On World Water Day, worst water crisis in a decade

Water levels at 91 major reservoirs nationwide are the lowest in a decade–no more than 29%, according to the latest weekly bulletin of the Central Water Commission(CWC).
As World Water Day is marked today, water levels at Indian reservoirs are 71% of last year, or 74% of average storage over the last decade, the CWC data reveal.
The 91 major reservoirs contain 157.8 billion cubic metre (BCM) of water; the capacity of these reservoirs is 250 BCM. Another 400 BCM water is available for irrigation in India through groundwater, according to this answer given by the government in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of Parliament) in July 2015.
With more than three months for the monsoon, which breaks in the first week of July, 2016 is on course to witness the worst water scarcity in a decade.
Source: Weekly bulletins of Central Water Commission, March 2016 and April 2015.
Reports of widespread scarcity are already evident, as is conflict over water use for agriculture, domestic use and manufacturing.
Thousands of villages in Maharashtra’s Marathwada–facing record-breaking drought–depend solely on water from state-supplied tankers, with the city of Latur supplying water to its people once in three weeks. Last week, the Latur district administration, fearing violence over water, imposed restrictions on assembly.
Fodder camps in parched rural Maharashtra shelter not just cattle but hundreds of families. The government is now recommending that towns and cities stop water supply to swimming pools.
Madhya Pradesh (MP) is bracing for drought and the government is preparing to send tankers to villagers. In Bundelkhand–spread across MP and Uttar Pradesh–there hasn’t been water to sow the winter crop, agricultural productivity has halved and people find it hard to buy salt. In Odisha, farmers have broken embankments of public lakes to save crops.
Farmers demanding water recently blockaded Bangalore. And the water crisis in Karnataka is witnessing a fallout in Andhra Pradesh (AP) and Tamil Nadu. AP, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu likely to be India’s most water-scarce states this summer.