Maharashtra is facing a water emergency of unprecedented proportions. Following years of drought, the rivers’ currents have ebbed, water in dams and reservoirs has depleted and over-exploitation of groundwater has raised concerns over the long-term availability of water. Meanwhile media reports claim IT companies in Chennai are asking employees to work from home. The reason being they don’t have water to sustain operations. It has not rained for almost 200 days in the city and Chennai may not get sufficient rain to tide over the water crisis for the next three months. In North India, residents in the arid Thar Desert of Rajasthan are dishing out Rs 2,500 to buy 2,500 litres of water which they share with their cattle. With the threat of desertification staring Punjab in the face and the state struggling to break away from the ‘wheat-paddy’ cycle, farmers in the state are quickly adopting a five-decade-old scheme to use ‘Underground Pipeline System’ for irrigation. The union government on its part has created a Jal Shakti Ministry under a full-fledged cabinet minister to try and address the water emergency, but a lot more needs to be done. On this edition of the big picture we will analyse how grave the water crisis is and what needs to be done to deal with the problem.
Guest - Nitin Desai, Chairman, TERI,
Akhil Kumar, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Water Resources, GoI,
Prem S. Vashishtha, Former Director, Agricultural Economics Research Centre,
Chetan Chauhan, Deputy National Affairs Editor, Hindustan Times,
Anchor - Frank Rausan Pereira
12 июн 2019
