India’s daunting challenge: There’s water everywhere, and nowhere | Hacker News Reader

India’s daunting challenge: There’s water everywhere, and nowhere

nationalgeographic.com

136 pointsbaud14725845 comments

A highly recommended talk on the relevant topic by P Sainath https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-l2LvA2dSI .

I can't think of anyone who has researched and understands rural India better than Sainath. He spends ~200+ days per year touring rural India; he has done this over last 20+ years. His articles are quite revealing.

If you want to understand rural India then I highly recommend these two sources:

1. https://ruralindiaonline.org

2. Book, "Everybody Loves a Good Drought": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everybody_Loves_a_Good_Drought

By some reports, India is the largest exporter of water in the world [1]. Almost 100 billion cubic meters, 4 times more than the total household consumption is exported in the form of water intensive crops (mostly rice and cotton). This pales in comparison to the total agricultural consumption, probably 10-15x more. There are solutions to this, of course, but they're politically difficult to implement.

Edit: The total water consumption is closer to 700 billion cubic meters. My guess for agricultural consumption were off by a factor of 2x.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-06/india-...

This. Many of the most water short areas grow water intensive crops and have droughts. Another thing is bureaucrats love droughts, you get extra money from the center for relief and it is a huge opportunity for corruption. There was even a book written on it called Everybody Loves a Good Drought, by P. Sainath, about his research findings of poverty in the rural districts of India.

> “Where is all of this excess water?” Raghu Chundawat, a leading Indian conservationist, asks me sourly in nearby Panna National Park, a sanctuary for endangered tigers. “The government won’t share its flow data. I don’t think even they know what the impacts will be.”

In a quick Google search I was able to find this - http://www.mppcb.nic.in/pdf/594-English.pdf. I'm not an expert on this topic, but seems like there is some amount of flow data.

This is just one example of what's wrong with the article. It feels more like a travel blog than a well researched article.

That link (from 8 years ago) doesn't contradict the claim that the government won't share its flow data and doesn't know the what the impacts will be.

Can you elaborate on how the report doesn't answer those questions? Raghu Chundawat is asking the question about the Ken-Betwa project and this report is exactly about that project. The fact that the report was out 8 years ago and Raghu Chundawat still says there is no data is surprising.

Well, the author has been walking through the area, so the travel blog feel isn't too far off the mark

After having read the article i can say that the headline is a misnomer. It is more of a travelogue than about the water crisis. But an interesting read nevertheless.

It's indeed a travelogue, a fascinating one at that, into its 7th year [1]. The water story is a sub-plot.

[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/out-of-eden-walk...

> In total, some 600 million people—roughly half India’s population—live without enough clean water.

I think India is projected to add 350M more ppl by 2050. The challenge is certainly daunting.

Lets not forget that they had about 300M people in 1950. It would be 5 times population growth in a century. This is historically unheard of and it is no wonder that it is causing such problems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_England

England.

Population in 1800: 7.7 million.

Population in 1900: 30 million.

So not quite 5x, but almost 4x, not that far off.

I'm pretty sure there are many other examples of nations undergoing a huge population boom as they industrialize.

Mandatory Palestine (roughly Israel + Palestinian Territories today) had a population of ~750k in 1920 [0]. The population of Israel today is ~9m [1] and of the Palestinian territories another ~5m [2].

It would have probably still been a massive increase even without the migration of Jews into what is now Israel, as there are ~13m [3] Palestinians world-wide today and most of them live in the middle east (PT, Israel & refugees in neighboring countries). You can see similar albeit less extreme growth in neighboring countries (e.g. Egypt went from ~13m to ~100m in the same period).

Like Oblio I would guess this is common for countries who were unindustrialized in 1920 as they have seen massive reduction in child mortality & massive increase in food supplies due to advances in modern medicine & agriculture in the last 100 years.

EDIT: I tried to phrase this comment with good intentions as neutrally as possible, but seeing as how this is a sensitive topic please let me know if I got something wrong.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Palestine#Demographi...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_territories

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinians

Maybe it was 5x. In that period millions of English went to colonies.

That's a valid point. What many people don't know about the French-Indian War, for example, is that the British colonists numbered in the high hundreds of thousands (if not a million) and the French colonists were about 50.000. That's why Quebec was doomed regardless of any short term military results.

Yes, English had crazy fertility rate. At the begining of the Hundred Years’ War France had population of 17 million and Britain(excluding Ireland) had 4 million. By the time of Napoleonic wars Britain(with Ireland) had 17 million people compared with 30 million in France. English also had much higher emigration rate to colonies.

When the First World War started UK had a larger population than France.

Thanks for this observation. It explains how they had so much excess man power to run their empire.

I found a very interesting graph related to the population growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Uni...

There are many infrastructure projects that can help a little bit. However historically land acquisition has been very difficult (unlike say China) which meant projects kept on extending. A lot of it is also because of corruption that the system enabled. However it is improving much faster now.

In terms of water security a low hanging fruit is agricultural policy, however due to the politically tricky thing it is , it is not an easy solution.

There are 10s of different problems when it comes to issues such as resolving water and it is not due to lack of will. A classic example in my state is that rich farmers (< 5%) hoard all the resources (land, water, free energy and subsidies) cultivating cash rich crops and poor farmers have to survive on subsistence. Average land holdings are very small and in my state agri output is directly proportional to amount of water you have access to, either by being close to a water body or some groundwater.

I think solar power based lift irrigation projects will solve water woes in India

Elections != Democracy; India is Feudalism masquerading as Democracy

How do I read this article? Looks like it is behind a paywall.

No paywall my side. (Noscript/uorigin/ maybe nextdns not sure)

https://archive.is/mb23Q

Given a complex economic situation pitting the green revolution and the need to feed a billion people versus the sustainability of local ecology and scarce groundwater resources, the article offers this pithy insight:

>Given enough time, water defeats almost anything. Stone. Iron. Bone. Rivers saw through the stratigraphy of time itself. Yet patriarchy endures.

I had to read though half the article to get to this. You're all welcome.

Would love to read about this in a more digestible format. This kind of journalism is going the way of the dodo.

The author (Paul Salopek) is walking from East Africa to South America, writing shorter articles along the way. The project is called out of eden walk and there is a rss feed you can subscribe to: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/out-of-eden-walk...

Due to lack of will and wisdom; Since 80% people are poor https://archive.vn/bS2fL in India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses is very effective in India;

Getting these problems fixed will be money well spent. Trying to go to the moon is not an example of that.

Getting your Govt to fix all the US' crumbling infrastructure will be money well spent. Spending a crap load of money on your military is not an example of that.

There is waste surely --but if we don't "police" then people complain the US isn't keeping the peace and they let dictators do as they wish. People want it both ways, they want the US to stabilize the world but they also want the US to keep out of other countries' business.

Trust me, nobody wants you to police the whole world. UN was formed for that very reason. US has over the years weakened UN to expand its own reach. So please get the hell out of everywhere and let UN handle.

UN is toothless without the US. Alas, US populace is tired of being chastised for spending massively and making mistakes on Pax Americana[0]. So, the US will increasingly isolate and won’t have the will to stand up to Russia and China aggression, which they are aware of and increasingly taking advantage of in the last decade. UK, France, and India aren’t formidable; not that they’d be willing. As you wish, we’ll find out how effective the UN’s deterrence is in the next decade.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana

The UN is not much of a mechanism to rein in China or Russia anyway considering the structure of the Security Council.

USA spends very little money on military as a percentage of GDP while being the most powerful force in history. I would argue that that money is very well spent.

Learning to survive on the moon might translate into being able to survive in India one day.

Space research necessitates research into water recollection, purifying, and usage.

Going to the moon isn't just dumping money into getting from point A to B, like paying for gas during a daily commute. It's about advancing technology that improves life for everyone. Just look at this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies

I’d argue that it also creates high-tech jobs. More skilled workers allows a country to go upmarket, rather than simply building cheap stuff in factories.

Hopefully, a few of these people become entrepreneurs.

India's moon mission budget ($145 million) was 11 cents per Indian person (1.353 billion).

It was 0.02% of a single year's expenditure ($725 billion) by the Indian federal government-- spread out over multiple years.

It amounted to approximately 0.005% of India's GDP ($2.7 trillion).

And the money spent didn't disappear it went into infrastructure, manufacturing, and other mostly domestic pockets.

The only money that disappeared from the economy was the value of the fuel burned and materials not returned to earth from space.

Those 11 cents per person (well, let's call it 10 because the value of the craft on the moon in pieces) are floating around the economy, ready to be spent on water supplies.

Surprising to see comments like this on HN of all places.

1) It assumes the problem is due to lack of money - that India being poor is not spending enough and throwing money at the problem would make it go away.

2) It completely disregards that the government has multiple departments who can independently make progress in varying fields.

Stop with this stupid trope already; think before you post.

If you want to save money - when I was India for 3 years, I saw same road being paved 3-4 times a year, nowhere else I had ever seen such a colossal waste of money due to improper planning.

Paving same road 3-4 times is not development.

It is not something that is planned. It is grass roots corruption. I will give you a crazier example. In a large taluka (like a town) in South India in a very poor water scarce area, money for a particular stretch of road (20 km) is given every year. The contract always goes to the company owned by the local MLA (member of state assembly). They deliberately make a weak road which washes away in a year. Some of my friends have seen this happen 11-12 times in a year. They say nowadays at least the contractor makes some roads, 10+ years back the road would not be constructed and the funds withdrawn.

This corruption is lower in centrally funded large scale expressways because lot of data logging, monitoring etc. is done nowadays. Having said that execution with < 10% money being pilfered means a highly successful project.

Indian bureaucracy always finds a way to slow down any expenditure on public infrastructure, unless they manage to get something of it for themselves. The system is so well evolved in all cases, e.g. agri subsidies are only given to farmers who pay middlemen 10% of the amount in cash (which is actually a progress !). The money transfers is handled by middlemen and not by the Govt. officials themselves.

The only slow solution to reducing this corruption has been technology, cashless digital transfers etc. It will take another 10 years to reduce to 'acceptable' levels.

I'm pretty sure this is a troll, guys.

Valuing short term goals over long term goals is how you get into a vicious cycle of poverty and stagnation. What people might not understand is that the long term goal isn't necessarily more expensive than the value you get out of it. Going to space sounds really "difficult" compared to something "basic" like solving water problems except it ignores that going to space might just be a matter of spending money whereas solving water would require solving political problems. The solution might be easy but it cannot be bought with money.

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