Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.
Is India turning into a desert? Are the frequent strangleholds of dust, heat and high humidity that North India witnessed this summer a precursor to what is in store for us in the future?
Dust-laden winds from Western India and the Thar Desert blew across this region, making it difficult to breathe. Even the hill stations of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand were not spared, with a pall of dust hanging over Shimla and Mussoorie. The heat and dust will also have precipitated a surge in incidences of respiratory disorders.
What has this got to do with desertification? Everything. The Indian Institute of Meteorology has issued repeated warnings that the duration of dry spells in the country is set to increase. While the average annual rainfall will remain the same, it will come in short, heavy spurts as was witnessed in Uttarakhand in June 2013.
These drier spells and our inability to harness rainwater have already seen more than a quarter of the country become a desert. A study by the Indian Space Research Organisation, backed by satellite images, shows that over 32% of India’s land is affected by degradation, of which desertification is the major component. This is a frightening prospect because, in essence, fertile land is being converted into a desert.
The figures speak for themselves. India’s total geographical area extends to 329 million hectares (Mha), of which 120 Mha is degraded. C. P. Rajendran, a senior scientist, warns that “the upper soil is being removed for construction and road building purposes and this is affecting our soil adversely. Earlier, soil loss was a slow process which took millions of years. Now, we have managed to change that in just a few decades, but the natural time for the soil to regain what it loses is still as long. It is imperative that we need to stop this entire degradation process on a top priority basis”.
The principal concern is that river basins, both big and small, contain little water. “Take any river basin and you will find water levels are diminishing rapidly,” Rajendran explained. “The government has sanctioned the construction of several dams in Uttarakhand and the Himachal hills, which are destroying our rivers. With groundwater levels falling, we are not going to be able to regain what we have lost.”
The NITI Aayog recently released a report, and it only serves to reiterate what activists have been complaining about for years. The report states that “India is undergoing the worst water crisis in its history. Already, more than 600 million people are facing acute water shortages. Critical groundwater resources – which account for 40% of our water supply — are being depleted at unsustainable rates.” The report further warned that the crisis will worsen because, by 2030, the country’s demand for water will be twice the available supply, creating a severe water crisis for millions of people.
A UNESCO report should serve as another wake-up call. India is staring at a deepening water crisis with few steps being taken to ameliorate this bleak situation. It predicts an intensified water crisis across the nation by 2050, with many parts of central India battling a 40% withdrawal of renewable surface water resources. It claims more than half of our rivers are heavily polluted and our groundwater resources contain contamination from metals and improper disposal of human excreta.
The CPCB has issued repeated warnings that if the situation is not reversed immediately, the 'demand for freshwater for all users will be unmanageable'.
Another factor feeding the spectre of increasing aridity is rapid deforestation. For example, the forests of the Aravali hills protected the National Capital Region, including Delhi, against the dust from Rajasthan. But our political class and bureaucrats do not seem to realise the gravity of the situation. Despite the Aravalis having been designated a Natural Conservation Zone, environmentalists are crying wolf over the latest attempt to exclude a large swathe of forest land located east of the Surajkund-Badhkal road. Chetan Agarwal, an environmental analyst, recently wrote about how a vast track of 5,000 ha of Aravali land was not shown to be a forest by the authorities, obviously keeping in mind the surging demand for real estate development.
“We are facing an ecological crisis. Unless we come up with strategies to preserve our ecological resources which help provide water and livelihood security, we will see a worsening of the situation,” said Himanshu Thakkar, an environmental activist.
India does not have a specific legislative or policy framework to combat desertification. The concern for arresting and reversing land degradation and desertification is reflected in many policies and soil conservation programs, but few of them are realised.
Scientists believe the government should have been at the forefront of mobilising vulnerable communities to help them harvest rainwater and to regenerate ecosystems, thereby enhancing nature-based livelihoods. Climate change adaptation and mitigation should lead this effort. If immediate steps are not taken, we are definitely inviting an unprecedented calamity- and this time, it will be too late.
