Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 150
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 151
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Water crisis set to became nightmare for North India; here's why

Water crisis set to became nightmare for North India; here's why

Share this article Share this article
published Published on Sep 2, 2016   modified Modified on Sep 2, 2016
-The Financial Express

For India, a looming freshwater crisis—the World Bank already puts the country’s per capita renewable freshwater resources at less than a fifth of the world, far behind the other four in the list of top-five populous countries—is set to become a nightmare. A study published in Nature Geoscience has found that, upto a depth of 200 metres, 60% of the groundwater in the Indian part of the Indo-Gangetic Basin (IGB)—comprising the riparine systems of the Indus, the Ganga and the Bramhaputra—has become unsuitable for drinking and irrigation, thanks to high arsenic content and excessive salinity. For perspective, groundwater withdrawal from the trans-boundary basin accounts for a quarter of the global withdrawal, and thus, high toxicity and salinity are likely to have rather severe and widespread ramifications. As per the study, while high levels of salinity is common in the Indus basin and the drier reaches of the Upper Ganga basin, high arsenic content seems to exclusively plague the IGB in southern parts of Bengal.

Part of the problem is because of natural causes such as excessive surface water evaporation but man-made factors like indiscriminate fertiliser and pesticide usage and thoughtless irrigation practices have also contributed their bit over the years. Between 2000 and 2012, the water-table has fallen in 30% of the highly-populated area that makes up the IGB in the north of the country, mostly in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab. With subsidised power fuelling reckless irrigation and heavily subsidised urea knocking soil chemistry off kilter, there can be no real change until these are dealt with first.

The Financial Express, 1 September, 2016, http://www.financialexpress.com/fe-columnist/water-crisis-set-to-became-nightmare-for-north-india-heres-why/363696/


Related Articles

 

Write Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

Video Archives

Archives

share on Facebook
Twitter
RSS
Feedback
Read Later

Contact Form

Please enter security code
      Close