Water Shortage: Lack of Water Storage Facilities is the Real Problem

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Every week the Central Water Commission (CWC) puts out the total volume of water that it has in 91 storage reservoirs all over the country. These reservoirs have a total storage capacity of around 157.8 billion cubic metres(BCM). This amounts to around 62% of the total storage capacity of 253.4 BCM in the country.

Hence, the data put out by CWC is a good representation of the total water stored in the reservoirs across the country.  For the week ending April 13, 2016, the total amount of water stored in these reservoirs stood at 35.8 BCM. Given that the total storage capacity of these reservoirs is around 157.8 BCM, the total amount of water currently available amounts to around 23.3%. This is less than one-fourths of the total storage capacity.

How does the situation look if we were to compare it with the same time last year? As on April 16, 2015, the total amount of water in these 91 reservoirs had stood at 50.9 BCM. This amounted to around 33% of the total capacity of these reservoirs.

Further, the total amount of water currently available is around 70.3% of that was available last year. Hence, the situation has deteriorated since then. This can be explained by the fact that the country has had two bad monsoons.

In 2015, the monsoon rains had stood at 86% of the long period average (LPA). In 2014, the monsoon rains had stood at 88% of the long period average(LPA). Two bad monsoons have essentially ensured that the total amount of water available in the CWC reservoirs is currently very low.

The good news is that this time around the monsoon rains have been predicted to be at 106% of the long period average. Unless, the India Meteorological Department goes badly wrong, the monsoon rainfall is going to be much better than the previous two years. This should help building up the water levels in the CWC reservoirs.

But that is just the short-term solution.  The per capita water availability in India has been falling over the years. The average per capita availability of water as per the 2001 census was 1816 cubic meters. This fell to 1545 cubic metres as per the 2011 census. The number must have fallen further by now.

In fact, data from World Bank suggests that in 2014, the renewable internal freshwater resources per capita in India stood at 1,116 cubic metres. This had stood at 1,226 cubic metres in 2007.

As the Economic Survey of 2015-2016 points out: “India has much lower levels of water per capita than Brazil, one of the world’s leading agricultural countries. This constraint is exacerbated because, while Brazil and China use approximately 60 per cent of their renewable fresh water resources for agriculture, India uses a little over 90 per cent.”

 

So what is the way out of this? The simple answer is creation of more water storage capacity to start with. As Akhilesh Tilotia of Kotak Institutional Equities and author of The Making of India writes in a recent research note titled Dam It: “India’s consumption of water was estimated to be 1,030 BCM per year in 2010 and is expected to rise to 1,498 BCM by 2030E. The current consumption of water would hence be around 1,100 BCM (of which ~80% of the water is used for agriculture and rest is split between housing and industry). For a country that even in a failed monsoon gets 2,640 BCM of rain, servicing a requirement of 1,100 BCM should not ideally be a challenge – so what gives?

Further, there are rains, other than the monsoon, and then parts of India get snow as well. This leads Tilotia to conclude that India “receives a precipitation of ~4,000 BCM of rains (and snow) every year.”

So the consumption of water stands at 1100 BCM. Even a bad monsoon gets 2640 BCM of rain, so where does the real problem lie? As Tilotia writes: “It should be obvious that if the bulk of rains fall in a few months of the year, the only way to get water through the year is to bank it. There are two ways in which water can be banked: a natural process of water seeping underground which is then pulled out over the course of the year or by holding back the water in artificially created storage areas or dams. As we have noted above, India has the capacity to store only 253 BCM of water (or less than 10% of normal monsoon rains). It is no surprise that we annually find ourselves without water in summers!

The point being that if India’s water problem needs to be solved, then first and foremost we need to create more water storage capacity to start with.

Further, efficiency of water usage in agriculture also needs to improve. As the Economic Survey points out: “Although water is one of India’s most scarce natural resources, India uses 2 to 4 times more water to produce a unit of major food crop than does China and Brazil  (Hoekstra and Chapagain [2008]). Hence, it is imperative that the country focus on improving the efficiency of water use in agriculture.”

This will start to happen once state governments price power for agriculture at the right price, instead of selling it cheap or giving it away free. As the Economic Survey points out: “It has long been recognized that a key factor undermining the efficient use of water is subsidies on power for agriculture that, apart from its benefits towards farmers, incentivises wasteful use of water and hasten the decline of water tables.”

The solutions to the water problem are well known. The question is do the government(s) [state governments as well as the central government] have the political will and the necessary money to go ahead and implement them.

The column originally appeared on the Vivek Kaul’s Diary on April 20, 2016

With a deficient monsoon, no acche din for rural economy anytime soon

Drought
This column has been due for a while now and I am finally getting around to writing it. Given that there has hardly been any mention of this topic in the mainstream media, it is still not too late to write about it.

For two years in a row India has had a deficient monsoon. In its end of season report, the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the nation’s weather forecaster, stated that “rainfall over the country as a whole was 86% of its long period average (LPA). Thus years 2014 & 2015 was the fourth case of two consecutive all India deficient monsoon years during the last 115 years.”

IMD uses rainfall data for the last 50 years to come up with the long period average. If the rainfall is between 96% and 104% of the 50 year average, then it is categorised as normal. If it is between 90% and 96% of the 50 year average is categorised as below-normal. And anything below 90% is categorised as deficient.

If something has happened only four times in 115 years, there is clearly reason to worry. Further, IMD at the beginning of June 2015 had predicted that the rainfall this year will be 12% below normal at 88% of the long period average(LPA) and they have more or less been proven right, with the rainfall coming in at 86%. The funny thing is that at the end of June it looked that the IMD might have got the forecast wrong.

The rainfall in June was at 116% of the long period average. Nevertheless, IMD proved to be right given that the country saw deficient rainfall in the coming months. It was at “84% of LPA in July, 78% of LPA in August, and 76% of LPA in September.”

The accompanying table from Crisil Research gives a breakdown of monsoon performance across various parts of the country.
South-west monsoon performance across regions

Interestingly, the IMD no longer uses the term ‘drought’ primarily because it believes that the entire country does not face a drought, at the same time.

As I keep pointing out, averages don’t give the complete picture. If we were to look at state wise monsoon data, the situation is very bad in some states. As Crisil Research points out in a report titled Rain Check: All You Need to Know About Monsoon 2015: “Five states have seen a rainfall deficiency of 20% or more. At 45.8%, Uttar Pradesh (UP) had the highest deficiency, which is nearly as bad as last year’s 47.2%. In Haryana, the deficit was 36.7%, in Punjab 31.7%, in Maharashtra 25.2% and in Karnataka 19.9%.”

The impact of the deficient rainfall varies depending on the kind of irrigation cover that is available and that varies from state to state. “While irrigation cover is high at ~77-99% in UP, Haryana and Punjab, it is low ~18- 34% in Maharashtra and Karnataka. The impact of deficient rains, therefore, differs by geography,” Crisil Research.

In fact, there are variations within a state as well. The Marathwada region of Maharashtra has been the worst affected region in the country, with a rainfall deficiency of a huge 54%.

The deficient rainfall will have a considerable impact on rural incomes this year. Depending on who you believe 40-60% of country’s population is engaged in agriculture.

India Brand Equity Foundation, a trust established by the Ministry of Commerce with the business lobby CII, puts the number at 58%. Crisil Research puts the number at 40%. Given this, we can safely say that the deficient monsoon will roughly impact half of the country’s population.

Slowing as well as falling rural incomes, will have an impact on rural demand. In fact, this is already being seen. Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) has had to cut prices of its soap and detergents by seven percent, in order to counter falling rural demand. Soaps and detergents make up for around half of the company’s sales.

Further, tractor sales have been falling all through this financial year. Data from the Tractor Manufacturers Association shows that sales have fallen by 20% during the first six months of this financial year (i.e. April to September 2015). “The decline is the sharpest since 2003, a year when India faced a severe drought,” a newsreport in the Mint newspaper points out.

In fact, this is the second year of falling tractor sales. In 2014-2015(April 2014 to March 2015) tractor sales had fallen by 13%.

The slowdown in rural demand is also reflected in the falling motorcycle sales. Data from the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam) points out that motorcycle sales during the first six months of the year are down by 4.06% to 5.36 million units, in comparison to the same period last year. The fall in motorcycle sales hasn’t been as big as the fall in tractor sales given that motorcycles are significantly cheaper than tractors.

Companies are also scaling down their future expansion plans due the slowdown in rural demand. Take the case of Hero MotoCorp Ltd, which has huge exposure to the rural market, with half its sales happening in the hinterland.

As the Mint newsreport referred to earlier points out: “In a post earnings conference call with analysts on 21 October, Hero’s chief financial officer Ravi Sud said that the company has scaled down the initial production capacity at its upcoming facility in Gujarat from 1.2 million units earlier to 750,000 units now.”

The failure of the monsoon has had an impact on the kharif crop. It is now expected to have an impact on the rabi crop as well. The sowing of the rabi crop has started in some parts of the country.

Due to a bad monsoon the water level in the reservoirs is well below normal. The Central Water Commission monitors 91 reservoirs in the country. The water level in these reservoirs currently is at 58% of the total live storage capacity. At the same time the water level is at 76% of the average availability during the last ten years.

This is clearly not good news for the rabi crop, given that with low water levels in reservoirs, the irrigation needs of farmers cannot possibly be completely met.

Some of the crops grown during the season are onion, masur, mustard and wheat.

All in all things look tricky for the rural economy as of now. No acche din for them anytime soon.

The column originally appeared on The Daily Reckoning on October 30, 2015