By Fen Montaigne
Photographs by Peter Essick
| How can such a wet planet be so short on clean fresh water? The latest installment in the “Challenges for Humanity” series plumbs the problem. |
| Get a taste of what awaits you in print from this compelling excerpt. To see what unbridled water consumption has wrought, both good and bad, you need go no farther than the Indian state of Gujarat. Like neighboring Rajasthan, Gujarat is a dry place that has experienced a surge of irrigated agriculture. In the northern part of the state, on a hot spring day, I came across a brick pump house amid flat green fields of wheat, mustard, cumin, and anise. Inside was the electrical system for a 62-horsepower motor that, ten hours a day, pumped a steady column of water from deep underground into a concrete tank through which the water was channeled to nearby fields. One of the pump’s owners?70-year-old Nemchandbhai U. Patel?rested on a rope bed in the cool, dusky interior, lulled by the sound of water rushing up from underground aquifers and gurgling into the tank. Patel stirred as I approached. He explained that the pump was used to irrigate his fields, as well as those of his partners and 50 other farmers who purchase the water. Without it they would have to rely solely on rain, which in an area that receives about 25 inches (64 centimeters) of precipitation a year?most of it in short summer cloudbursts?is a highly risky proposition. “Thanks to this well,” said Patel, “we are able to sustain our lives.” The electric pump that sent water streaming onto Patel’s land is the machine that has powered India’s green revolution. That agricultural achievement, which has enabled the country to grow enough food for its one billion people, was accomplished because of a huge increase in groundwater pumping. In the mid-fifties fewer than 100,000 motorized pumps were extracting groundwater for Indian agriculture. Today about 20 million are in operation, with the number growing by half a million each year. |
