30% villages in India reeling under acute water shortage: Rajendra Singh

Expressing a serious concern over the depletion of surface water, Dr Rajendra Singh, the recipient of the coveted Stockholm Water Prize Laureate 2015 - the Nobel Prize for water - said that the community-based decentralisation of water management system is the only solution to tackle water crisis in the country.

In an exclusive chat with DH, on the sidelines of the two-day International Conference on Water Management and Climate Change, organised by Water & Land Management Institute in Dharwad, Dr Singh batted for a water literacy movement in India to prevent water abuse.

Singh, who has inspired many youth to take up water conservation, said that at the beginning of First Five-Year Plan in 1951, only 1% of the villages in India (297) were listed as facing acute shortage of drinking water. Planning was meant to ensure sustained development. But after 75 years of Independence, a severe water crisis is found in 30% of the villages. As many as 87,000 villages in India are facing drinking water crisis.

The water crisis which earlier was confined only to West Bengal, Bihar and Odisha, has become a common problem in every state, he said.

“The advancement in science and technology is being used for machine learning to make life easy. But water, the elixir of life, is not given due importance. The successive governments have not bothered to introduce decentralised community-based water management. Instead they are allowing the corporate sector to manage the water resources and we are seeing the results of such a move. If we don’t tackle the issue now, we will not have a better future,” said the ‘Water Man of India’.

The time is ripe to rethink moving to communitisation of water from commercialisation of water, he added.

Dharwad Declaration

Dr Singh who chaired the two-day water meet which saw participation of water experts from 22 countries across six continents, has come out with Dharwad Declaration-2023.

The Declaration will be submitted at the UN water conference to be held in New York from March 22 to 24, said Singh.

“We will build teams of communities, civil society organisations, farmers, researchers, media, artists, spiritual groups, government and corporate partners across political divides to collaborate on drought, flood and climate adaptation, mitigation, resilience and recovery projects in 100 flash points around the world in the next 5 years. These prospects will focus on local food security, equality and justice through appropriate water conservation measures,” the Declaration said.