FAILURE OF WATER MANAGEMENT IN INDIA

                                                       Edition-3

Primary inputs of fresh water to India, in the form of rain, snow, are strongly influenced by the monsoon & are highly skewed in time & unevenly distributed over country. Annual average precipitation over India amounts to about 4,000 billion cubic meters. A close examination of smaller areas gives rise to difficulties. The arid areas in Rajasthan received about 200mm of annual rainfall, while many areas in Meghalaya annually receive over 11,000 mm of rainfall.

                          Further, about 80% of this rainfall occurs during 2-and half months, from July to September. This spatial & temporal inequity in natural distribution of precipitation makes way for some serious challenges in water management in India.

                         Among the various requirements of water, safe drinking water should get the highest priority. In India, irrigation has received the highest investment & irrigation potential has increased from about 20 million hectare in the pre-plan era of the 1950s to about 102 million hectare by the turn of the century.

                            This has been the largest irrigation system in the world but is also among the more inefficient ones. While about a third of the population does not get safe drinking water, the power of irrigation has turned single crop lands to four-crop ones, produced paddy in desert areas & grown flowers on spices in Semi-arid areas.