SwitchON Foundation today observed, World Water Day 2022 by organizing a high level multi stakeholder convening organized at The Lalit Great Eastern Kolkata. The discussion titled “Groundwater: Making the Invisible Visible” was primarily aimed at creating awareness on the importance of groundwater conservation and recharge.
Delivering the opening keynote address, Hon’ble Additional Chief Secretary, Department of Power GoWB, Shri S. Suresh Kumar said – “Bengal has been blessed with groundwater, however there is increasing evidence now that in many districts it is depleting at a faster rate. We need to act now before we cross the tipping point.”
Also delivering the second keynote address, Hon’ble Principal Secretary of WRID, Sri Prabhat Kumar Mishra, IAS, highlighted the importance of water conservation. He said – “Groundwater happens to be out of sight and thus out of mind and excess use of groundwater has led to issues of salinity and arsenic. The department has taken multiple initiatives from building check dams, farm ponds and installation of various technology to conserve and monitor use of groundwater amongst 2500 water user groups of farmers created across Bengal”
This event highlighted the current critical challenges of groundwater in the state of West Bengal, with participating technical experts raising the alarm bell, calling for immediate policy action. Though West Bengal is not conventionally seen to be a water scarce state as compared to the arid and semi-arid states of central and western India, the Central Groundwater Board (CGWB) shows a consistent decline in the groundwater level in the state. According to CGWB, the overall groundwater level has declined by 1.28 meters from 1993 to 2019 in West Bengal.
The CGWB data further shows that in some pockets of selected blocks of Purba Medinipur district (Bhagwanpur, Sutahata, Ratulia, Anukhagram, Anantapur), the groundwater level is as low as 35 meter which is comparable to the water levels of Jodhpur in Rajasthan. Various stakeholders attended the event and took nuanced stands on how we as a society can work together on improving the current situation.
Most of South Asia today is overwhelmingly dependent on groundwater irrigation for supporting its predominantly agrarian economies. With India leading it in terms of being the world’s single largest user, with over 90 % used only for irrigation. It is then no surprise that in such pump lift irrigation based economies, fortunes of groundwater and energy sectors are closely entwined, often referred as the ‘energy irrigation nexus’. It is also important to note that there has been a 69% decline in the per capita availability of water in India from 1950 to 2011 which is further estimated to be reduced by an additional 13% by 2025. As per NASA, groundwater is depleting at the rate of 5km3/year in the eastern belt of India due to excess irrigation.
Over the years there has been significantly increasing depletion of groundwater across India primarily caused by dying of wells due to continuous temperature rise and submersible pumping in the agricultural field. In the case of West Bengal, this is even more relevant for districts like Bankura, Birbhum, Purulia which have low cultivation areas due to low precipitation and very high temperature. With growing demand for food production, there will be a need to draw more water from deeper water beds which will tend to increase the water stress and also affect the high energy demand and thereby further increase the irrigation pumping cost for Bengal Farmers. Therefore, it is important to look at the groundwater issue along with energy and agriculture which brings us to the need for developing a prospective action plan to address the nexus between energy-water-agriculture.
0 
0 
