WATER

India may be the only country that could actually be benefiting from the greenhouse effect. As seawater warms up, there is more moisture in the atmosphere and, thanks to the Himalayas, this moisture is trapped during the summer monsoon, especially at the Indo-Burma-Tibet corner.

Although the unpredictable intensity of precipitation can be damaging, overall India’s rainfall pattern is now more secure than ever before.

Aside from intense local flooding and droughts, that the climate is changing can be authenticated by observing the migration of flora and fauna from the hot and humid east eg. Calcutta to the hot and arid northwest eg. Delhi.

India as a whole is greener than before. Due to climate change and a successful ‘green revolution’ originating in the 1970s, and thanks to the free electricity used by farmers, even during summer very few places are barren or dry.

In theory, during an average monsoon, the whole of India is hit by 2m of water. This occurs mostly during the four-month rainy season and the water then drains away to the sea.

Yet all of the above is a false security. Unless something is done quickly, water could be one the problems of the century.

Water has to be properly managed and right now is scarce for cities and industry. Thinking of rural areas, while it is abundant in some states, it is not in others. No longer dependent on local rivers, city water is now supplemented by deep tube wells and is not properly treated or filtered. Pipes and domestic appliances thus clog up in no time.

Our interests are in the industrial use of water, and as industry expands, water becomes an ever-more critical issue. The reason is that most industry is dependent on monsoon rivers emanating from the western Ghats or the hills of the central provinces. Snow-fed rivers such as the Jamuna or Ganges are already overexploited by cities.

These waters are exploited by numerous dams, but the evaporation and silting rates of these reservoirs are very high.

The solution may be to recharge the aquifers, the layers of porous water-retaining rock, but concepts such as water harvesting with rings of gabions, or silt traps with dams of gabions are not yet well known in Indian engineering. Many Indian engineers are not even sure what a gabion is.