44 Essay |The South Asian monsoon The EconomistJune 29th 2019
and drought by which much of India has remained gripped as the
monsoon stalls in the southern states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
On a recent day when this correspondent climbed down to the step
well’s bottom, Delhi’s temperature hit 48°C (118°F) in the shade.
But it is all too tempting to view the empty baolias a metaphor
for decades of human folly in which precious water in India has
been squandered. At the time the photograph was taken, a farming
transformation was under way—a “green revolution” marrying
new seed varieties with artificial fertilisers and pesticides. Just add
water. The baoli’s builders would have been amazed at how crop
yields soared. They would have been appalled at the green revolu-
tion’s other consequences, which include soil erosion, a plunder-
ing of aquifers and toxic water in much depleted water tables.The human stream
They would also have been appalled to see how urban develop-
ment has outrun the wells and rivers. Just one instance: in late
June, Chennai, India’s sixth-biggest city, was officially declared to
have run out of water. Its municipal authorities blamed the
drought. Yet years ago they abandoned any coherent policy of wa-
ter supply. Not only did they not factor in new water capacity or
conservation measures. They allowed developers to fill in the wa-
ter tanks and seasonal lakes for which the city was once famous.
The towers of gated communities now rise on these lake beds. A
giant billboard outside one such development, Golden Opulence,
in Chennai’s western exurbs, promises well-heeled buyers limit-
less water as a chief sales pitch. The supply is guaranteed by the
tankers of a well-established “water mafia” whose thousands of
soot-belching lorries are a continuous threat to the city’s air, pe-
destrians and cyclists. Their cargo disgorged, they return to the
countryside—specifically, to places where farmers lucky enough
to sit atop an aquifer replenish them for city cash. For farmers
wealthy enough to drill a bore hole and install an electric pumpthis is a doddle, not least because electricity for farmers is essen-
tially free. Mining water beats farming crops.
Narayanappa, in Chittoor district, has no such scam to support
him. The butterflies enjoying the shade of the well he dug in the
1990s flit over a stagnant puddle. He and his family have borrowed
from local moneylenders to drill five bore holes across the small-
holding. Four of them, including the one which goes down 460
metres (1,500 feet), are now dry. And even in better years than this
one, bore-well water is not always sweet or safe to drink, given nat-
urally occurring levels of arsenic. For the past five years, the water
tankers have been coming to farms around Kuppam village too.
The gamble on the rains is not just for finance ministers. If, de-
spite ensoand Cyclone Vayu, the monsoon comes good, as Mr Ra-
jeevan thinks it will, Narayanappa wins out, sells his crops, repays
his debts. If not he goes deeper into hock. The desperation such
debt drives has led to protests—some violent—and suicide. The
misery is one example of how water and the want of water deter-
mine inequalities, and even fates. Another can be seen in attacks
on people of lower caste using water tanks customarily monopol-
ised by the upper castes. There are also water wars between states.
These phenomena are not new—the bitter dispute between Karna-
taka and Tamil Nadu over extracting water from the Cauvery river
dates back to the 1890s—but they speak poorly of modern India’s
ability to manage the stakes in its monsoonal roulette.
At the far end of Narayanappa’s land runs the railway from
Mumbai to the south. To the old folk of the village the crammed
carriages rolling past are another world, one that fleetingly flows
through theirs a few times a day. When the rains fail, their children
and grandchildren join the flow, streaming into Bangalore in
search of work as labourers or security guards. They throng the
steps of Kuppam station, crowding the train well before it has even
clanged to a halt. Only the old folk are left in the fields, looking up
at the fierce, empty sky. 72