'Water on earth is limited unless we bring it from moon'

Ramaswamy R. Iyer has served as Secretary of Water Resources for the Government of India. As Secretary, he played a major role in shifting the Ministry's attention from big projects to resource-policy issues. He was the initiator and principal draftsman of India's first National Water Policy in 1987.

He was also a member of two high-level committees designated to review the environmental and displacement/ rehabilitation aspects of the Sardar Sarovar Project (1993-95) and the Tehri Hydro-Electric Project (1996-97).

He also served as a consultant to the World Commission on Dams (WCD) from 1998-2000, and joined the team commissioned to write a country study on India's experience with large dams.

He is Honorary Research Professor at India's Centre for Policy Research. As a water expert, Ramaswamy R. Iyer has also published a variety of articles in newspapers and journals. He published his first book WATER: Perspectives, Issues, Concerns in 2003 and later WATER: Limits, Justice, Harmony. He has recently edited a book Water and the Laws in India, published by Sage Publications.

Here are the excerpts of the interview:

OneWorld South Asia: I learn from your book Water and the Laws in India that the state owns water resources of the country under the principle of “eminent domain”. Do you think the state – in controlling, regulating, owning and managing them – has fulfilled the criteria of “public interest” in true sense of the term?

Ramaswamy R. Iyer: ‘Eminent domain’ does not necessarily mean that the state owns water resources of the country. In fact, it’s legally a very complicated question. Some states claim ownership over water resources. But that is not generally accepted.

What is accepted is that the state controls and it can legislate on water. Here I must clarify that control is not the same thing as ownership.

'Eminent domain’ is more common a term in the US than here in India. It only means sovereign power. That is to say that whatever rights you may have; or the state might have given you; or you may exercise; is subject to that sovereign power.

For instance, state takes over private property, under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894. What is called ‘eminent domain’ in America is called ‘compulsory purchase’ in England. The state can take over private property on the payment of compensation in what is called the ‘public interest’ to build a school, or a hospital, or a dispensary.

Acquiring private land for industries is no public interest like in the famous acquisition of land case in Singur, West Bengal for Tata’s Nano car project.

The view has emerged that ‘public interest’ should be more narrowly defined and that the Land Acquisition Act should be overhauled. Acquiring land for private industrial houses by the state using this Act should be minimised. There is now an amendment bill, which in a sense proposes to limit it.

The proposed amendment says that if a company wants to put up a factory, it can purchase 70% of such land; the remaining 30% can be acquired by the state.

As of now ‘public interest’ is very loosely defined. So it cannot be said that all acts of land acquisition by the government really fulfill the criteria. The widely accepted feeling is that the exercise of ‘eminent domain’ or ‘sovereign power’ is not a good thing and therefore should be reduced.

OWSA: Would you describe India as a water-efficient country, or do you think we waste too much of water? Who is misusing or overusing this vital life-supporting resource [industries, farmers, domestic users]?

RRI: Everybody. India is a grossly water-inefficient country. We misuse water in every possible way. In agriculture, our efficiency of water is very low.

And yields from agriculture are also very low. The productivity is going to remain low even after all the irrigation projects are completed because there is too much wastage of water.

The National Commission on Integrated Water Resource Planning reported in 1999 that the water efficiency in agriculture was at 35 to 40%. Agriculture is our largest user of water – 80% or more and the most inefficient as well.

Our industries are also very poor users of water. However, some of them are now trying to improve their efficiency. It can be further improved upon through innovations and use of new technologies. The problem of industrial pollution of water resources is also very widespread in this country.

There are companies in the world that practice the multiple use of the same water. You give them a certain quantity and they keep using it and reusing it. This way at least 90% of the water gets reused. We are very far away from that for now.

As far as domestic water is concerned, all our water supply systems are wasteful and inefficient. Today in Delhi, the Delhi Jal Board claims to supply 200 litres of water per capita per day. Which is higher than in Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. It is even higher than many European countries and is also very badly distributed.

There are areas that get less than 30 or 40 litres per capita per day, whereas some elite areas get to use more than 400-500 litres. Therefore, we must improve our water efficiency in agriculture, in industry, and in domestic use.

OWSA: How serious do you think is the crisis of water in India? What should be done?

RRI: Well, we partly covered that. On the ground we know that population is increasing. Water remains the same; it doesn’t change. The water that is on the earth today is the same water that was there 10,000 or 20,000 years ago. Therefore finite supply and increasing population put a pressure on the resource. Result: you get less and less water, as you grow.

Added to that, there is rapid urbanisation. Urban centres need more water than rural areas. So we put an enormous pressure on the available water. And that is the crisis. The crisis is not that availability has sharply reduced; it is that the pressure that we are putting on it has sharply increased. And this can be reduced.

We can produce more soap or cement or textile or fertiliser on the basis of our demand in, say, 2050. But you can’t do that with water. You can’t produce more water. And therefore we ought not make projections for water requirement in 2050. Instead you should start with saying that there is so much water available and you have to manage with it. Unless you find water on the moon and bring it here.

I am not talking about restraining the basic life support requirement of water. Nobody can do that. If I need five litres of water a day for drinking I need it. I can’t reduce it.

Look at all these building that are coming up. Where will the water come from? Did they ever think of the water source for these building complexes?

So the crisis is partly created by us. It’s partly a question of population but also of how we use water.

OWSA: Overexploitation of groundwater has led to water tables going down drastically. Would you say in this case the regulating laws are being implemented properly?

RRI: In a sense there are no regulating laws. There is a groundwater draft bill that has been prepared by the central government and sent across to the states. Some of the states have enacted it. However, no state has made it operational. There are some little regulations here and there on drinking water sources.

The law, as of today, is that the owner of the piece of land owns the water under it. And he/ she can draw whatever amount he/ she likes. There is no restriction. So it is extremely difficult to restrain groundwater use.

It was not so in, say, 1950s or 1960s. There was not so much use of groundwater. It started happening in the 1970s and it exploded in the 1980s.

The groundwater became a major input into agriculture. People don’t realise that. Whenever we think of agriculture, we think of dams and canals. That has drastically changed. Today, there is much more irrigation from groundwater than from canals. True it produced short-term dramatic results and the crop production went up.

But we are running the aquifer down in most parts of India, barring eastern parts of the country. In the western, northern and southern parts, the groundwater is fast depleting. In some parts of Gujarat, it has gone down drastically.

Groundwater can be used, provided we limit our use to the annual rate of recharge. It gets recharged by rain. Now if X quantity of groundwater recharge takes place, you can take out only that amount, but if you draw twice or thrice that quantity then it will be finished. This is the situation in major parts of India today.

In some areas of Gujarat, agriculturalists do not expect the next generation to practice agriculture. They are moving away to other occupations. Now that is not a very desirable development. We need to control groundwater but the difficulty is that there are 20 million tube wells in India.  Mostly small ones, mostly for private use.

If a farmer has a tube well for his own use, it is not a public system. He takes water from it and irrigates his land. How are you going to control it? That is why regulation has not been very effective.

In many cases companies buy land not because they need the land but the water under it. Now if ownership goes with land and if there is no legal way of restraining your use, it becomes very difficult.

So if you want to change the system of regulating groundwater, using the law is not necessarily very effective. You can pass a law you cannot implement it. So what exactly is to be done? Today, one of the reasons why groundwater is being recklessly used is that you get free electricity. If you increase electricity tariffs, people will become more careful.

The other possibility is to get the owners together and let them regulate their water use in their own interest. But this has not made any headway so far.

OWSA: Industries are also polluting both groundwater and surface water, what should be done to curb this?

RRI: Well, we have the Water [Prevention and Control of Pollution] Act, 1974. There are boards at the state and central levels. Obviously they have not been very effective.

The law is only as good as its enforcement. Unfortunately our systems are also defective. Each time an industry owner comes and applies for a clearance, it is given without proper scrutiny.

There is not enough assessment of the overall carrying capacity of the system. This is what happened in Maharashtra in the Danapur Bela area, where there is a stream called Patal Ganga. Today it is heavily polluted by industrial effluent. Reason: nobody bothered to think how much pollutants were going into the river.

Even if each industrial unit conforms to some standards, it is not going to solve the problem because together it adds up to a huge quantity.

Thus we must move towards a system in which there is no effluent. It’s possible. There are some companies, which are doing it not because they have very acute social conscience but because it makes sense for them. If they use the same water over and over again, it makes perfect economic sense.

OWSA: Which are the regions in India that are likely to suffer the most due to scarcity of water, owing to climate change?

RRI: Climate change is a very complicated subject. I am not its student. Broadly speaking what the experts say is that because of climate change rainfall will increase in some places and decrease in others. In other words, precipitation will increase in some areas; drought will increase in other areas. Increase in precipitation is not necessarily a good news because the rain then comes down heavily in a shorter period. This causes a tremendous problem of floods.

But beyond this, we do not know precisely what is going to happen when and where. Responses are being formulated. But at this juncture, I can’t give you an exact answer to that.

OWSA: Bundelkhand is one region, which is already facing serious water crisis; it also happens to be a place known for its traditional water conservation methods. What led to this situation?

RRI: This is not true only of Bundelkhand. It is true of other place as well. We have had a rich tradition of water harvesting and water management methods. Tanks in the south; johads in Rajasthan, etc. But many of them have fallen into decline and disuse. Because we abandoned those methods and went in for other methods.

When engineers came and started building dams, the interest in maintaining the tanks declined. Similarly, when the farmers got drilling technologies and bought tube wells and bore wells, they no longer bothered to maintain the tanks. So in a sense this is inevitable historic development, but it is still possible to revive some of them.

There is no sense in regretting something, which has already happened. But we need to think how much we can salvage the situation. There is a movement going on in the south to restore and revive the old tanks.

In and around Delhi itself, there are several hundred water bodies. Hauz Khas was a water body. It’s gone now. They are trying to revive it.

OWSA: Given the fact that climate change is going to have a bearing on water, how do you see the water scenario 20 years from now?

RRI: That is an impossible question. Because the scientists themselves don’t know exactly what is happening. There is a big controversy going on. Everybody agrees that climate change is taking place. That is no longer in doubt.

You know one prediction is that as the glaciers melt there will be increased flows in the rivers for some time. Floods may increase. And if floods increase during a short period of the year, there is nothing much you can do with that water. It will only cause damage.

But after some time when all the ice has melted and the rivers run dry, we just don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. For instance, there is a prediction that as the sea levels rise, some of the coastal area and so on will get submerged - Bangladesh, the Maldives.

But beyond that what will happen? Will all the Bangladeshis come into India? We don’t know.

We are not really adequately prepared for it, partly because we need to do more work on this. It may affect different areas differentially. The mere fact that more water will come down in some areas is not necessarily a good news.

We may not be able to use it and it will cause more problems. It may also mean that some other areas are going to be dry. I think studies are going on. People are formulating ideas. Every day now there are half a dozen conferences and workshops on climate change. So I hope that some clear answers will come.

With editorial inputs from Rajender Singh Negi.