Sugar

Not Holding IPL in Maharashtra Will Meet Water Needs of Latur for 42 Minutes

Indian-Premier-League-IPL-logo

In yesterday’s column I had explained why holding the Indian Premier League(IPL) T20 cricket tournament, responsible, for the water woes of Maharashtra, is wrong.

The trouble is that no one is using numbers to make an argument. Emotions are running high—and the typical argument against IPL is when there is no water in Latur, how can we waste water on cricket grounds.

But this argument looks at the issue only in absolute terms. It is estimated that the IPL will use around 6 million litres of water. This sounds a lot on its own. But it amounts to only an insignificant amount of the total water used to produce sugarcane in Maharashtra in 2013-2014.

The basic problem is that Maharashtra should not be growing as much sugarcane as it is. Sugarcane is cultivated on less than four percent of the total cropped area in the state but uses 70% of its irrigation water.

Hence, all the noise around IPL being moved out of Maharashtra is essentially nonsense of the worst kind. People who feel for those who do not have water in parts of Maharashtra can do more for them by stopping to waste water in their daily lives, than agitating about this. Also, they should check for water leakages in their building.

Let’s take a look at Latur in a little more detail. An India Today report points out that the daily requirement of water in Latur is 85 litres per person. As per the 2011 census, the population of the Latur district is around 24.6 lakh (2.46 million).

This means the district needs around 209.1 million litres of water every day (85 litres multiplied by 2.46 million). IPL is scheduled between April 9 and May 29, and will use six million litres of water over a period of 51 days in Maharashtra.

During the same period Latur would require 10,664 million litres of water (209.1 million litres multiplied by 51 days). How will not using six million litres of water at IPL help? If I stretch my argument, not allowing IPL in Maharashtra to happen, will essentially save water that is good enough to meet the water needs of Latur for 0.029 days (6 million litres expressed as a proportion of 209.1 million). This essentially means around 42 minutes (0.029 x 24 x 60), if I were to convert it into minutes.

So not allowing IPL in Maharashtra to happen will supply water to the people of Latur for all of 42 minutes. Of course, I am assuming that all the water that is thus saved can be moved to Latur, all at once, and no part of it is evaporated during the process.

The larger point is that there are better things that can be done to save water.

Further, why is no one talking about the huge amount of water that gets wasted everyday due to leakage as well as theft. A March 2016 report in The Times of India offers some data points. The report points out that Mumbai loses 900 million litres of water daily due to leakage and theft.

An August 2015 report in the same newspaper had put the daily leakage of water in Mumbai at 1,012.5 million litres. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation(BMC) terms this leakage as “non-revenue” water, in a classic bureaucratic way.

In this column, I will work with the former estimate of 900 million litres daily leakage, given that it is a more recent one.

I tried looking for the water leakage numbers for Pune and Nagpur where IPL matches are scheduled along with Mumbai, in the state of Maharashtra, but I couldn’t find any numbers. Given that I will have to work with only the Mumbai water leakage number.

The IPL started on April 9 and is supposed to go on till May 29. Effectively, it is a tournament that will go on for 51 days. Over 51 days, 45,900 million litres of water (900 million multiplied by 51) would have been lost just in Mumbai. The total number would be higher if we had the leakage numbers for Pune and Nagpur as well. In comparison, the IPL will use only six million litres of water, over 51 days. This works out to 0.013% of the total leakage of water in Mumbai.

If only a part of the leakage could be plugged, the water needs of Latur could be easily met. Why is no one really talking about this?

I know I am exaggerating here with my calculations but this is just to show the absurdity of the issue of moving IPL out of Maharashtra in order to save water. The question that crops up here is that why are the NGOs which have filed a PIL in the Bombay High Court asking for IPL to be moved out of Maharashtra, not taking BMC to task as well?

The ultimate idea should be to stop the wastage of water and considerably huge amount of water is being wasted by leakage and municipal corporations not doing much about it. Why is this discussion not happening?

The BCCI, for once, does not appear to be in a confrontational state. An India Today TV report points out that BCCI is planning to move five matches out of Maharashtra. Of this two matches were scheduled in Pune and three matches in Nagpur.

The three matches that were scheduled to happen in Nagpur are now likely to take place in Mohali in Punjab. Like Maharashtra grows sugarcane, a fairly water-intensive crop, Punjab grows rice. Punjab is a semi-arid region and in an ideal world, rice shouldn’t be grown there, because it needs a lot of water, and there is not a lot of water going around in a semi-arid region.

Like Maharashtra shouldn’t be growing sugarcane, Punjab shouldn’t be growing rice. Punjab uses 5,337 litres of water to grow one kilogram of rice. This is more than double that of West Bengal, which takes 2,605 litres of water to grow one kilogram of rice.

In total Punjab produced 11.1 million tonnes of rice in 2013-2014. So how many litres of water did it use in total? The total amount of water used was 59,240,700 million litres (11.1 million tonnes of rice multiplied by 5,337 litres of water per kg of rice).

Currently, four matches are scheduled at Mohali. The India Today TV report suggests that three matches from Nagpur will be moved to Mohali. This basically means that seven matches will be played in Mohali.

In the public interest litigation that has been filed in the Bombay High Court asking that IPL cricket matches should be moved out of Maharashtra, it has been said for each match three lakh litres of water are needed. As Ankita Verma, the lawyer for the petitioners told Rediff.com: “International maintenance for pitch guidelines state that for each match you need three lakh litres [0.3 million] of water for one ground.”

Hence, for seven matches in Mohali, a total of 2.1 million litres of water (0.3 million litres per match multiplied by seven matches) would be needed. This forms around 0.0000035% of water used in Punjab for growing rice.

This is as insignificant as the water to be used for IPL matches in Maharashtra in comparison to the total water used for growing sugarcane. If to save such a small proportion of water, cricket matches can be moved out of Maharashtra, they should be moved out of Punjab as well. The logic is exactly the same.

I know the argument is absurd. But it needs to be made in order to show that the real issues behind the water problem in the country are not being talked about. No one is talking about sugarcane and rice paddy not being the right agricultural crops to be grown in Punjab and Maharashtra. The reason is straightforward, there are political parties which benefit from this.

Further, no one is talking about the astonishing amount of water leakage that happens on a daily basis. While, changing cropping patters is a long term solution, preventing water leakage on a war-footing is a simpler solution, and can be carried out, if the local municipalities get their way around to doing it. The only people who will lose due to this, is the water mafia.

But then this is not as sexy as criticising IPL. I am no fan of BCCI, but IPL is a soft target.

The column originally appeared in the Vivek Kaul Diary on Equitymaster on April 13, 2016

IPL Will Use ZERO Percent of the Water That Sugarcane Does

Indian-Premier-League-IPL-logo

The Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) is where politicians from across party lines come together. And given this, you don’t expect it to be the most transparent and fair institution going around. Over and above this, the BCCI also has monopolistic tendencies. Hence, in most situations I would not support BCCI on an issue.

Nevertheless, the entire issue of moving the Indian Premier League(IPL) T20 cricket tournament out of the state of Maharashtra, in order to save water, is basically nonsense. The real issue when it comes to a water crisis in Maharashtra is the agricultural production of sugarcane and not IPL. Allow me to explain.

Take a look at the following chart.

Chart-1.2: State-wise Shares in Production of Sugarcane and Sugar

Maharashtra is the second largest producer of sugarcane in the country after Uttar Pradesh. It is also the largest producer of sugar, which is a by-product of sugarcane. Maharashtra produces more sugar than Uttar Pradesh primarily because the sugarcane produced in the state has a higher sucrose content. In fact, among all states, Maharasthra has the highest sugar recovery rate of 11.1% from sugarcane.

Getting back to the issue of water and sugarcane. As TN Ninan writes in The Turn of the Tortoise: “Nationally, the bulk of the water is used for agriculture…Cropping patters have developed such that water-intensive crops are grown in water-scare areas—like [rice] paddy in Haryana and sugar cane in Maharashtra.”

In fact, Maharashtra uses a lot more water to produce sugarcane than other states like Bihar. As the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices(CACP) points out in a document titled Price Policy for Sugarcane—2015-16 Sugar Season: “Water productivity analysis shows that Bihar consumes just 822 litres of water to produce a kilogram of sugar compared to over 2100 litres in Maharashtra, and more than 2200 litres each in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Thus, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu consume an additional 1300 to 1400 litres of water over and above what it takes Bihar to produce a kilogram of sugar.”

Andhra Pradesh produces only 4% of India’s sugarcane, so it doesn’t really matter much, if it is a water guzzler. Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu between them produce nearly one-third of India’s sugarcane (22% of Maharashtra and 10% for Tamil Nadu). Given that they use a huge amount of water doing so, this shouldn’t be the case.

As CACP further points out in the case of Maharashtra: “In Maharashtra, sugarcane cultivation, which is on less than 4 percent of the total cropped area of the state, takes away almost 70 percent of irrigation water in the state. This leads to massive inequity in the use of water within the state.”

As mentioned earlier, it takes 2100 litres of water to produce one kilogram of sugar in Maharashtra. This basically means that it will take around 2100000 litres or 2.1 million litres of water to produce one tonne or 1000 kilograms of sugar.

It is estimated that the twenty IPL cricket matches being played in Maharashtra would end up using six million litres of water. How has this estimate been arrived at? A public interest litigation has been filed in the Bombay High Court stating that IPL cricket matches should be moved out of Maharashtra.

Ankita Verma, the lawyer for the petitioners told Rediff.com: “International maintenance for pitch guidelines state that for each match you need three lakh litres of water for one ground. If you multiply that for the 20 matches that will be played here, you will come to the figure of 60 lakh litres [or 6 million litres] of water.”

The BCCI puts the number at four million litres, reports Mint. Let’s take the higher of the two numbers of six million litres of water. As mentioned earlier, it takes 2.1 million litres of water to grow one tonne of sugarcane. Hence, for IPL the total water being used is what would have been good enough to produce less than three tonnes of sugarcane, actually 2.86 tonnes to be very precise.

Hence, the entire argument of IPL cricket matches leading to a wastage of water is basically nonsense. Sugarcane is the real water guzzler in the state of Maharashtra. In 2013-2014, the state produced 75,384,000 tonnes of sugarcane, which would have needed around 158,306,400 million litres of water (75,384,000 x 2.1).

On the other hand, IPL this year will end up using six million litres of water, which would essentially be good enough to produce three tonnes of sugarcane.

So the total amount of water used by IPL will be around 0.0000038%(6.1 million litres expressed as a percentage of 158,306,400 million litres) of the water used to produce sugarcane in Maharashtra in 2013-2014. The proportion is so small that we can even round it off to 0%. This entire argument to move IPL out of Maharashtra is basically nonsense. The real issue is the production of sugarcane in the state.

Of course, no noise is being made against the excessive consumption of water in the production of sugarcane primarily because some of the bigger politicians of the state of Maharashtra are also sugar barons.

There are other issues also that need to be discussed here. India produces much more sugarcane than it consumes. The CACP estimates that the total demand for sugar in India (domestic demand plus bulk demand) is at 24.3 million tonnes. The domestic demand being 12.3 million tonnes and the bulk demand being 12 million tonnes.

In 2014-2015, India produced around 28 million tonnes of sugar. This is 3.7 million tonnes more than demand. This excess sugar is exported. We need to realise that when we export sugar, we are essentially exporting water. As Ninan points out: “Growing sugar cane, even more water hungry than[rice] paddy, in water-scarce Maharashtra is equally contraindicated—especially since the country happens to be surplus in sugar most of the time, and exporting sugar amounts to exporting water.”

And a country as water-constrained as India is, should not be exporting water. To conclude, as CACP points out: “Future growth of cane in Maharashtra is likely to be severely hampered by scarce water supplies unless much of sugarcane is put on drip irrigation or varieties are evolved that use less water. Given that sugarcane is a water guzzling crop, its long term development must ensure that water pricing policies are formulated in a manner that reflects its scarcity.”

And this is something worth thinking about.

Disclosure: The basic idea for writing this column came after reading Sunil Jain’s column titled IPL vs sugarcane: That’s really the equation in Maharashtra in The Financial Express.

The column originally appeared on Vivek Kaul’s Diary on April 12, 2016