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    Agriculture rapidly depleting India’s water resources: Jal Shakti minister.

  • Date : 23 November, 2019

     NEW DELHI: Almost 22% of the groundwater (assessed units) in the country has either dried up or is in the ‘critical’ and ‘over-exploited’ categories, said Union Jal Shakti (water resources) minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat on Friday as he emphasised the need to focus on efficient use of water resources.

    With annual extraction of groundwater in these units exceeding annual replenishment, Shekhawat told TOI that it’s time the country acts to improve 'demand side’ management by taking multiple measures instead of only managing ‘supply side’ of resources.

    While quoting figures from the ‘Dynamic Ground Water Resources of India’ report which shows 1,499 out of 6,881 assessed units (blocks/mandals/taluks) in 2017 came under ‘over-exploited’ and ‘critical’ categories taken together, Shekhawat said, “Agriculture sector consumes nearly 89% of available water resources in India. We really need to help farmers and create awareness among them so that they can move towards water use efficiency measures such as drip and sprinkler irrigation. We can take lessons from countries like Israel which have made tremendous progress in this direction,” said Shekhawat.

    The minister, who visited Israel earlier this week to take part in the biennial WATEC conference there, said there were many things which India could learn from Israel’s experience and replicate taking into consideration local conditions and traditional ways of water conservation. “If we could save 10% of water in agriculture now, it will make water available for all users in the country for the next 50 years,” said the minister while emphasising on both demand and supply sides management of water. 

    Speaking about ongoing measures, he said the works on aquifer (underground layer of water-bearing rock) mapping has been going on at full pace to delineate and characterise the groundwater aquifers and develop suitable management plans.

    “Aquifer mapping of all 256 water stressed districts (nearly 5,500 blocks) will be completed by March next year. It will help us make farmers and other users aware of water availability in their villages and tell them how they should use it,” said Shekhawat.

    India’s Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) on Friday signed a MoU with MARVI (Managing Aquifer Recharge and Sustaining Groundwater Use through Village-level Intervention) partners of Australia to accelerate ongoing works.

    Highest number of water stressed blocks, identified by the CGWB, fall in Tamil Nadu (541) followed by Rajasthan (218), Uttar Pradesh (139), Telangana (137), Punjab (111) and Haryana (81).


    Source (The Times Of India)
 















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