India is currently experiencing a remarkable upsurge in economic power. Its participation in various economic and technological developments has not escaped the eye of observers, who see in this the classic example of an emerging power. However the country has its problems. Above all, India today faces a series of internal challenges and projects on which its future is likely to depend. Water supply, at the national level, is a question of considerable importance: failure to master it could eventually become a brake on India’s economic ambitions.
Regional Ambitions and National Realities: India's Hydraulic Brakes
Of the many challenges facing India as an emerging Asian great power, water supply is clearly one. ‘Blue gold’ is by no means absent from Indian central government preoccupations, since it concerns the country’s social equilibrium as well as its economic potential. Every area of economic activity is affected by the massive drain on water resources, especially in a country where two-thirds of the population is rural and which gives priority to the produce of its own agricultural sector. India cannot by a long chalk claim to be comfortably placed where its water supply is concerned. The unequal distribution of the nation’s water resources combined with less than perfect management methods is pushing the country to acknowledge the challenges facing it, and to seek the best solutions. Despite these efforts, can India in the long term satisfy its regional political ambitions when national water resource problems risk creating a brake on the country’s ‘leap forward’?
A Striking Imbalance
Viewed overall, India’s water resources appear satisfactory. Its billion-plus inhabitants enjoy a total annual supply of about 1,900 km3, or roughly 2,000 m3 per capita annually. However, this crude statistic does not portray the reality of the situation, which, as for the whole region, depends on specific circumstances and makes water resources a central concern.
One of India’s major problems is the disparity of its water resources. The 19 catchment areas do not have a similar outflow, and they are rarely subject to similar methods of exploitation. So the Brahmaputra and the Meghna basins (north-east), and those of the Brahmane, the Baitarane and the Mahanadi (East) are unquestionably national reservoirs, inasmuch as their abundance is quite sufficient to meet agricultural, industrial and domestic demand in the regions they cover. But it is quite a different story elsewhere. Most of the territory between the Ganges basin and the southern rivers is on the edge of water penury, with immediate repercussions for its agricultural self-sufficiency. Water shortage peaks, apart from the eastern province of Pennar, concern the Indus basins and the Western province.
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