The steady progress of the monsoons ought to refocus policy attention on India's deeply stressed water economy . There are fast rising demands on water resources generally, together with poorly governed supply systems, with the result that overall balances are precarious. What is worse, there's increasingly reckless mining of groundwater, and aquifer depletion is concentrated in many of the most populated and economically significant areas. Now, we have a highly...

The Planning Commission’s advice to the Haryana government to levy a cess on agricultural power to raise funds for replenishing dwindling groundwater is wise counsel that is likely to fall on deaf ears. There is no denying that the continuous decline in groundwater levels across the subcontinent and weak attempts at replenishment constitute a grave threat to human security in this part of the world. Haryana is not a lonely...

WITH the introduction of short-term, high-yielding varieties of cereal and oil-seed crops, the cropping intensity has now reached almost 300 per cent in Punjab. Moreover, the intensive use of chemical fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides involve greater use of scarce groundwater resources. The water table has gone down alarmingly resulting in huge investment on installation of costly submersible pumps to draw water for irrigation. This does not auger well for sustainable...

Both sides will have to rise above politics and focus on the water crisis, which requires difficult and bitter solutions.  As the long hot summer sizzles, one's thoughts in Lahore and Amritsar turn to water. It is scarce on both sides of the border. When the British finally and fully took over the Punjab in 1849, their thoughts turned to the possibility of engineering for agriculture. In the 1860s, they...

Two years of drought has started to take its toll on the people of Vidarbha, with a failed crop leaving them with no income to tide over the crisis. He's a butcher out of business. “I want to shift to a town like Panderkauda,” says Sarfaraz Qureshi in Yavatmal district. “I'm unable to sell any meat in the villages I work in.” Qureshi is a small operator who carries as...