330 million without water

Desperate times: Villagers collecting water from an almost dried up well at Thackerchi wadi on the outskirts of Mumbai. — EPA

New Delhi: India is scrambling to get water to drought-hit parts of the country as a sweltering heatwave adds to the misery.

Some 330 million people in 256 of the nation’s 664 districts have been affected, the government told the Supreme Court last week.

So far, 10 of India’s 29 states have declared themselves in a state of drought following two years of below-average monsoon rains.

Water trains are running daily to deliver water to parts of Maha­rashtra, while Odisha state has extended summer vacations for schools and deployed more than 1,000 tankers to supply water.

In the southern state of Telangana, the government has promised to continue supplying drinking water to affected households until the monsoon rains in June.

“The drinking water supply is the biggest concern... because there is no rain, the water table has come down and we are losing tube wells,” said Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra, the special relief commissioner for Odisha, where temperatures shot past 45°C this month.

“We haven’t had any rains for seven months, which is unusual for Orissa as it is a coastal state.”

In many areas, the drought has been aggravated by soaring temperatures even before the peak summer months arrive, leaving more than 100 people dead and triggering concerns that already low reservoir waters will be depleted further.

According to Central Water Commission data released last week, storage levels in India’s 91 reservoirs have dipped to 22% of total capacity, down from 27% last month.

The water crisis has intensified this year because of two poor monsoons in a row.

The monsoons usually move from south to north and then east, slowly covering the country before withdrawing in Septem­ber. The rains recharge water bodies and groundwater.

The poor monsoons have been attributed partly to the El Nino effect, which involves the warming of Pacific waters and has always affected the rains in India. — The Straits Times / Asia News Network