Water Management & Gloomy State Of The Economy - Today Current Affairs Topics

Water Management In The 21st Century

What is the issue?

Our ideas & institutions dealing with water management have become out-dated.
We are probably peddling towards disastrous wrongly perceieved solutions, that calls for an immediate course correction.

What is the background?

Flooding across various regions in India has become an annual phenomenon.
Alternately, farmers in other regions committing suicide due to lack of rains have also become common.
Notably, lakes catching fire, water contamination & plummeting ground-water tables are indicative of the seriousness of the crisis that we face.

What are our systemic flaws?

Outdated Ideas - Ideas have been slow to evolve in India.
Whether it is management of floods or droughts, the government planning engineers haven’t thought outside conventional norms.
The legal and constitutional mandates too are archaic and in most cases lack clarity & relevance to the 21st century.
The legal framework is yet to recognized the concepts of “Integrated Water Resource Management, Environment flows, Conjunctive use, Basin management, Water footprint and Virtual water trade”.
Multitude of Organisations - About 23 organisations deal with water resources at the union government level alone.
Similar counterparts exist at State, district and village levels with overlapping jurisdictions.
Paradoxically, these organisations rarely co-ordinate or integrate between themselves to solve a water problem.
Expertise - Also, most engineers in water organisations in India don’t have the requisit qualifications regarding water resources.
Even the Central Water Engineering Services, the only dedicated water service cadre of union isn’t composed of technocrats in water resources but civil servants and civil engineers.

How can the future be best approached?

The 21st century faces daunting challenges that were unknown earlier.
Population explosion and changes in consumption patterns have raised the demand for water.
Climate change, silting & aging dams and the deteriorating quality of freshwater are serious issues that needs focus.
This calls for relevant structurtal & policy changes along with the development of expertise that is capable of thinking out of the box.

Why is the issue?

The GDP growth is slowing & inflation is high.
Although, short-term disturbances will get rectified soon, a full bounce back looks far off.

What do the latest numbers say?

The Index of Industrial Production has slumped to 1.2% in July as against a 4.5% during the same month last year.
IIP for June this year was even worse at -0.2%
Retail price inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, rose to a five-month high of 3.36% in August.
These numbers follow the slowdown reported earlier this month in the GDP growth during the first quarter of 2017-18.
Growth in the latest quarter hit a three-year low.

What has caused the slowdown?

The implementation of the GST has caused significant uncertainty among businesses.
This has led to a drop in business activity across the value chain, which is being reflected in the industrial output numbers.
Also, the economy has been contracting for the last five consecutive quarters, starting well before the implementation of GST or the demonetisation.
Many have attributed this to the drought in private investment which has lasted for years now.
The current slowdown is thus very likely the result of both short-term disturbances caused by GST as well as other factors.

What is the likely policy response?

The slump in economic growth has increased pressure on the RBI to provide a boost to the economy by cutting interest rates.
The underlying belief is that printing money can grow the economy.
The rise in retail inflation in August, however, probably rules out any form of aggressive monetary stimulus by the RBI in its next policy meeting due to be held in October.
Some part of the lost growth may be recovered over the next few quarters as the economy adapts to GST and other related short-term disturbances.
A sustained recovery that puts India on the high-growth trajectory for years, however, may be possible only after the government implements structural reforms in the labour and land market.

Author : Shankar IAS Academy, Chennai.