Water

This proposal was put forth at a high-level meeting between rural development minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh and Bihar public health engineering department (PHED) minister Aswini Kumar Chowbey.

The districts in which high arsenic content has been found in the groundwater include Buxar, Bhojpur, Patna, Lakhisarai, Munger, Bhagalpur, Vaishali, Sharan, Samastipur, Begusarai, Khagaria and Katihar.

In other districts including, Gaya, Rohtas, Nawada, north of Munger and Bhagalpur and Sheikhpura, high level of floride has been found in groundwater. Urging the Centre to help the state in its effort to provide safe drinking water, Chowbey said, "A poor state like Bihar cannot undertake this task on its own and so the Centre should approve the special package, including the technical support, to make water in the state safe for drinking."

"I have spoken to the Union minister for rural development and he has assured that the state will be provided with the required fund," Chowbey added.

Kulhara village in Bihar's Vaishali district has six drinking water wells. And in the scorching summer, Janpatia Devi's family doesn't have a drop to drink. That's because she is a Dalit, and the well in the village meant only for her community has gone dry.

Wells the only source of drinking water in this village -- are divided on the basis of caste. but Dalits get the worst deal.

"The water is not potable at all. It is dirty but we have no other choice," Sunita Devi, a distraught villager, says.

And dry wells mean a half-kilometre trek to nearby villages to fetch water.

The well with filthy water is the main source of water for around 50 households and they blame the government's apathy for the present state of affairs.

They further point out that frogs are in abundance in the water that they drink.

"There is acute water shortage here and we don't have any alternatives," said Virendra Mhamri, a resident.

" We are forced to drink this dirty and smelly water. When the water of this well dries up, we are forced to fetch water from far off villages. Besides, there is a hand pump which is also far away," said Murti Devi, another resident.

Many parts of India suffer severe dry spells and water crisis during the summer months when temperatures soar.

But he's not alone. Lakhs of residents of central Bihar are living this way, as the entire region reels under acute water shortage.

The temperature is soaring; taps and wells have gone dry and the rivers have turned into narrow canals. In a waterless land, those surviving are living a nightmare.

"We haven't been able to take a bath for three months now. We have to use a wet washcloth to clean ourselves. Even the government doesn't give us any attention," Chandradev says.

The only respite are the isolated wells, many of which are also drying up fast. Fetching water from these wells could easily mean a six-kilometer long walk.

Reacting to the developments which took place after the cancellation of the contract to the Tantia Constructions Ltd the chief minister said that the state government would not allow loot of public money by any agency even if it means facing inconvenience for some more time.

He said the decision was taken by the road construction department after all the options have been exhausted and added that he had full faith in the road construction department.

Nitish not only came down on Tantia but flayed National Building Construction Corporation, which had been assigned the task of constructing drainage in Kankarbagh. Last month he even inspected some of the drainage works and ordered for the lodging of case against the firm.

The state Urban Development department joint secretary Prem Chandra Chowdhary, at a press conference in Patna on Thursday claimed that the 'people of Patna would not experience water-logging this monsoon as the Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) has floated tender for the clean up of Patna underground drainage', an insinuation that no one in sane mind is buying unless the contractors come from the planet Krypton.

Blaming the National Building and Construction Corporation (NBCC) for poor workmanship and ignoring the government's ineptness in outsourcing the work to NBCC in the first place, Chowdhary said the drainage built by the NBCC were being demolished and then rebuilt from scratch 'to rid the state capital from the water-logging' problem.

Summer is yet to reveal its true colours but there's already a drinking water crisis in the city. Residents of Shekhpura and Aadmi Gaon are facing an acute water shortage following the breakdown of the water pumping station that supplies to these localities.

Patna Jal Parshad (PJP), the agency responsible for water supply, provided just two water tankers that proved inadequate for the 10,000-odd who live there.

Irked over the water shortage, residents resorted to road blockade, forcing the PJP to act. Mechanics were put on the job and the pumping station was repaired on April 2.

This is not an isolated incident. Such breakdowns and water shortages are common in the city, particularly during summer months when demand for drinking water shoots up. Localities like sector VI on Bhootnath Road, Chitragupta Nagara, Nurnai Bagh, Mussalahpur, Ambedkar Colony, Alam Ganj, Krishna Nagar and areas near Gol Ghar and Science College are plagued by an intermittent water crisis as old motors in pumping stations play truant every now and again.

Several of the 89 drinking water pumping stations in the city are in poor shape. PJP has been found wanting on proper up-keep of motors and electric transformers, leading to frequent breakdowns.

Replying to a short-notice question of the RJD MLA Bhim Singh in the state legislative council, Singh said we are making relentless efforts for eliciting sanction from the governments of Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand which is necessary for execution of the project.

Talks are in progress between the authorities of Bihar and its neighbouring states of UP and Jharkhand as the Centre too has responded positively in this connection, he said.

Singh said a sum of Rs 1111.14 crore was earmarked for the reservoir-cum-hydel power project in Rohtas.

The detailed project report had already been submitted to the Central Water Commission but the project is still pending for the lack of required sanction from the two states, he added.

The Sonari Bagan area network will supply round-the-clock water to around 60,000 residents in 16 localities.

Jusco general manager (water management) GS Basu said the company spent around Rs 9 crore last year on building a water tower and a main supply line, among the other things that will support the network.

The network, which will distribute around 10 million litres of potable water a day on completion in six months' time, is to cost Jusco around Rs 12 crore.

"High level of arsenic in the groundwater is posing a threat to 120,000 people living along the Ganga," Prem Kumar told IANS after he apprised the state assembly of the danger.

He said the worst affected district was Bhojpur, followed by Buxar, Vaishali, Bhagalpur, Samastipur, Khagaria, Katihar, Chapra, Munger and Darbhanga.

Harail Chapar, a village in Samastipur district, recorded 2,100 parts per billion (ppb) of arsenic in groundwater, the highest in the state.

The World Health Organisation guideline for a safe limit is 10 ppb, while the Indian government's guideline is 50 ppb.

The 12 districts under threat were identified in a state government report prepared last year on the basis of a survey that collected water samples at random from 19,961 tubewells in 398 villages, spread across 42 blocks in 12 districts.

Singh was reacting to Yadav's statement in which he had mentioned that the state government had not informed him about the shortage of water in the Sone canal.

Singh said that even as senior engineers and officials of the WRD were in constant touch with senior officials of the Rihand (Uttar Pradesh) and Bansagar (Madhya Pradesh) water reservoirs, water had not been released to the state.

The engineer-in-chief of the state WRD was camping at the Indrapuri barrage but no effort was made to release water to Bihar.

He appealed to the junior Union minister to see to it that the requisite water share for Bihar is released from the two reservoirs at the earliest.

The Court order came following complaints by lawyers that water-logging in Patna for last so many days has badly affected the life of the people and is likely to cause diseases. One of the complainants complained before the court that a sump house of the Bihar Raj Jal Parishad in Kankarbagh has not been working for the last about a decade.

Lawyers complained that the de-watering process was slow and that many localities have started stinking. School-children, old and infirm citizens and house-wives are facing extreme difficulty as their houses are still submerged in knee-deep water.

One of the lawyers complained that way back in 1997 the court asked the government to undertake a permanent solution to the perennial problem of water-logging in Kankarbagh and some of the adjoining localities, but in the last so many years the problem only got aggravated.

The urban development department through an affidavit on Wednesday conceded that water-logging persists in a large part of the city.

Gujarat could soon witness corporate get-togethers on hovercrafts in the Arabian Sea, in far east, in the dense mangrove forests between the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. The Sunderban cruise has already introduced the region as a destination for high-end corporate meetings. Ever since the river transport company, Vivada Inland Waterways, introduced Sunderban river cruise in March 2007, there have been a substantial number of clients from the niche segment, Vivada director S Chakravarty told ET.

Not to forget the Hoogly river cruise in Kolkata that has been witnessing an assemblage of the high-fliers from the business world of Kolkata on various cruises every evening.

A report prepared on groundwater management and ownership and released by the Planning Commission has recommended cooperative management of groundwater by its users, but did not address contentious issues such as pricing of groundwater for industrial and commercial units.

The findings will be used by the commission in formulating the roadmap for water resources in the Eleventh Plan (2007-2012).

"Since groundwater management is best done at local levels, the report has recommended empowering panchayats to lead the initiative to monitor its optimal use. Besides, the report has suggested creating a consensus among all users on restricting over use of groundwater," said Kirit Parikh a member of the commission.

The report doesn't specifically discuss the use of groundwater by commercial and industrial units, which is also resulting in environmental degradation.

Parikh, who also chaired the expert committee that prepared this report, noted that since over 80% of groundwater in India is used by agriculture, the report has largely concentrated on its rational use by that sector.

The government has made almost no headway in its ambitious plan to treat groundwater for arsenic, fluoride and salinity under its flagship programme, Bharat Nirman.

"With more than 210,000 habitations remaining to be covered, there is no way we can meet the target by 2009. And there are chances that this project may go beyond 2011," said a senior official at the Planning Commission, India's apex policy planning organization. The official did not wish to be identified.

While the government's target was to provide potable water free from these chemicals to 217,000 habitations in the country over a four-year period beginning 2005, it has managed to do this only in 3.4%, or around 7,300 of the habitations until April this year, according to a review done by the Planning Commission. The number is less than one-third of the tar get of 25,000 habitations set for the first two years (2005-07) of Bharat Nirman.

With an initial estimated cost of Rs1.76 trillion, Bharat Nirman planned to develop rural infrastructure, covering areas such as water, irrigation, roads, housing, electrification and telecom connectivity.

The Planning Commission official said the main reason for the slow progress of the project was that each state government wants anywhere between Rs10,000 crore and Rs30,000 crore to tackle the problems of chemicals in water. India has a rural water supply network of more than 5.2 million hand pumps and more than 0.3 million piped water supply systems across 0.6 million villages that cover 1.4 million habitations.

The government has increased its spend on drinking water project by 44.44% to Rs6,500 crore this year.

Another government official involved with the monitoring of Bharat Nirman projects defended the government's initiative and said the Planning Commis sion figures may not account for potable water obtained from an alternative source. The official, who did not wish to be identified, did not provide any data to support this.

Major rivers, however, showed a receding trend in Bihar, Assam and Uttar Pradesh. Five persons, including three children of a family, were drowned in Begusarai district of Bihar on Wednesday in two separate incidents of boat capsize.

In Gujarat, the brunt was borne by coastal town of Veraval, Jamnagar and Rajkot, where over 16,000 people have been shifted to safer places. While an Army column was pressed into service in Veraval in Junagadh district, an IAF helicopter was used in Jamnagar and two National Disaster Response Force teams were rushed to Rajkot. The helicopter rescued eight people, who were stranded in flood waters after a check-dam overflowed.

This year 290 people have lost their lives in Gujarat floods and rains. On Wednesday eight persons were reported missing in the state. Boats have been engaged in rescue operation.

Minister of Earth Sciences, Kapil Sibal, today said the plant was a forerunner to similar plants of higher capacity that could be set up in public private partnership (PPP) along the vast Indian coastline using the same low-cost technology to solve the country's water woes in the future. The single point mooring of 1000 m at the barge was the first of its kind in the world, the minister said.

Population growth along with limited fresh water sources has made good quality water a precious commodity. Considering the fact that the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change's latest assessment report predicted the gross per capita water availability to drop by almost 38 per cent by 2050, declining from 1820 cubic meter at present to 1,000 cubic meter, this low cost method can become an answer to challenges posed by imminent climate change and global warming.

"Following some more improvisations, we expect to be ready with the entire technology early next year and bring in private players to set up desalination plants of higher capacity along the coast for the use of common people, " he added.

Even in the UK, the average use of water per person per day is only 150 litres, not too far above the Indian level, and in neighbouring Bangladesh, the situation is much worse with less than 50 litres of water available for average use per person per day. Yet, specific examples from different parts show just how disparate the distribution of water is and how dismal the situation is for millions who do not get even the minimum requirement of 20 litres of clean water per person per day.

Today he has reinvented himself as a vendor of what counts here as the most precious of commodities: the water under his land.

Each year he bores ever deeper. His well now reaches 130 feet down. Four times a day he starts up his electric pumps. The water that gurgles up, he sells to the local government 13,000 gallons a day. What is left, he sells to thirsty neighbors. He reaps handsomely, and he plans to continue for as long as it lasts.

The country is running through its groundwater so fast that scarcity could threaten whole regions like this one, drive people off the land and ultimately stunt the country's ability to farm and feed its people.

With the population soaring past one billion and with a driving need to boost agricultural production, Indians are tapping their groundwater faster than nature can replenish it, so fast that they are hitting deposits formed at the time of the dinosaurs.

What we will do?" wondered Pavan Agarwal, an assistant engineer with the state Public Health and Engineering Department, as he walked across a stretch of dusty fields near Mr. Yadav's water farm. "We have to deliver water.

Click on "Full Story" for more about these point

• Saving for a Dry Day


• The Politics of Water


• A Parched Village

The bench told the government to keep the court updated of steps taken to resolve the problem before it reconvenes on August 21.

Earlier the court had appointed a committee of experts to recommend ways to put an end to the recurring water-logging problem in the city at the sign of even slight rain during each monsoon.

The committee had recommended repair and replacement of the existing drain pipes and a complete ban on the usage of polythene bags.