Dr. Vandana Shiva, President Of The Research Foundation For Science Technology And Ecology
...(Gil Martin 1995)
After independence in India as in much of the world, the government made parallel efforts to control, manage, and distribute this precious resource and eventually played a bad dominant role in water allocation. Water became a state subject and policies framed at the national level now have to be passed at the state level.
During the past three decades the government has spent over Rs. 100 billion on developing irrigation facilities and over 1,554 dams of various sizes have been constructed
Intensive irrigation shifted the water use technology from tanks and open wells to tube wells, once again with loans from the World Bank. India has more than 17 million energised wells today. The total number of pumps jumped from 4.3 million in 1980-1981 to 9.1 million in 1990-1991. Groundwater has been increasingly exploited to meet agricultural and domestic needs.
Progressive increase in groundwater structures: 1947 to 1997
Year Drug Wells (millions) Private Shallow
Tube-wells
(thousands) Deep
Tube-wells
(thousands)
1947 3.51 1 1.7
1950/51 3.86 3 2.4
1968/69 6.11 360 14.6
1973/74 6.94 1000 22.0
1978/79 7.69 1960 32.6
1984/85 8.74 3360 46.2
1993/94 10.20 5040 69.4
1997 10.92 6020 83.2
Source: Looking Back to Think Ahead: Green India 2047, TERI 1998, 48.
The benefits of the 'water revolution' have not equally reached the entire population. Of the total annual per capita water withdrawal in the country, estimated at 612 cubic meters, 5.94 is used by agriculture and industry, and 18 cubic meters is for domestic use. Only 1140 cu km of water resources have been made utilizable annually out of the total available flow of about 1880 cu km. This has been because the Indian expert policy makers have largely ignored our indigenous low-cost traditional systems of water harvesting, which were small-scale and sustainable and looked after the needs...
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