A cabinet meeting on July 23 declared Madhesh Province a disaster zone, citing acute water shortage after scant rainfall. All three tiers of government have scrambled to come up with ideas to address the crisis, but there is a paucity of coordination and expert opinion, exposing a policy gap in planning and implementation of water supply and irrigation in the province. The Post’s Biken K Dawadi sat down with former secretary for the Ministry of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation Engineer Anup Kumar Upadhyay to discuss the causes, effects and possible solutions to the crisis.

Madhesh province is considered the country’s breadbasket. What are the water supply needs of the province to sustain agriculture, especially those related to grain production?

Of the province’s total area of around 950,000 hectares, about 60 percent (around 600,000 hectares) is arable land. Despite only covering 6.5 percent of the total land area of the country, the province accounts for around 18 percent of the total arable land. The main crop cultivated in the region, paddy, requires a substantial amount of water. On average, to cultivate paddy in five hectares of land, a constant water supply of around 10 litres per second and a precipitation of 6-10 mm per day is needed. Rainfall in the province is at most 400 mm in the four months of monsoon, which amounts to around 70 percent of total rainfall, with scant 5-10 mm rainfall in other months. Water from rainfall is not enough for paddy cultivation, and hence the need for irrigation.

Are the currently operational irrigation projects sufficient to address these needs?

There are a number of operational irrigation systems in the region, including the early 20-century Chandra Canal irrigation system, Koshi basin irrigation system, Bagmati irrigation system, Kamala irrigation system and Gandak irrigation system. These are, however, not enough to sustain the region’s agricultural needs. Plans for the construction of other irrigation systems, including the Koshi-Marin diversion project, have reached breakthroughs but have been stalled over the years.

If the rainfall in the region is not adequate, how did grain cultivation flourish there since antiquity?

More than 20 percent of the land area of Madhesh province is covered by Chure hills. There was a time when the rivers originating from the hills flowed slowly as the ground would have had adequate time to absorb the rainwater, thereby recharging the shallow aquifers in the region. The steady flow of non-perennial rivers and the high amount of groundwater levels due to sufficient recharge time contributed to the adequacy of water for agriculture. The shallow aquifers, recharged due to the steady flow of rivers from Chure, have now depleted due to the overexploitation of the Chure hills.

How has the change in aquifer recharge affected the paddy production practice in the region?

Rampant encroachment and overexploitation of the Chure hills led to degradation in the capacity of the hills to recharge aquifers, which triggered flash floods and depleted groundwater. The flash floods carried sediments into the arable land, affecting its agricultural productivity. When this problem persisted, farmers opted to install boring pumps to meet their irrigation needs. The proliferation of boring pumps depleted the water table rapidly as farmers started to pump more water to facilitate pre-monsoon agriculture. The tubewells installed across the region dried up and farmers had to turn to the deep-boring, which introduced detrimental substances, including arsenic, to arable land. All of these factors have contributed to decreasing the productivity of the cultivable land.

What are some alternatives to paddy cultivation in the province?

The only alternative to paddy is paddy. As rice is consumed popularly as the staple food across the country, the demand for paddy will not decrease overnight. To sustain the demand, the province, as the breadbasket, must maintain a constant supply of grain not just to the province but to the entire country.

The current water crisis in the province was not unexpected. Experts have been warning of erratic rainfall patterns in the region in addition to the depleting groundwater levels. What went wrong in planning for the crisis?

First, all three tiers of government failed to identify their priority. One big responsibility of the government is to ensure agricultural security, which has been constantly overlooked. Planners, technocrats, and concerned ministries are all knowledgeable about this problem, but have not paid heed to the looming crisis for the farmers. In addition, the concerned authorities did not inspect the installed boring systems to identify the reasons behind the drying up of these systems. The government’s utter disregard for water supply and the worsening conditions for agriculture led to inadequate planning.

Second, the political leaders who should be most concerned about the well-being of the people are more concerned about their vote banks. To win the confidence of the people in the Chure region, the leaders let the locals encroach on and exploit the hills, which is the major cause of the current water crisis.

Third, there have been major lapses in the implementation of the programs and projects aimed at addressing the water crisis. The President Chure Program, formulated to ensure conservation and sustainable development of the Chure hills, was hyped up but fizzled out due to poor implementation. Lack of priority in the implementation of the various Chure conservation efforts is also highlighted by the allocation of insufficient manpower to administer conservation offices. Around 10-15 government officers have to lead conservation efforts for an area of over 900 hectares.

What are some challenges regarding the Chure conservation? Which stakeholders are most responsible for its degradation?

In addition to the lapses of the government, the locals of the Chure hills are another party responsible for the water crisis unfolding in Madhesh province. Encroachment activities, including overgrazing in the hills, overextraction of sand and soil, and proliferation of moonshiners in the forest areas, have harmed groundwater recharge. This is not due to lack of awareness. The elderly population of the region is aware of the changes in weather patterns and the decrease in agricultural productivity. They have narrated this to the locals, but the profits associated with the extraction of resources and the exploitation of forests in the Chure hills has motivated the locals to continue rampant exploitation.

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli was quick to announce the installation of 500 deep-boring pumps to address the water crisis. Are deep drilling pumps a sustainable solution? If they are a possible solution even for the short run, why is there an inadequacy of such mechanisms?

As I explained, the installation of deep-boring pumps has more detrimental effects in the long run, which outweigh their ability to solve the water shortage in the short run. Even the pumps already installed in the province have started to dry up.

It is expensive to install deep-boring pumps: A deep-boring machine for five hectares would cost around Rs2.5 million. Even when the installation of such a mechanism is warranted as a short-term solution, there is a policy gap in the implementation. Only the lower tiers of government have been handed the right to plan and install the pumps, but these tiers do not have sufficient funds to install or maintain such pumps. The federal government, while having enough resources to finance such a project, has not been given the right to do so. None of the three tiers has been adequately armed to plan and implement solutions for the water crisis.

As no tier of government can address the problem on its own, smooth coordination between different tiers is a must. However, Prime Minister Oli’s on-site inspection of the drought exposed lack of coordination between the federal and provincial tiers. Madhesh Chief Minister Satish Kumar Singh, who is more privy to the crisis than any federal minister, told the prime minister that deep-boring mechanisms had dried up. However, Prime Minister Oli turned a deaf ear to the suggestion and announced a plan to install 500 deep-boring pumps in the province.

What are some feasible, sustainable solutions to the water crisis in the province?

The farmers of the province depend on rainwater for their agricultural needs, but precipitation is erratic across the province. So planners must look for alternative solutions, some of which could be inspired by our traditional practices of irrigation. For example, the pond-based irrigation system in Dhanusha district is a sustainable solution to avoid a water crisis in the future.

In addition, the government must prioritise timely completion of under-construction irrigation systems. We must make optimal use of the three major river basins in the region—Koshi, Gandak and Bagmati—to irrigate the arable land of Madhesh province.

How can other provinces with significant areas of arable land, including Lumbini and Sudurpaschim, learn from Madhesh so as to avoid such a problem in the future?

The policymakers of these provinces must include irrigation and water supply as a top-priority sector in their plans. As the encroachment of the Chure hills is the main reason for the water crisis, they need to focus on the conservation of the region. In addition, stakeholders must ensure that the tendency of projects to fizzle out is avoided. For this, the provincial governments should coordinate with the federal government to secure sufficient funding for the implementation and form policies to carry out the projects effectively.