Managing India's Land and Water Resources

Author(s): B B Vohra
Source: India International Centre Quarterly , JANUARY 1979, Vol. 6, No. 1 (JANUARY
1979), pp. 20-27
Published by: India International Centre

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Managing India's Land
and Water Resources
B B Vohra

IT resources
cannot be has
denied
beenthat
far the management
from of else
satisfactory, our vast land
40 per andofwater
cent our
people would not today be living below the line of absolute poverty. In
contrast, China has less than 80 per cent of our arable land resources
but is producing more than twice as much food as we are, and has
succeeded in solving her problems of hunger and destitution. This is
due mainly to the much better use she has made of her natural resources
even though these are far smaller than ours.
The visible deforestation of the Himalaya, the growing denudation of
our watersheds and the frequency of floods are all evidence of the way
in which we have mismanaged our land and water resources. It has been
estimated that out of a total 'reporting' area of 304 million hectares, as
many as 90 million hectares suffer from water erosion and another 50
million hectares from wind erosion. Areas susceptible to flooding are in
the region of 20 million hectares while another 12 million hectares have
been affected by waterlogging and salinity. At least 10 million hectares
have access to canal irrigation. However, even this land produces only a
fraction of its total capacity because it has not been given all the facil
ities, such as land levelling, field channels and drainage systems, all
necessary for the controlled application of water to soils and for the
prevention of waterlogging. This makes a total of 182 million hectares,
equivalent to 60 per cent of our entire land surface, which requires
urgent attention if it is to be saved from further degradation and made
to produce more.

Colossal Loss

It is not easy to compute in terms of money all the losses suffered by

the community as a result of this situation. Nevertheless, certain esti
mates are available which show how colossal these losses are. Erosion
causes a displacement of around 6,000 million tonnes of fertile top soil
every year. Nature takes from 500 to 1,000 years to build an inch of top
soil. It has been estimated that top soil contains nutrients to the order of
over 5 million tonnes of NPK alone (not to speak of other lesser nu

20

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 MANAGING INDIA'S LAND AND WATER RESOURCES 21

trients) which at today's prices would cost well over Rs 1,000 crore to
replace. Much of this top soil finds its way to the sea but a great deal of
it gets deposited in irrigation and hydel reservoirs, river beds, harbours
and estuaries, creating problems at every stage. The loss of storage
capacity caused by excessive siltation is difficult to compute. But it is
well to remember that the community has spent over Rs 5,000 crore on
major reservoirs alone, and that these are being silted at rates which are
several times greater than those projected at the time of their construc
tion. It is also necessary to remember that in most cases other sites for
storage will just not be available once the present reservoirs get silted.
Quite apart from the loss to irrigation, the closure of these reservoirs
will affect our power potential at a time when we are desperately short
of energy.
Floods are a direct result of the siltation of river beds. They take an
average annual toll of around Rs. 300 crore by way of damage to crops,
cattle, dwelling houses and communications, not to speak of the inde
scribable distress and suffering they cause in human terms. Waterlogging
and salinization are caused by the lack of adequate drainage in canal
irrigated areas, the clogging of natural drains and the obstruction caused
to natural drainage by railways, roadways, canals and embankments.
Where obstructions exist, cross-drainage works are a must. The rate at
which 'good' land is being lost to production because of waterlogging
and salinization is astonishing. Figures are not always readily available,
but the value of the land lost in this way is well over Rs 10,000 crore.
Account must also be taken of the additional production possible from
irrigated areas if they had improved conditions of land and water
management.
To all these losses must be added those which are being incurred as a
result of our failure to make use of denuded non-agricultural lands—all
ultimately capable of production. According to official statistics, there
are 138 million hectares under agriculture, 17 million hectares under
non-agricultual use and 24 million hectares which are classified as 'barren
and unculturable'. This makes a total of 179 million hectares. The
remaining 125 million hectares of our land surface is accounted for thus:
(in million hectares)
Forests 65

Miscellaneous tree crops 4

Permanent Pastures 13
Culturable Wastes 17
Fallows 25

TOTAL 125

One hundred and twenty-five million hectares represent over 40 per

cent of our entire land surface. By definition, these lands are neither
'barren nor unculturable'. Consequently, they must be made to produce

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22 B B VOHRA

whatever trees and grasses they best can in the particular circumstan
of climate, soil capability and water availability. In actual fact, howev
only about 30 million hectares—of the 65 million hectares classified a
forest lands—are known to have adequate cover. The remaining 95
million hectares represent more or less denuded land surfaces whose
contribution to the nation's economy is disastrously negative. They don't
produce any trees or grasses, or, if they do, then no where near to capac
ity. They are today the main source of soil erosion, and we are all aware
of the evils that that leads to. It is easy to imagine the difference it would
make to our economy if all 95 million hectares could be given a perma
nent vegetal cover. This would stop further erosion and, at the same
time, enable the sun's energy to be harnessed—in nature's own way—over
nearly a third of our total land surface.
Serious note must also be taken of the incalculable loss of ground
water suffered as a result of the excessive run-off which takes place on
exposed surfaces. The restoration of vegetal cover to our non-agricultural
lands would allow a much greater proportion of rain water to percolate
and be stored underground. There is no question that ground-water is
one of our most precious resources. The maximum recharging of ground
water aquifers would not only mean more water made available for
irrigation in a form both convenient and easy to tap, but it would also
help in moderating river flows—reducing the flow when necessary and
increasing it in the winter months by recharges from ground-water.
The neglect of our land and therefore also of our water resources (the
management of one is absolutely not possible without the management of
the other) has brought the country to a situation serious beyond
description. For even with the best will in the world and with the most
vigorous efforts imaginable—neither of which is in evidence today—it
will be decades before we can arrest and then reverse the massive degra
dation which our soil resources have already suffered It must be
remembered, however, that further damage will continue to take place
even during this period: pressures of population on depleted soils will
continue to grow; the vicious circle we are already in will deepen. Our
situation may, indeed, be compared with that of a leaking boat: more and
more people keep climbing into it while unknown to its occupants the leak
grows larger all the time. If only the oarsmen and the passengers knew of
the danger, they would not only try to keep the boat as light as possible
but they would also use all their energy to reduce the level of water in
the boat and plug the leak.

The Problem and How to Deal with It

In such a situation, the first thing is to realize the gravity of the dangers
that face us. Then, to take immediate steps to engage in the race against
time into which we have been forced by our neglect to the soil and our
failure to control the growth of our population. We must, evenat this

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 MANAGING INDIA'S LAND AND WATER RESOURCES 23

late stage, recognize soil for what it actually is: the source of all agricul
tural, animal and forest produce and, therefore, the basis of our very
existence. We must no longer take soil for granted; something which has
been with us from the beginning and will continue to serve us in the
future without requiring any attention. For, contrary to popular belief,
the soil is not an inert substance but a fragile, almost living organism of
unrivalled complexity. We can allow it to be damaged only at our own
peril. It will surprise many to know that fertile top soil 'teems with life...
a teaspoonful of it may contain billions of living organisms—the micro
fauna and micro-flora which are responsible for the fixation of atmos
pheric nitrogen and the breaking down of organic as well as inorganic
materials into forms suitable for assimilation by plants. These minute
organisms also perform the indescribably complex functions which are
carried on simultaneously in the soil at various levels—physical, chemical,
geological and biological—so that life may continue to be sustained on
this planet.'
We must also appreciate the fact that there is and can be no such thing
as water management per se. The management of water, which is a
renewable resource, can, in fact, have only one valid objective: the
optimization of production from the soil which is for all purposes a
non-renewable and an irreplaceable resource. We must therefore learn to
look at all land and water management problems from the point of view
of the soil's productivity. The only rational policy to pursue in this
regard is, therefore, one which aims at maximizing the land's productivity
in any given situation. Thus, if the land is sick, it must be restored to and
thereafter kept in good health. Good lands must be saved from damage
and treated in a manner which would enable them to improve their
productivity.
Fortunately for us, land in India does not suffer from more than two
major problems: the loss of its fertile top soil in conditions of denudation
caused by over-exploitation both by man and beast, and its asphyxiation
by water in conditions of poor drainage. Both these maladies are
comparatively easy to deal with if they are taken in hand early. As far as
soil erosion is concerned, all that is usually required is to allow the land
to regenerate itself by leaving it fallow for a period of time. Once a
natural vegetal cover has grown, over-grazing and over-felling must not
be allowed to destroy it. Artificial grassing and afforestation programmes
will help the process of regeneration, as will engineering works such as
terracing and bunding in areas where the damage has been severe. Water
logging and salinization can also be treated by well-established methods:
drainage, followed by soil amendments and correct agricultural
procedures.

Need for Correct Policies

A conscious policy for putting down-graded lands back into work, and

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24 B B VOHRA

for improving the productivity of the soil in all conditions, will yiel
dividends and, literally, change the face of the country. The utilizat
hitherto unproductive lands will result in an enormous increase in
availability of grasses, fuel-wood and timber. It will revolutionize a
husbandry, horticulture and the forest industry. We will be ab
maintain large numbers of range animals at much higher leve
nutrition and therefore increase productivity to levels we can only
of today. Further, it will mean a very great increase in the availabil
milk and milk products, meat, wool and hides. A careful select
trees, to be grown on what are waste lands today, will make it possi
develop horticulture in a really big way as well as develop fore
various kinds. Depending on the needs of each region, the developme
horticulture and of forests would be useful for fuel and fodder, for
and timber, for recreation and for watershed management.
Viewed in this context, the Forest Department's present pre-occup
with the achievement of targets for areas to be brought under for
would appear to be rather pointless. How can additional areas be br
under tree cover when even existing 'forest lands' have lost such cov
35 out of 65 million hectares? In fact, the problems of forest develo
can be correctly understood only if they are seen in their true persp
namely, the gross neglect to which land as a basic resource has
subjected for so long. Till such time as all our land resources a
made proper use of, it will not be possible to relieve the unbea
pressures to which afforested lands are being exposed today. Whet
these pressures take the form of unauthorized lopping and choppin
over-grazing by indigent villagers, or illegal trade by contract
league with corrupt forest officials, or of land distribution to the la
under cover of populist programmes, is only a matter of detail and
relevance to the basic issue.
The fact of the matter is that if we succeed in substantially increasing
the productivity of our agricultural lands, particularly our irrigated lands,
it will be possible to obtain all our food crop requirements from a much
smaller area than the 138 million hectares under cultivation today, and
therefore to free large additional areas for non-agricultural use. Con
sidering that China practices multiple cropping over 90 per cent of her
cultivated area, while we do so over 15 per cent of ours, there is no
reason why in course of time our agricultural lands should not shrink to
somewhere around 100 million hectares of which 80 million hectares,
we are confident, will be served by irrigation schemes. It should be
possible, at some time in the foreseeable future, to produce 300 million
tonnes of cereals from no more than 100 million hectares. With our
climate—abundant sunshine and high temperatures—an average increase
of 3 tonnes per hectare per annum is by no means impossible; that too
with cultivation being confined only to our better soils. Three hundred
million tonnes should be more than enough to feed adequately a popula
tion of even 1,000 million, particularly when cereals will be generously

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 MANAGING INDIA'S LAND AND WATER RESOURCES 25

supplemented by the animal proteins and fruits produced by non-agricul

tural lands. It may be mentioned—and most accounts agree on this—that
China's 900 odd million are doing very well on a production of 280
million tonnes per annum.
It is clear, therefore, that if we pursue correct land-use policies and
succeed in getting the best out of our vast land resources, agricultural as
well as non-agricultural, the area under trees and grasses could increase
by another 40 million hectares or so, from the present 125 million
hectares, so that ultimately over 50 per cent of our total land surface is
covered in this way. Correct land-use policies will, incidentally, also
include the conversion of naturally low-lying areas into permanent lakes
and ponds which could support a flourishing inland fisheries industry to
further improve the country's dietary requirements.

Benefits from Proper Management

If implemented, such a policy will have enormous benefits, too numerous

and obvious to list here. However, mention can be made of the huge
employment opportunities such a policy will create in rural areas where
idle manpower represents one of the most intractible problems we face. It
has been estimated that the implementation of a total programme for
containing the threats posed by erosion, floods, waterlogging and
salinity, and for making the optimum use of our canal irrigated areas,
will require an investment of around Rs 50,000 crore over a period of
thirty years or so. Very largely, this will be in the form of wages to
labour required to carry out the necessary work—shaping and levelling
of land, drainage, afforestation and soil conservation schemes. Since this
investment will result in a revolutionary increase in agricultural producti
vity, a large section of our rural poor will be put on their feet on a
permanent basis. They would be engaged in activities related to animal
husbandry, horticulture, pisciculture, forestry, multiple cropping and the
service industries which will grow up around them. A revitalized rural
scene will have other unexpected pay-offs. The present drift of the rural
poor to the towns will come to an end—a drift which is turning our
towns into unmanageable slums. Nutrition and health standards will
improve dramatically, reducing the country's medical bill. With greater
prosperity and employment, social tensions born of poverty, and the
glaring disparities in standards of living will lessen; as a direct result
problems of law and order will also lessen. Greater productivity from the
soil will also help solve many of our energy problems by increasing the
availability of firewood and bio-gas as well as by prolonging the life of
our hydel projects. The planned development of our natural resources
will also provide a truly firm foundation for so-called 'integrated rural
development programmes'; otherwise, these would necessarily be based on
uncoordinated and therefore wasteful approaches by a number of depart
ments each working in isolation from the other.

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26 B B VOHRA

The adoption of national land-use policies will also answer th

of all those who love nature and wildlife but who are today helpless
spectators to the growing denudation of our forests and of the increasing
threat that this poses to our vanishing flora and fauna. The restoration
of vegetal cover to tens of millions of hectares of denuded land will
automatically bring in its wake a great increase in plant, bird and animal
life. It will also allow large new areas to be set aside as game sanctuaries,
protected forests and biosphere reserves with the assurance that these
will not be constantly encroached upon by a perpetually hungry and
impoverished population. As things stand, our forests and wildlife have
little chance of survival in an environment that is becoming increasingly
inhospitable to man himself.
Recognizing soil, rather than water, as our basic natural resource will
will also help to correct the present bias for gigantic engineering projects
as an answer to the country's problems with regard to land and water
management. We are already paying heavily for such an approach: costly
and inadequate irrigation projects—costly because they are still far from
paying their way, and inadequate because attention has not been given to
the health of their watersheds nor to the productivity of their command
areas. Projects that cannot control floods because the protection
embankments that have been built offer no solution to the real problem
of flooding but merely create the illusion of doing so. Moreover, this is
an approach that will take a long time to correct, not only because of the
general ignorance on this subject but also because of a powerful
engineering lobby which, while it exists, prevents others from speaking
out on behalf of the soil's real interests. There is little talk of the urgent
need for soil conservation even at a time when our neglect of this vital
resource literally threatens our very existence. And this is the reason why
discussions on grandiose schemes like the Ganga-Cauvery Canal and the
Garland Canal are still possible in certain quarters. It is clear that in any
overall view of our land and water management problems, schemes like
these do not deserve the priority given to them now or even at some
future date. Only after we have successfully tackled all our present
problems could we begin to consider schemes like these, and that, in my
view, will not be possible until somewhere in the twenty-first century. If
at that time our rivers run deep and blue with clear water and our
reservoirs act as storage only for water (not water as well as a great deal
of top soil), then there can be no harm in large inter-basin transfers of
siltless water provided, of course, that such projects are considered
desirable, technically feasible and financially justifiable. But not until
then.
We have no choice today but to engage immediately in a total effort
aimed at providing land a 'green cover' in order to save our soil from
further deterioration, to put our idle lands to work and to get every acre
of land to yield as much as it can, in whatever form—crops, trees or
grasses. However, all this is easier said than done. For we are almost

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 MANAGING INDIA'S LAND AND WATER RESOURCES 27

entirely unprepared for the task. The situation in this respect is much the
same today as it was six years ago when it was described in the
following terms:
'Even at the national level, there is as yet not even a broad perspective
plan for the care of the land, no exact information regarding the extent
and the location of lands which require protective and ameliorative
treatment, and no agency specifically charged with the responsibility
for the assessment and management of our irreplaceable land and soil
resources.'
Where do we go from here? We must obviously begin by creating the
administrative, legal, financial and technical infrastructures needed for the
successful implementation of a programme the size and range of which is
indicated by the circumstances we find ourselves in today. But such an
effort can be undertaken only if it is backed by stern political will, one
which recognizes the task as being of overriding national importance,
transcending political differences, and deserving of a long-term perspec
tive. Such political will can only be sustained by strong and well-informed
public opinion.
Informed public opinion cannot, however, be wished into existence
overnight. A great deal of painstaking and patient work will have to be
done to wipe out the backlog of ignorance, inertia and complacency that
have stood in the way in the past. Only when this has been done, and
thinking people in the country are made conscious of the issues at stake,
would it be reasonable to expect public opinion to form and assert
itself. This, then, is the immediate task confronting the leadership of the
country today—leadership not only in the field of politics but of ideas,
planning and policy making as well. □

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