Draft National Water Policy (NWP)

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• The new National Water Policy (NWP) calls for a multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder approach to water management.

Background

• In November 2019, the Ministry of Jal Shakti had set up a committee to draft the new National Water Policy (NWP). 
• This was the first time that the government asked a committee of independent experts to draft the policy. 
• Over a period of one year, the committee received 124 submissions from state and central governments, academics and practitioners. 
• The NWP is based on the striking consensus that emerged through these wide-ranging deliberations.

Image Courtesy: TOI 

Draft New National Water Policy (NWP)

•  It has been submitted to the Ministry of Jal Shakti. 
• Two Major Recommendations of the proposed NWP:
  • Shift focus from endlessly increasing the supply of water towards measures for demand management. 
    • This means diversifying our cropping pattern to include less water-intensive crops, in line with regional agroecology.
    • It also needs to lower the industrial water footprint, which is among the highest in the world by reducing freshwater use and shifting to recycled water. 
    • Cities must mandatorily shift all non-potable uses, such as flushing, fire protection, vehicle washing, landscaping, horticulture etc to treated wastewater.
  • Shift in focus within the supply-side also because the country is running out of sites for further construction of large dams, while water tables and groundwater quality are falling in many areas. 
    • There are trillions of litres of water stored in big dams, which are not reaching the farmers for whom they are meant. 
    • The policy outlines how this can be done by deploying pressurized closed conveyance pipelines, combined with Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems and pressurized micro-irrigation.
    • There is mounting evidence across the globe in favour of “nature-based solutions” for water storage and supply. 
    • Thus, the NWP places major emphasis on the supply of water through rejuvenation of catchment areas, which needs to be incentivised through compensation for ecosystem services, especially to vulnerable communities in the upstream, mountainous regions. 

Need for Water Policy

• Recent estimates suggest that if the current pattern of demand continues, about half of the national demand for water will remain unmet by 2030. 
• With water tables falling and water quality deteriorating, a radical change is needed in the approach to water management.
• Changing patterns and intensity of precipitation, as also rates of discharge of rivers, show that it can no longer be assumed that the water cycle operates within an invariant range of predictability. 
• This requires greater emphasis on agility, resilience and flexibility in water management so that there could be an adequate response to the heightened uncertainty and unpredictability of the future.

Issues in National Water Policy

• Demand Management:
  • The policy recognises limits to endlessly increasing water supply and proposes a shift towards demand management. 
  • Irrigation:
    • Irrigation consumes 80-90 per cent of India’s water, most of which is used by rice, wheat and sugarcane. 
    • Without a radical change in this pattern of water demand, the basic water needs of millions of people cannot be met. 
• Groundwater:
  • The NWP gives the highest priority to the sustainable and equitable management of groundwater. 
  • Participatory groundwater management is the key. Information on aquifer boundaries, water storage capacities and flows provided in a user-friendly manner to stakeholders, designated as custodians of their aquifers, would enable them to develop protocols for effective management of groundwater.
•  River: 
  • The water policy has seen rivers primarily as a resource to serve economic purposes. 
  • While acknowledging their economic role, the NWP accords river protection and revitalisation prior and primary importance. 
  • The NWP outlines a process to draft a Rights of Rivers Act, including their right to flow, to meander and to meet the sea.
• Water Quality:
  • The new NWP considers water quality as the most serious unaddressed issue in India today. 
  • It proposes that every water ministry, at the Centre and states, include a water quality department. 
• Hydro Schizophrenia
  • The policy makes radical suggestions for reforming the governance of water, which suffers from three kinds of “hydro-schizophrenia”: That between:
    • irrigation and drinking water, 
    • surface and groundwater, 
    • water and wastewater.
  • Rivers are drying up because of the over-extraction of groundwater, which reduces the base-flows needed for rivers to have water after the monsoon. 
  • Dealing with drinking water and irrigation in silos has meant that aquifers providing assured sources of drinking water dry up because the same aquifers are used for irrigation, which consumes much more water. 
  • And when water and wastewater are separated in planning, the result is a fall in water quality.

Suggestions

• Demand Side Options:
  • Crop Diversification:
    • Thus, crop diversification is the single most important step in resolving India’s water crisis. 
    • The policy suggests diversifying public procurement operations to include Nutri-cereals, pulses and oilseeds. 
  • Incentive to farmers, also:
    • This would incentivise farmers to diversify their cropping patterns, resulting in huge savings of water. 
• Supply to ICDS:
  • The largest outlets for these procured crops are the Integrated Child Development Services, the mid-day meal scheme and the public distribution system. 
• Addressing malnutrition:
  • Creating this link would also help address the crisis of malnutrition and diabetes, given the superior nutritional profile of these crops. 
• Reduce-Recycle-Reuse:
  • It has been proposed as the basic mantra of integrated urban water supply and wastewater management, with the treatment of sewage and eco-restoration of urban river stretches, as far as possible through decentralised wastewater management. 
  • Use treated wastewater:
    • All non-potable use, such as flushing, fire protection, vehicle washing must mandatorily shift to treated wastewater.
• Supply Side Options:
  • Water to reach farmers and low-cost irrigation:
    • The NWP points to trillions of litres stored in big dams, which are still not reaching farmers and explains how the irrigated areas could be greatly expanded at a very low cost by deploying pressurised closed conveyance pipelines, combined with Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems and pressurised micro-irrigation.
  • Catchment area rejuvenation: 
    • The NWP places major emphasis on the supply of water through “nature-based solutions” such as the rejuvenation of catchment areas, to be incentivised through compensation for ecosystem services. 
  • Blue-green infrastructure
    • Specially curated “blue-green infrastructure” such as rain gardens and bio-swales, restored rivers with wet meadows, wetlands constructed for bio-remediation, urban parks, permeable pavements, green roofs etc are proposed for urban areas.
• Steps to restore river flows include:
  • Re-vegetation of catchments, 
  • regulation of groundwater extraction, 
  • river-bed pumping and mining of sand and boulders. 
• Water Quality:
  • The policy advocates adoption of state-of-the-art, low-cost, low-energy, eco-sensitive technologies for sewage treatment. 
  • Widespread use of reverse osmosis has led to huge water wastage and adverse impacts on water quality. 
  • The policy wants RO units to be discouraged if the total dissolved solids count in water is less than 500mg/L. 
  • It suggests a task force on emerging water contaminants to better understand and tackle the threats they are likely to pose.

Conclusion

• Since systems such as water are greater than the sum of their constituent parts, solving water problems requires understanding whole systems, deploying multi-disciplinary teams and a trans-disciplinary approach. 
• Governments should build enduring partnerships with primary stakeholders of water, who must become an integral part of the NWC and its counterparts in the states. 
• The indigenous knowledge of our people, with a long history of water management, is an invaluable intellectual resource that must be fully leveraged.

Source: IE