Jal Shakti Abhiyan: catch the rain

• Ministry of Jal Shakti is taking up this national campaign 'Jal Shakti Abhiyan: Catch the Rain) focusing on saving and conserving rainwater from March to end of November 2022 in the pre-monsoon and monsoon periods, covering both urban and rural areas. 
• National Water Mission is the implementing agency for this program. 
• Aims to nudge states and stakeholders to create appropriate Rainwater Harvesting Structures suitable to climatic conditions and sub-soil strata before monsoon.
• To facilitate these activities, states have been requested to open 'Rain Centers' in each district, in collectorates/municipalities or GPs.

Challenges with JSA

• Lack of scientific approach and planning:
  • JSA has failed to incorporate scientific water management principles and planning. For instance, JSA treats district as planning unit rather than treating the entire hydrological unit i.e., river basin as a planning unit.
  • This prevents from undertaking a comprehensive and holistic outlook for efficient water management and would lead to problems of coordination between multiple agencies, leading to the failure of water management strategies.

• Lack of integrated approach to surface and groundwater:
  • Any effective water management strategy must take an integrated view of surface and ground water since both are ultimately part of water cycle.
  • Surface water and ground water cannot be seen in a compartmentalized manner. However, JSA has failed to set up autonomous and knowledge intensive River-basin organizations which can provide integrated information about the surface and ground water within a hydrological unit.
  • There is no data on the basin-wise rainfall, analysis of the surface run-off and mapping of aquifers. In absence of such a data, it becomes quite difficult to undertake planning and efficiently manage surface and ground water.

• Neglects urban areas:
  • Predominantly focuses on rural areas and neglects urban areas. Per-capita water allocation in rural areas is hardly around 55 liters in comparison to per capita water allocation of 135-150 liters in urban areas.
  • This shows that there is an ample scope to undertake water conservation measures even in the urban areas.
  • However, JSA fails to incorporate water management strategies in the urban areas which may include sewage treatment, checking pollution of water bodies, rainwater harvesting in large residential buildings etc.

• Quality of Structures:
  • Presently, JSA is implemented in convergence with government schemes and programs such as MGNREGA.
  • However, concerns have been raised with respect to poor allocation of finances to MGNREGA.
  • Most farm ponds built under JSA may be of poor quality and may collapse in future due to heavy rains, trespassing by farm vehicles, animals etc.  

Way forward

• JSA must be seen as an opportunity to address present water crisis in India and hence various flaws highlighted above must be addressed at the earliest. 
• Presently, there is no parameter to measure outcome of this mission-mode campaign. Thus, government must develop a comprehensive parameter which can compare and monitor the long-term water level data prior to and post the implementation of JSA. Such a parameter would enable us to monitor the effectiveness of the JSA on a continuous basis and undertake course correction, if needed.
• As the agriculture sector consumes around 80% of the water, efforts must be stepped up to dissuade the farmers from cultivating water-intensive crops such as Paddy, sugarcane etc.
• JSA has failed to incorporate the lessons learnt from our previous failures of the water management strategies. These lessons need to be incorporated to ensure the effectiveness and success of JSA.