Punjab has no spare water: Experts

CHANDIGARH: In all the political din reverberating in the region in the wake of Punjab’s recent annulment of river water agreements, one of the primary reasons behind the act seems to have been lost sight of completely.
Which is the ground reality that the state may indeed not have surplus water to spare for its thirsty neigbours. The three states in the eye of the storm — Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan — have advanced various arguments against and in favour of the Act, but unfortunately, there seems to have been no effort at rationalising the issue in real terms.
For, according to experts, the state of Punjab itself needs some 55 Million Acre Feet (MAF) of water to meet its irrigation needs, which is not available, leading to over-exploitation of ground water.
According to P S Kumedan, an expert on the issue who was involved in the original study of the river basins in question, Punjab has 76 lakh hectares (188 lakh acres) of gross irrigated area.
"This figure indicates all land under irrigation year around i.e one or more crop in different periods of the year. The area that is actually cropped is more than the area irrigated," he says.
"The dispute is over the so-called surplus water of 7.2 MAF from the Ravi-Beas system which is supposed to be divided equally among the three states," he adds.
Now, Kumedan says, this 7.2 MAF figure was surplus in 1947 but by 1955-56, it had already been fully utilised as the capacity of the UBD canal was doubled and the capacity of other canals like the eastern canal too was increased. "So where is the surplus water?" he says.
So the trouble seems to be that the ground situation has changed over the years. In 1982, Punjab government had issued a white paper in which it had claimed that 68 lakh acres of land could be irrigated with 15.6 MAF water available at that time to the state.
Since then cropping has not only intensified but so has the net area under cultivation. And going by that yardstick, Punjab would indeed seem to have little water to spare.