Looking strange and rather unbelievable that even in Kashmir valley conditions akin to draught can take place and to tide over the water crisis for irrigation purposes, draught pumps are felt to be urgently installed. As it is said that mysterious are the ways of nature and when there is wanton exploitation of natural resources, forest cover getting extensively shrunk as also the existing area not with a quality and dense tree cover, mad race for fast urbanisation and invasion on and pollution of water bodies and encroachments on them, larger levels of carbon emission , no harvesting of rain water, no de-silting and deepening of rivers’ depth levels are just a few reasons that contribute to water crisis of the type experienced this year in Kashmir valley. Veth or the River Jehlum which usually remains abuzz around this time with its usual utilities including even tourism related activities of enjoying of a shikara (boat) ride , bathing, swimming etc and flowing with not less than 3 to 4 feet level is reported to be flowing with all time low not seen during the last 65 years. Its immediate impact being on traditional agriculture, sufficient water cannot, therefore, be lifted through the irrigation projects as the water level is several feet below the normal and allowed level.
Turning the pages of history of Kashmir valley , one comes across two natural tragedies having visited it besides numerous man made and they had been frequent floods and earthquakes. Never has there been a draught as Kashmir means at once water in abundance, of a better quality and of a taste. Dig a well in Kashmir by a simple shovel or a backhoe and only after a few feet, water level is reached and surprisingly the life of a simple well is up to 50 years. Why then has a crisis like situation emerged in some districts of Kashmir is primarily due to an unprecedented longer dry and hot spell coupled with less of snowfall this time as compared to last year .
This all has resulted in most of the vertical irrigation projects being otherwise active and now completely inoperative affecting the requirements of irrigating the parched land, posing serious challenges to the prospects of growing of crops. Unless nature again comes to the rescue and it rains within a few days , the main paddy crops are bound to get damaged and dried up to yield nothing. The same usually is true of saffron crops in autumn season which usually suffer on account of insufficient rains and not sufficient bore wells sunk to provide water for the precious cash crop and surprisingly those ones sunk too are found all not working properly. Why not to envisage things and requirements in advance rather than allowing them to become problematic later is the moot question.
Only the draught pumps can salvage the position but primarily such type of pumps could ever be required in the valley was never anticipated just like when in 2014 all of a sudden, there were witnessed devastating floods in the valley, requirement of salvaging and rescuing boats was felt. We have many a time observed that to meet with such type of unforeseen natural upheavals, wells were attempted to be dug out when the fire was all raging. In other words, even if crash permission was granted to secure draught pumps, by the time the process of requisitioning, to getting these to make operational etc a minimum few weeks are necessarily required , till then it is only “leaving to the nature” , if not to sheer providence. However, unless long term measures are effectively and seriously taken in respect of management of water and its resources, many related problems impacting very adversely agricultural prospects are bound to surface.
Nature is behaving somewhat erratically and even ”indignantly”. Winters are slowly and gradually getting shorter in duration , setting in quite late and leaving earlier and summers are getting longer and warmer year after year . Atmosphere is getting warmer day by day with surface temperature rapidly increasing , day temperatures and even evening /night temperatures are rising . In common parlance, higher temperatures are accentuating the effects of many disasters including storms, heat waves, droughts and even floods. Experts forecast a gloomy picture as climatic pattern worldwide is to experience significant changes , the one under reference is just one of numerous ones. Leaving to nature alone will not salvage the position, the citizen has to accept challenge and act accordingly to save the nature. In the meantime, let arrival of rains at the earliest be there to have the position salvaged.
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