Over the past few years, flood-drought cycles are becoming both more common and pronounced in the country. Discuss measures to handle it. (200 words)
Refer – The Financial Express
Enrich the answer from other sources, if the question demands.
IAS Parliament 6 years
KEY POINTS
· With climate change, extreme and erratic monsoon is becoming the new normal for India.
· Rainfall distribution within the country has traditionally been uneven, but severe droughts in certain parts of the country being coterminous with flooding in others have become more common now.
· While the country saw a 6% deficiency over the long period average, over 20% of the 718 districts in the country were flooded and nearly 40% are facing droughts with deficits of over 20%.
Suggestions
· Proper water management – While India gets around 2,600 billion cubic metres (bcm) of rain in even a bad year—and just 1,110 bcm is enough to meet all its needs—it has the capacity to store a mere 253 bcm.
· Creating more reservoir capacity—and at the right places—could help cut loss of water even as it checks flooding.
· Similarly, dams can be a solution, too, but dam construction in the country has been slowing in the recent times.
· Mitigating floods can help address droughts more effectively.
· A network of connected water storage structures should be built to drain off excess water in case of floods and act as storehouses for droughts.
· Policy correction – The need is also to rectify a host of bad agri-policies.
· For instance, the heavy power subsidies to farmers has led to reckless pumping out of groundwater in regions that are already water-scarce for cultivation of crops that demand a lot of water.
· This is exacerbated by a focus of public procurement of, say, rice in Punjab and Haryana where the water-table is falling while West Bengal and Odisha that see ample annual rainfall could do with increased public procurement.
Nandadeep 6 years
Kindly review.Thanks
IAS Parliament 6 years
