A Flood Of Dry Taps!

It’s official: the worst water crisis in our national history is upon us now. But we also see signs of a fight to save us from a dry future.

- Lola Nayar and Jyotika Sood

Farmers in Kurukshetra’s Thanesar, a paddy-growing region of Haryana, are faced with a peculiar dilemma. Over the past few weeks, acres and acres of standing paddy have been destroyed by floodwater from the Ghaggar and markanda, two of the main rivers in the state. Gurmel Singh, 42, for one, is at his wit’s end. With depleting groundwater levels, the government has been asking farmers to switch to other crops which consume less water. “Our paddy fields are under two-three feet of water. The crop has been destroyed. What other crop would survive here?” he asks, surveying his hard labour going waste within days. Floods have occurred here earlier too, but not with such ferocity. Crisis on the surface, crisis below the surface, Kurukshetra’s water woes now has a paradoxical character.

Ask Jayanta Sharma about such contradictions. Sharma, 33, buys nearly 300 litres of water daily from a private firm, delivered by tankers directly to the overhead tank in his apartment in Guwahati. Yet, he and his family of three cannot step out of their homes on many days during the rainy season as even brief showers flood the entire locality. “We are having a tough time with water. The irony is that the roads are flooded with water and we are buying in trucks,” says Sharma, who works in a private company. Over the past decade or so, Guwahati has seen an unplanned growth of housing apartments, leading to fast depletion of its groundwater level. And floods in Assam’s capital are now a recurring problem, an urban nightmare that also blights Mumbai and other cities annually.