CHANDIGARH - While warnings by farmers and experts over the years that Punjab’s groundwater level is falling dangerously low has been strengthened recently by satellite imagery, authorities seem slow to measure up to the agricultural challenge .
Based on satellite imagery, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) scientists have recently warned of a “collapse of agricultural output and severe shortage of potable water” in India’s bread basket. They have echoed concerns expressed by agricultural experts that the future of foodgrain production in Punjab is at stake.
Much of the groundwater depletion in Punjab, the green revolution state which contributes a substantial part of India’s foodgrains, is attributed to sowing of water-gulping paddy varieties.
But the Punjab government is hardly keeping pace with the deterioration of groundwater levels.
“We are trying to identify blocks where water level is going down. We have a Rs.10-crore (Rs.100-million) project for water re-charging. The late sowing of paddy this year will also improve groundwater level,” Punjab’s Irrigation Minister Janmeja Singh Sekhon told IANS.
“If rains fail again, I feel that a ban on paddy sowing should be there,” Sekhon added, without saying what, if anything, was being done at the ground level to check further depletion of groundwater level.
NASA scientists — led by hydrologist Matt Rodell, who have been hunting the disappearing groundwater in northern India, particularly in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, using twin satellites of GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Change Experiment) — have warned that “beneath northern India’s irrigated fields of wheat, rice and barley…. The groundwater has been disappearing.
They pointed out that groundwater levels were falling everywhere despite no unusual trends in rainfall over the region. They have pointed out that in recent years, rainfall over the region has been slightly above average, this year’s shortfall notwithstanding.
“If measures are not taken to ensure sustainable groundwater usage, consequences for the 114 million residents of the region may include a collapse of agricultural output and severe shortages of potable water,” Rodell, who is based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt in the US, stated on the NASA website.
Rodell, who was this month contacted by educationist and land-owner Mandeep Gill of Punjab’s Hoshiarpur town, 140 km from here, to know about the groundwater level scare, got a reply that if the situation was not controlled now, things would get out of hand.
“It depends largely on how the government addresses the issue. Will they implement incentives and regulations to encourage farmers to plant less water-intensive crops and to otherwise reduce water use? That depends largely on the will of the people and what they tell their government representatives,” Rodell wrote to Gill.
But Gill, who is chairman of the Woodland Overseas School near Hoshiarpur and has been using techniques to re-charge water, says that the Punjab government is not serious about the groundwater depletion.
“The government is just not serious. If it rains, the government cannot utilise the water and it is wasted. Educational institutions can make people aware about this,” Gill told IANS.
Punjab’s soil and water engineering department official A.K. Jain said that a model technique for water re-charging was being demonstrated in the state. “But, for this recharging to succeed, the model will have to be adopted on a large scale. With paddy sowing, water level is still going down,” Jain said.
Scientists say that re-charging of groundwater takes years unlike lakes, rivers and streams which respond more quickly to weather changes.
The groundwater alarm has been sounded by the NASA scientists in their report posted on the NASA website earlier this month. It has also been published in the journal Nature.
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