There is only enough water to fill 23% of the holding capacity in all of South India’s reservoirs, The Hindu reported last week based on an analysis of Central Water Commission data. This, according to the analysis, is nine percentage points lower than the rolling decadal average, speaking to the certainty and the magnitude of the impending crisis. The last time South India faced a summertime water crisis was in 2017. The crisis in the same region this year is poised to be different, and worse, for a few reasons. First, the monsoons are influenced by various factors; of these, El Niño events render them more erratic, even if isolating their influence thus is a simplification. There was an El Niño event in 2014-16 whereas this time there is an ongoing event and among the five strongest such events in recorded history. Second, after meteorologists recorded 2023 to be the warmest year on record, they also said they expected 2024 to be worse. A team led by the U.K. Meteorological Office also predicted a 93% chance that every year until 2026 will be a record-breaker. Third, millions in India will be spending some additional time outdoors this summer to cast their votes in the general election. Fourth, this crisis has happened before; yet, while (some) policies and forecasting have improved, preparedness and implementation of these policies on the ground have not. Other factors, including unplanned urban growth, over-extraction of groundwater, low water reuse efficiency, insufficient community involvement, and encroachment and/or degradation of catchment areas, persist.
Climate change will impose a deadlier cost on low- and middle-income countries such as India by creating simultaneous crises. While the phenomenon changes the way weather events co-evolve, it also affects the frequency of their occurrence such that two events may develop a greater chance of transpiring together than they did before — such as a drought and a disease outbreak, which in turn will worsen socio-economic conditions among marginalised groups. Any water crisis must be seen against this backdrop, where it is both a crisis in itself and a factor that compounds the effects of another. That a region’s water situation becomes precarious after one year of deficient rain is a sign governments are not learning their lessons or are ignoring them, even if the deficit was considerable. No more information or context is necessary to understand this fact than what already exists. But governments and policymakers seem to need reminding that this and future crises will neither be just about the water nor the fault of climate change.