Write an article for your school magazine on the scarcity of clean drinking water in the country
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Explanation:
Water is life because plants and animals cannot live without water. Water is needed to ensure food security, feed livestock, take up industrial production and to conserve the biodiversity and environment. Although, India is not a water poor country, due to growing human population, severe neglect and over-exploitation of this resource, water is becoming a scarce commodity. While this is a growing concern all over the world, India is most vulnerable because of the growing demand and in-disciplined lifestyle. This calls for immediate attention by the stakeholders to make sustainable use of the available water resources to ensure better quality of lives.
70% of the earth surface is covered with water, which amounts to 1400 million cubic kilometres (m km3). However, 97.5% of this water being sea water, it is salty. Fresh water availability is only 35 m km3. Out of the total fresh water, 68.7% is frozen in ice caps, 30% is stored underground and only 0.3% water is available on the surface of the earth. Out of the surface water, 87% is stored in lakes, 11% in swamp and 2% in rivers. As all the sweet water is not extractable, only 1% of the total water can be used by human beings (Anon. 2006).
As water was available in plenty, it was considered as a free resource since generations. However, with growing demand for water and depletion of the available water, assured supply of good quality water is becoming a growing concern. As the water resources are not evenly distributed, across different continents, some countries have surplus water while many other countries are facing scarcity of water. Likewise, there is skewed growth of population in different continents, resulting in a wide mis-match between the existing population and water availability. Among various continents, Asia has 36% of the available fresh water reserves, with over 60% of the world population where water is a scarce commodity.
India is blessed with good rainfall well distributed over 5-6 months in the year. The average annual rainfall in the country is 1170 mm with a wide range between 100 mm in desert areas of Rajasthan to 10000 mm in Cherapunji. The total available sweet water in the country is 4000 billion m3 per annum. Out of this, over 1047 billion m3 water is lost due to evaporation, transpiration and runoff, reducing the available water to 1953 billion m3 and the usable water to 1123 billion m3. It is disturbing to note that only 18% of the rainwater is used effectively while 48% enters the river and most of which reaches the ocean. Out of the total usable water, 728 billion m3 is contributed from surface water and 395 billion m3 is contributed by replenishable ground water. Against the above supply, the water consumed during the year 2006 in India was 829 billion m3 which is likely to increase to 1093 billion m3 in 2025 and 1047 billion m3 in 2050, as estimated by the Government of India (2009). As the potential for increasing the volume of utilisation of water is hardly 5-10%, India is bound to face severe scarcity of water in the near future.
While water for consumption is most crucial, it is equally important to provide water for irrigation to increase the food production and livestock husbandry, to ensure food security for the increasing population. Growing population, as everyone is aware, is a serious concern as it will create further burden on the per capita water availability in the future. As can be seen in Table 4, the per capita water availability in 1951 was 5177 m3 per year when the total population was only 361 million. In 2001, as the population increased to 1027 million, the per capita water availability reduced drastically to 1820 m3 per year. By 2025, the per capita water availability will further drop down to 1341 m3 and to 1140 m3 in 2050. Based on the average requirement of water for various purposes, the situation is considered as water stress condition when the per capita water availability ranges from 1000 to 1700 m3 per year and it is considered water scarcity when the availability reduces to 1000 m3 per year. As the water available within the country varies widely as a result of rainfall, ground water reserve and proximity to river basins, most of the Indian States will have reached the water stress condition by 2020 and water scarcity condition by 2025. This would further hamper the food security, as the scarcity of water will directly suppress agricultural production.