The battleground appears to have shifted in the farmers’ protest from the repeal of the three farm laws to a legally binding MSP. Leaving aside issues of implementation-practicality, the several-billion-dollar questions are for which crops should MSP be legally binding, where, and for how long? For context, consider that we have gone from being a nation of 220 million eating primarily millets in 1881to a 1.3billion rice and-wheat-eating behemoth today. The price for this transformation has been paid largely from the groundwater reserves of the northwest It’s unclear how long that water will last -one high-level state government committee opined that the groundwater could run out in 20-25 years in Punjab. Between 1966 and 2010, Punjab’s annual rainfall has averaged 662 mm, while the rainfall between 2011and 2020 is 653 mm-not a big fall, but still a fall. How long can farming continue if this fall continues, as some climate models predict? Already, bores are being deepened at a high cost. An attempt to conserve groundwater squeezed crop cycles and caused farmers to burn stubble, contributing to the winter spike in pollution. Given this context, should MSP, a policy tool forged during the droughts of the mid 1960s, be used to encourage the growing of a water-hungry crop in India’s dry northwest ?
Consider, India ‘s monsoon does not deposit 1,100 mm of rain equally: places like Jaisalmer get about 165 mm, while some parts of the North-East see five meters in a matter of months. Before the British, Indian farmers grew their crops largely in keeping with locally available water and opted for crop varieties that could cope with the vicissitudes of India’s temperamental rainfall. But the British changed that with the canals bringing water in and railroads carting produce out. All at once, Indians began to believe that we could grow what we like, where we like. The Green Revolution with its bore. wells and the ascendance of central procurement of rice and wheat only strengthened that belief. Only now, as the climate warms, and wet regions become wetter, and dry regions grow drier, that belief is being questioned.
Apart from being geographically varied, India’s rainfall is highly seasonal, temporally skewed and varies across years as global phenomena like the El Nino exert their influence. When we ignore these facets, we create fault lines that erupt into crisis. Just last week, South India -Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry -were confronting rivers in spate intent on sweeping away everything in their paths. Earlier, we had the ameliorating influence of tanks that could help moderate intense rain fall and parley between dry and wet seasons. When we began seeing tanks as uncool (and dry tanks as prime real estate), and borewells as sophisticated and convenient, many Indian cities slipped into a bipolar reality of flood and drought.
Speaking of ameliorating influences, we must not forget forests and the glowing embers of an incipient water crisis in the North-East the Jal Shakti of the Brahmaputra comes from both the plentiful rainfall and the emerald forests of Arunachal. Forests trap the rain and send it into cerulean streams which coalesce to form large rivers that feed into the Brahmaputra. In a water-scarce world, both China and India eye those waters hungrily. Moreover, the steep descent of many of the streams sing the siren song of hydropower -a renewable energy source that has become increasingly valuable in a planet short of carbon space. China plans a huge dam (three times the size of the Three Gorges) on the Brahmaputra, just a few kilometers away from the Line of Control. Will forests be cleared to build this dam, or others like it in this region? Will such a dam be able to cope with intense rainfall, which the loss of trees will only make worse (think Kerala floods)? What about the very real risk of earthquakes? Will the dam become a capricious hydro-disciplinary tool ?
These are knotty questions with few easy answers, but almost every water crisis in India stems from our disrespect for the tempestuous nature of India’s cloud messenger: And so, any action begins with respecting this variability. This means building water storage -something India has too little of. This means keeping forests intact to smoothen the intense rainfall and maintain dry season river flows. This also means sustainable crop practices and urban planning that requires giving water its space. Many of these actions go against both powerful and popular forces. As the farmers outside Delhi exult, what about the next generation of farmers who will confront a dry land in which to grow a water-hungry crop ? What will they do ? What will we do ?
Mridula Ramesh is a climate and water expert and author of Watershed: How We Destroyed India Water and How We Can Save It and The Climate Solution.
“Stop water from going into the drain,
Make a collective effort & catch the rain ! “