already taking its toll. In one of the instances of economic impacts, the prestigious Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers Limited -- which produces 650 tonnes of paper daily from its plant in Karur district -- had to shut down operations due to the acute shortage of water.
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