The local governors of the Rana era, called Bada Hakims and literally the Big Boss who ruled the district on behalf of the Maharaja in distant Kathmandu, chose to base their headquarters in Jaleshwar and so did the zonal overlords of the direct Shah rule. In the last decade of Panchayat, King Birendra ordered that the commissioner’s office be shifted to the zonal headquarters at Janakpur. A few Anchaladhises obliged the king but continued to reside and function from Jaleshwar even as they occasionally commuted to their formal office at Janakpur.

Jaleshwar used to be cooler during the summer than nearby Janakpur, and slightly warmer in the winter than upcoming settlements close to the Chure foothills such as Bardibas. The groundwater was clearer, sweeter and easier to extract. Floods did play havoc with everyday life sometimes, but the eastern part of town remained relatively dry even during heavy monsoons. All that seems to be changing and at an unprecedented rate.

In a town where the temperature remained in the mid-30s even at the height of summer, this year it went up to 42 degrees Celsius around the end of May. It has been the hottest and longest summer in living memory. The delayed and below average monsoon was predicted, but very few had imagined that the rice paddies would remain dry till early August. Extremities of weather have begun to impact the agrarian life of the borderlands.

The month of July this year has been stated to be the hottest month on record in the world, which made the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres declare that the era of global warming has ended and the era of global boiling has arrived. Climate change is a complex phenomenon that requires collaborative and concerted efforts of the global community.

The share of Nepal in the global production of greenhouse gas emissions is miniscule—estimated to be less than 0.03 percent—but it must face the consequences of being one of the most climatically sensitive countries located bang in the middle of two of the largest polluters of the world. Locally relevant mitigation measures to reduce the suffering of the people, however, needs to be planned, designed and implemented with urgency.

Water crisis

Even though floods have always been more common in Madhesh, old-timers still recall the cyclicity of droughts that occasionally destroyed the main Kharif crop due to delayed or dry monsoons. Farmers then worked together to divert some water from nearby rivers into channels and ponds in the hope of having a better Rabi production of wheat, barley, gram, various other pulses and oil seeds. Winter rains usually replenished dry water bodies to the relief of farmers. This year, the winter was dry, and the monsoon has been drier so far creating a crisis of potable water in most of Madhesh.

Unlike in the settlements of hills and mountains where the supply of piped water has significantly improved in recent years, most of Madhesh still relies upon subsurface water for its daily needs. Till the mid-1960s, shallow wells with brick lining were ubiquitous not only in the villages but even in the towns such as Janakpur, Birgunj and Rajbiraj. A few deep wells were bored, overhead storage tanks built, and pipes laid out to supply water to select households in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the assistance of what was called the Indian Aid Mission.

Relatively easier availability of technicians and an increase in the supply of hand pumps in the early 1970s led to the popularity of sinking pipes to the level of what engineers call the unconfined zone of groundwater aquifer. Wealthier farmers invested in boring deep wells that reached confined aquifers and exuded more water. Some influential politicos rewarded their loyalists with state-funded bore wells in their rice paddies.

The system of shallow wells for household needs and deep wells for small-scale irrigation worked reasonably well for nearly four decades. Then the problem of exhaustion began to appear. First, the hand pumps required priming with water before they could be made functional. Then the pipes needed to be sent deeper down into the ground.

In Janakpur, the depth of the pipe required to reach the water level increased from the initial 30 metres or so in the early 1980s to more than 130 metres in recent years. One requires electric-powered machines to pump out water from such depths. Almost all deep wells of yesteryears that exuded water on their own now require motorised water pumps.

The problem isn’t unique to Janakpur and its neighbourhood. The crisis of water for household use in Birgunj was so acute this year that the sub-metropolitan government had to mobilise water tankers to ensure minimum supply. Most hand pumps have either gone dry or give out merely a trickle. Having been unused for decades, even the open shallow wells that have escaped being filled up are no longer functional.

There is an urgent need to ensure year-round availability of water for household use and irrigation in the most populous province of the country. Since 30 percent of the freshwater lies below the ground, its withdrawal and replenishment systems need to be studied in detail and remedial measures designed to maintain the precarious balance.

Critical correctives

The Code of Conduct of the Nepal Engineering Council urges engineers to refrain from offering suggestions on issues outside the area of their expertise. However, public interest requires that amateur opinions also be voiced to arouse the interest of suitably qualified professionals. Going beyond the longstanding controversy over Sapta Koshi high dam and the ongoing urgency of Sunkoshi Marin Diversion, the frequency of floods, cyclicity of droughts and worsening water situation in Madhesh requires that integrated system of surface and groundwater be studied to offer sustainable solutions.

A cursory glance at the topography, geology and hydrology of the Mahabharat mountains and the Chure/Shivalik hills is enough to reveal that degradation of slope stability in the upper reaches of seasonal rivers has played havoc with the natural functioning of regular flows downstream. During the Panchayat-era, a demographic barrier was sought to be erected in the Chure-Bhabar region by resettling migrants from the mountains to stop Madheshis from intruding into the hills.

The political strategy worked with disastrous consequences for the ecology—massive deforestation, reduction in vegetation cover of fragile slopes due to overgrazing, and a substantial increase in the bedload of seasonal flows caused by rampant excavation for boulders, gravel and sand. While the alarm over sand and gravel mining in the Chure-Bhabar region is wholly justified, the ecological havoc wreaked by the construction of Madan Bhandari Rajmarg also needs to be deliberated to minimise the complex impact of increased traffic load, unauthorised settlements, more human interventions and heavier debris flows.

Unlike the flow of surface water, the movement of groundwater in the aquifers isn’t easy to measure and predict. However, the assumption that negative externalities of industrial scale extraction of subsurface water in the Indian state of Bihar for electrified irrigation programmes and massive Nal-Jal Yojana (tap water to each household) may have impacted upstream groundwater reserves doesn’t sound farfetched. Methods of securing the rights of the upper riparian need to be explored.

Eventually, planners will have to come up with viable solutions that blend modern technologies of runoff farming, traditional practices of surface storage and hybrid techniques of subsurface recharge to ensure sustainable water availability in Madhesh for which the sanctity of Chure-Bhabar remains key.