Everything about the Indian general elections is colossal. Some 900 million people are eligible to vote in the world’s largest democracy. But despite the size of the election, neither major political party is truly addressing, what I believe is India’s biggest future problem: WATER.
Recently, I was sitting with some elderly women in a village in Rajasthan discussing how to boost the storage capacity of a local pond to provide water supply despite years of low rainfall. Like many communities across India, this village is no longer waiting for the government to come and solve their water woes.
When I suggested they raise this issue with politicians who come asking for their votes, they laughed the suggestion away, saying that they want to see water in their lifetime. The election results, look unlikely to move us more quickly to this goal.
According to the Global Climate Risk Index of 2019, published by Germanwatch, India is the 14th most vulnerable country to climate change impacts. But the election manifestos of the two main parties, the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) pay only scant attention to climate change or the water crisis it exacerbates.
Neither party has a track record to brag about. From 2007 to 2017, a period when both parties were successively in power, the Central Ground Water Board recorded a 60 percent decline in groundwater levels across the country.
The BJP’s main water policy, as outlined in its manifesto, appears to be a plan to start a huge engineering project to interlink the rivers of the country. The party says this will allow states with surplus water to supply those whose water is running dry. But the former outnumber the latter, making this plan unviable. Furthermore, the Indian Institute of Technology found that 42 percent of India’s land area is facing drought, and that rainfall and dam levels are dropping across the country. State governments will likely be in no mood to share their limited resources or participate in the grandiose plan, which ecologists say could severely damage India’s river systems.
Congress party does better on paper; its election manifesto addresses environment, climate change, climate resilience and disaster management. It pledges to provide equitable access to water by focusing on storage in dams and water bodies, replenishing groundwater and creating a large participatory programme for water management involving the state governments, civil society organisations, farmers and other users.
Congress’ plan sounds good, but the party’s record on water management while in government is lacklustre – leading some water advocates to doubt that it will be a priority this time around.
The two parties are also divided in their approach to protecting India’s most prized water resource, the Ganges River. The BJP commits to ensuring a clean and uninterrupted flow of the river from its headwaters in the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal—but it says nothing about how this will be achieved. Congress, on the other hand, promises to double the budget allocation for cleaning rivers, including the Ganges. But it is tight-lipped about the uninterrupted flow of the Ganges, which has been severely hampered by several hydro projects approved by previous Congress governments.
India has steadily increased the budget for the Ganges since the first Ganges action project was launched in 1986. But the river – the lifeblood of India, which flows through a region populated by some 500 million people – is both desperately polluted and increasingly weak as upstream waters are diverted.
India’s next government will face an array of challenges like unemployment, quality education, gender violence, urbanisation, health and sanitation. But climate change and water scarcity would be the toughest issues hampering the food security and economic growth of the country. Millions of Indians won’t have water to quench their thirst.
UN World Water Development report 2018 praises nature-based solutions like Tarun Bharat Sangh, a civil society organisation whose activities include the construction of small-scale water harvesting structures and the regeneration of forests and soils. The impact has been significant. Groundwater levels have risen by an estimated six metres; productive farmland increased from 20% to 80%; crucial forest cover, including in farmlands, has increased by 33%; and the return of wildlife such as antelope and leopard has been observed. These innovative water solutions improved water security in parts of rural India.
Jal Biradari, another civil society organisation, is working hand-in-hand with the administration and the community for the rejuvenation of River Agrani Basin in Maharashtra. It is an example of collaboration, creation and restoration. Other successful examples of community-driven decentralised water conservation and management include Ralegaon Siddhi and Hiwre Bazaar.
Whichever party wins the vote, the new government should launch an aggressive ecological restoration program replicating successful and committed grassroots movements like those mentioned above—ideally in a way that builds resilience and generates livelihoods. It is high time for politicians to learn the graveness of the issues like climate change and its impact on their voters.
Remember, if your voters are thirsty, you won’t win.