| | JULY 20208Vantage Point By Sudeep Nadukkandy, CEO and Co-Founder, WaterScience Rahul, maine kahaa thaa naa?....Paani chalaa jaaegaa!!I grew up in the '90s and vividly re-member this ad ­ although I have for-gotten the brand: a kid playing music and dancing around in the shower with the slightest bother about water wast-age and when water runs out, looks at the shower that is now just trickling a few drops - with sadness and disappointment on his face. In 2020 this is all too real - if you are in Bangalore, you prob-ably faced this couple of times already. We are all staring at empty show-ers and taps and what will remain will be only sadness and disappoint-ment for our future gen-erations ­ if we don't fix this fast.The Composite Water Management Index report, published by NITI Aayog in June 2018, mentions that India is undergoing the worst water crisis in its history and nearly 600 million peo-ple are facing high to extreme water stress. The report further mentions that India is placed at 120th amongst 122 countries in the water quality in-dex, with nearly 70% of water being contaminated. By 2020, 21 major cities of India will run out of water and face `day zero', it said --entire cities run-ning out of water! Let that sink in for a moment.We have about 17% of the world's population, only 4% of the world's freshwater, and 70% of it is contami-nated. Availability was always a prob-lem, quality for us became secondary. We are OK with any quality because that is how import-ant water is. Is there a way out?HOW DID WE GET HERE?It is probably not be-cause of Rahul, though Rahul does make it worse. We can't think of solutions without looking back and seeing how we got here. What are we doing wrong? 4% of the world's water for 17% of the people is skewed and sounds terrible, but it is still A LOT of water. We probably can manage very well with that.According to World Bank reports, agriculture accounts for 70% of all wa-ter withdrawals globally. In India, this is upwards of 80% and a lot of that wa-ter is not managed properly, resulting in wastage ­ as high as 60% for some crops. Now, irrigated land is more than twice as productive as rain-fed crop-land, so we can't ask farmers to stop taking water. But we can make the process more efficient and reduce wastage and we can get farmers to try for more wa-ter-efficient crops, especially in wa-ter-stressed areas. But the math is simple ­ if we can reduce 20% con-sumption in agriculture, we dou-ble the water available for all other uses combined!Unsurprisingly, India is the largest drawer of ground-water in the world. Our over-reliance on groundwater ir-rigation purposes is a huge reason for our current dilemma. That's because it is easy - just dig wells and draw water - next year, dig deeper. As you read this - you will realize how unsustainable and how absurd it is. But it is easy - so we have been doing it for decades. When we draw faster than these wells can re-charge - they dry up. But we will not stop drawing groundwater unless we have better, easier options. This means investing in irrigation networks, adopting new-er & better recycling technologies and closely monitoring water supply, de-mand and wastage. To start, we must move to crops that use less water in water-stressed areas for sure and en-able farmers with technology to ensure BECOMING WATER RESILIENT IN THE AGE OF WATER SCARCITYSudeep Nadukkandy
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