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“Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink” these immortal lines by Samuel Taylor Coleridge sum up the irony of a river-dotted country like India where flash floods and deluge are a regular occurrence. Till date access to clear, pure and safe drinking water is a mirage to a vast chunk of the population, particularly those inhabiting the countryside. As per government figures, 5,900 villages in India have no water, while 74,000 villages face water shortage.
According to Minister for Water Resources Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, if adequate remedial steps are not initiated immediately, India faces the danger of emerging as the nation with the worst water crisis in the world by the beginning of the 12th five-year plan.
Problem of Contamination
The task before the government seems quite arduous when one takes into account the fact that of the rural hamlets having access to drinking water, inhabitants of two lakh villages have to gulp down contaminated water, with problems of arsenic, fluoride, nitrate, salinity and iron affecting large parts of the country.
Water being a state subject, it is primarily the responsibility of the state governments concerned to formulate schemes for providing people with contamination-free water. But realizing that the extent and gravity of the crisis make it impossible for the state governments to meet the challenge in isolation, the UPA government has unfolded a variety of schemes to tackle the problem. But to gauge the severity of the crisis, one first needs to take a look at the geographical extent of the problem in the large country that is Bharat.
Inland salinity is a major problem in States like Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, while the effect of salinity in ground water due to sea water ingress has been causing concern in the coastal reaches of Saurashtra and Kutch as also some areas in the East Coast.
High level of fluoride in ground water has been the bane in vast tracts of Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. High concentration of arsenic due to drop in the ground water level has wrecked havoc in large parts of West Bengal, besides striking areas in Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, Uttar Pradesh and Chandigarh.
Though not as virulent, high iron-content in ground water is common in various eastern and northeastern states. Instance of ground water pollution due to the presence of toxic chemicals like Chromium, Copper and Nickel in the vicinity of the industrial areas and urban settlements have also been reported in many parts of the country.
Ensuring Safe Drinking Water
The Common minimum Programme of the UPA government has laid stress on providing clear, pure and safe drinking water to the people. The issue also figures in the innovative ‘Bharat Nirman Plan’, mentioned first by President A P J Abdul Kalam in his speech at the start of the Budget session of Parliament in February, that has set ambitious targets for developing infrastructure, particularly in the countryside. Under the Plan, the budget for 2005-06 has fixed a goal of reaching drinking water in the next four years to all the remaining 74,000 villages that face water crisis.
To alleviate the hardship faced by the people in Tamil Nadu due to salinity of water, the maiden budget of the UPA had announced setting up a desalination plant at Chennai.
Another significant steps taken by the present Government is the revival of the sub-mission on water quality problems. The sub-mission was set up in 1986 under the National Drinking Water Mission, that was later renamed as the Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission (RGNDWM). The states were provided 100 per cent grants for taking up water quality projects as part of the sub-mission activities. Though arsenic contamination was not within the ambit of the scheme initially, it was included in 1993.
Allocation of funds was practically stopped in 1999. However, the UPA government has decided to resurrect the sub-mission from this fiscal year by setting aside Rs 1,500 crore.
Increased Outlay
The RGNDWM itself has been strengthened by bringing all drinking water schemes under its purview. The 2005-06 budget has increased the outlay for the Mission from Rs 3,000 crore in 2004-05 to Rs 4,750 crore.
The government is also planning to enact a comprehensive Food Law to check Arsenic and Nitrate poisoning of drinking water sources. The move follows recommendation by a Group of Ministers set up to find ways of dealing with the menace.
As part of an integrated approach, efforts are on to involve heads of state Pollution Control Boards and other agencies dealing with water contamination issues in brainstorming sessions to get wide-ranging inputs on various aspects of the problem at the grass-roots level.
Combating arsenic Poisoning
But the leviathan nature of the task before the government can only be understood if one goes deeper into the malady of water contamination. The Arsenic menace in West Bengal can be studied in some detail as a test case to fathom how it has thrown socio-economic life haywire in the affected areas.
West Bengal has been identified as the most affected zone with regard to Arsenic contamination of drinking water sources in the Indian sub-continent, with 2.8 lakh people (1.60 lakh in villages and 1.2 lakh in cities) consuming such water or belonging to the at-risk group.
Nine districts in the state, including the southern part of Kolkata, have been marked as Arsenic-prone. Consumption of water with high arsenic content has given rise to a variety of health hazards in the affected areas. Skin pigmentation, stiffness of limbs, conjunctivitis, bronchitis, diarrhoea, stomachache, restricted movement of hands and legs, nerve disorders have been reported. The victims have also been diagnosed with hindered liver and kidney functions, while experts feel that skin cancer could be a long-term effect.
But more tragic are the socio-economic implications. Victims have lost their means of livelihood after being rendered immobile; entire villages have been reduced to starvation with able-bodied men and women in most of the households falling sick. Under the Arsenic sub-mission, a scheme for purifying ground water and supplying it through pipelines to affected areas was started in Malda in 1995. A second such project was commissioned in South 24 Parganas in 2001. In several districts, arsenic resistant plants have come up, and laboratories constructed for testing water quality.
The State, which received allocation of Rs 65 crore for the Accelerated Rural Water Supply Programme last year, was later sanctioned an additional amount of Rs 20 crore by the UPA government.
Though level of public awareness about the problem has gone up, a relentless campaign is still needed to make the people more aware of the demon that is arsenic.
*Senior Journalist, PTI, Kolkata
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