Issue #18: But It Rained
Or: water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink
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Laxman Singh and the Gramin Vikas Navyuvak Mandal, Laporiya
Our associations with Rajasthan are often limited to notions of dry, crackling earth and sandstone monuments - almost as though the state is a part of the Thar Desert, not the other way around. The average annual rainfall in Rajasthan ranges from 170mm in some regions to 600mm in others - both numbers on the lower end of the spectrum of rainfall across India. Districts in Eastern Rajasthan are at constant risk of drought. However, within these districts, located in an arid region, plagued often by severe droughts, is Laporiya, a drought-resilient village with swathes of forest and greenery in adjacent farmland. The drought-resilience that Laporiya and surrounding villages boast is the effect of efforts undertaken by several villages and communities, acting together to conserve water resources and supplies and regenerate soil systems that have been desiccated completely after years of droughts and scant rainfall. The Gramin Vikas Navyuvak Mandal Lopariya (GVNML), an organization spearheaded by Laxman Singh (dubbed the “Water Warrior” of India), engaged several communities and local governments in promoting rainwater reliance, rainwater harvesting and the adaptation of traditional ways of irrigation to capture rainwater in arid regions.
In the 1970s, the region was affected by severe droughts, and agricultural lands (spurred on by the Green Revolution) relied heavily on groundwater sources for irrigation. After successive years of failing rains and droughts, the sudden onset of rain eroded the topsoil away completely, leading to the government of Rajasthan declaring the soil barren, saline and unfit for agriculture. This was when Singh and the GVNML developed the “chauka” system (from Hindi, chauka meaning square) to restore soil moisture and increase rainwater percolation in agricultural lands in the area. These systems (like johads or pokharas) are easily implementable conservation measures that increase rainwater percolation and prevent run-off and soil erosion. These earthen structures take the shape of a rectangular embankment at the edge of a slope, with square pits about twelve inches deep (the embankments and pits are arranged in a U-formation) that fill up and act as percolation zones in the landscape. Plantation of local trees and plants help keep the embankments in place and prevent erosion and drying out over long periods of water scarcity. More than two decades after implementing this system (along with canals and check dams) on the farmland in the vicinity of Laporiya, there was a tangible difference in the landscape of villages that adopted his methods of water conservation, and lands that did not. During an extremely severe drought in 2001, Laporiya was the only village that was not completely devastated by it’s effects.
Low cost, high impact efforts that use natural systems to restore land and water systems only work with the engagement of entire communities, over long periods of time. Had the extremely severe drought struck Rajasthan in the early years of the implementation of the chauka system, it might have failed to produce results. The water resilience of the region, especially the groundwater and water commons would take decades to replenish to even a fraction of their original volumes. Further, if too few members of the community had adopted a system like this, it would not have had a large enough impact on the microclimate and regional geography - producing no tangible results when stuck by a drought even after two decades.
Now, more than forty years on, the village of Laporiya is touted as a paragon of rural water security and governmental and private organizations alike are approaching the GVNML to restore water systems and buffer regions’ water supply (and thus economies) against drying out during droughts. Additionally, the GVNML aids in the development of rural economies through biodiversity and ecosystem restoration, dairy cattle farming and organic agriculture - all of which are low-cost efforts with long-term benefits. Community-centered organizations such as this are instrumental in creating regional impact in areas that are affected by a unique combination of environmental and climatological factors - empowering rural stakeholders to create solutions to their problems, rather than homogenizing problems to fit a scaled “solution” - showing an alternate way forward towards planetary healing.
You can read more about the GVNML on their website, and check out their work on the links attached below:
Gramin Vikas Navyuvak Mandal Laporiya - Website
GVNML’s Case Studies on Projects They’ve Undertaken
An Interview With Laxman Singh - The Wire
DownToEarth: A Documentary Short on The Chauka System and Efforts to Conserve Water - Youtube
For research and more links related to this topic, please see:
Climate Catalogue Resource 3: Gramin Vikas Navyuvak Mandal Laporiya
An exemplar for the dependence of human beings on climate systems can be found in the Indian Monsoon. For a quarter of the year, each year, the most populous subcontinent in the world is lashed by the South West Monsoon, and afterwards, the Northeast Monsoon. While the SW Monsoon bring the bulk of the country’s rainfall to land, the NE Monsoon is an important source of “winter rains” in the southern states. The reactions to monsoons are a spectrum of emotions apart; some view the rains as life-bringers, spreading water across the hot, dry, cracked, summer-beaten lands and bringing yellowing flora back from the brink, and watering crops. Others see rain as the harbingers of death and rot - spoiled crops and stored food, spreading fungus and the uncontrollably destructive forces in storms and cyclones. For the longest time, we have sought to know the monsoon, ceding control of it to divine powers, but asking that we be able to predict it, or rely upon it all the same.
The South Asian Monsoon is a climate system that can be described as an hyperobject - (refer to the introduction of Issue #17) - affected by and affecting factors ranging from global atmospheric variables to geology and ecology. The presence of the Himalayas and Hindu-Kush ranges along the northern boundary of the subcontinent, and the atmospheric cooling caused by these and the ice-laden Tibetan plateau further north ensures that almost all the moisture picked up by the winds over the Indian Ocean during the summer months is deposited within the subcontinent as rain, hail, or snow. The thermal coefficients associated with a massive body of land heating up draws monsoon winds into the subcontinent, where they are pushed over a series of elevations, including the Ghats and Deccan Plateau, the Aravallis, the Vindhyas, , and finally, the Himalayas, cooling suddenly with each elevated landscape, and depositing moisture on the plains and slopes. Apart from the relationship between atmospheric temperature and cloud condensation, a variety of factors affect regional rainfall, including suspended particulate matter in the air, the presence of forests and large ecosystems, local variations in atmospheric pressure, and industrial presence.
However, effects of the global climate on the South Asian Monsoon (and vice versa) are becoming increasingly recordable due to global meteorological data processing, satellite imagery and a network of weather stations on (nearly) every part of the planet’s surface. One of the most prolific effects of the Global Climate on the South Asian Monsoon is that of the El Nino Southern Oscillation, or the ENSO. Although the effects of the El Nino are felt on the west coasts and seas of the Americas (particularly South and Latin America) over the Pacific Ocean. An El Nino effect (uncharacteristically hot ocean surface temperature) results in less rainfall received by the Indian subcontinent during months June through September of the South Asian Monsoon. Conversely, La Nina (cool ocean surface temperatures) and a neutral ENSO seem to have no effect on the South Asian Monsoon.
In addition to the ENSO, other Global Climatic Phenomena affect the intensity of the and trigger India’s monsoon system. Western Disturbances, low-pressure regions flow from the Mediterranean region to the Indian subcontinent are important during winter months, as they bring warm air and winter rainfall to dryer regions in the country. The Arctic Oscillation reduces the amount of snowfall over Eurasia during the winter months, and brings more precipitation to the subcontinent during the monsoon. The Siberian High is a cold, high-pressure area accumulating over Northern Asia, influencing cold fronts in the Indo-Gangetic Plains. Atmospheric and oceanographic interactions of many of these climate systems is a new frontiers, but sharing local archival data is key to make these associations across continents and hemispheres.
The advent of the South West Monsoon brings storms and cyclones to the coastlines of India and the shores of Pakistan and Bangladesh. The cyclones often trigger mass evacuations and uproot the lives and livelihoods of people in the entire subcontinent. These storms are exacerbated by excess warming of the ocean surface and creation of extreme low-pressure zones, pulling in air from surrounding areas at high speeds. Cyclonic storms, tropical storms, extratropical storms, hurricanes, and typhoons are all variations of this kind of climatic event. As oscillating climate extremes drive temperatures higher, the frequency and intensity of these cyclones is bound to increase. Additionally, heatwaves on the land surface create long-lasting low-pressure areas that tend to pull cyclones closer to the landmass, putting more lives at risk.
To know the monsoon (in modern terms) was an arduous and erratic process undertaken by generations of Kings, Colonizers, and Governments over a span of centuries. Some sought to control monsoons, and claim de-facto dominion the entire subcontinent’s hydrology, while others sought to understand it, to safeguard the masses from the vagaries of unpredictable weather.
In this issue, we focus on the history of Indian hydrology and climate over several centuries through the reading.
[A book]
Unruly Waters: How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons Have Shaped South Asia’s History
a book by Sunil Amrith, published by Penguin Books, 2018
This book is a 10 HOUR read.
The author, Sunil Amrith is currently a professor of history at Yale University, and was a professor of South Asian history at Harvard University when the book was published. His background in history has allowed him to approach geography, economics and hydrology from an interesting perspective: delving into colonial archives to understand how British knowledge of the Indian subcontinent’s hydrology and climate grew, and what impact their actions centuries ago is having on the current hydrological engineering and economics of the subcontinent.
Amrith’s book is an exhaustive (an understatement by most measures) recounting of key historical developments in the field of climate and hydrology, based in the South Asian subcontinent, with information dredged up from archives, gazettes, publications, records of the British Raj and various naval and trade vessels, and the East India Company. He follows the chronology of these records, bringing important developments to the fore, and identifying Indian individuals who made crucial contributions to the British knowledge base as assistants or secretaries (when they were not allowed to be a part of the upper echelons of governmental bureaucracy). While, within this summary, I have cherry-picked the information that most interests me, there is an abundance of stories - important, and interesting - that may not make it into this newsletter. For which, I most zealously recommend that you read this book. For those of you who would like to learn more about his research and the information in the book, it ends with an expansive bibliography.
The South Asian Monsoon is Big and Old
Civilizations in the subcontinent have been affected - both adversely and positively - by the South Asian Monsoon since they existed. This climate system, one of periodically reversing atmospheric currents and a defined “wet” and “dry” season, has been around since the Miocene Epoch - alongside the formation of the Himalayan ranges, during a period of tectonics that brought the Indian landmass to collide with the Eurasian landmass. The changes in geography of ( the somewhat flat) Eurasia led to the formation on a supersized climate system, bound by the Himalayas and the Hindu-Kush mountains in the north, and exerting a large influence limited to the Indian sub-continent. Tropical monsoons, caused by moisture from large bodies of water being transported to land are usually microcosms - with storms and precipitation affecting archipelagoes or coastal areas of larger landmasses. The South Asian monsoon, however, is unique as one of the largest such systems, contributing water (both as rainfall and snow) to the Brahmaputra, Ganga, Indus, and Yangtse River watersheds. These are, by volume, some of the largest rivers in the world - and, in terms of the populations of human beings dependent directly on them, the most important. The Indo-Gangetic plains, watered by a combination of rivers and monsoon precipitation are among the largest cultivable agricultural lands in the subcontinent. And - the South Asian Monsoon is the key hydrological driver of all of these rivers.
The British intervention in India’s hydrology focused on agrarian productivity
Beginning with canals, diversions and waterways to ease the flow of traded products from the heartlands of the country to major ports along the coast, the British (East India Company) viewed the innumerable natural waters of India as a logistical boon. Before their intervention, the entire trade network within the country depended on either horse-drawn carts or the movement of small volumes of raw material, grain, etc., in caravans across the country. Canals and waterways were within the domains of capital cities, and were generally associated with medieval urban agglomerations. Additionally, controlling the “unruly” waters was an easy way to create agriculturally productive land where there was none - via artificially irrigated landscapes.
The taming (channelization, dyke-building, and canaling) of the various large water bodies was celebrated abroad as an effort to civilize an uncivilized nation of people, to ease them away from their dependence on unpredictable monsoon, and to save them from drought, scarcity and famine.
Controlling the waterways had almost no positive effects on drought prevention
Although the irrigation works and canal-building fervor did bring water to generally dry areas and allow agricultural expansion, when the drought came, it hit the country even harder than before.
The monsoons were shackles, to be freed from, to carry on without, come rain or sun, and the understanding of the magnitude of the South Asian Monsoon system had not set in yet. The surplus water flowing through the rivers of the subcontinent was the effect of an extremely large and complex hydro-geological network that could not easily have been fathomed. When the monsoon rains failed, the volume of water collected and brought into the “civilized” masses’ irrigation canals and reservoirs reduced. Moreover, parts of the land that depended on a bare minimum water brought to them by streams or small ponds formed in the vicinity of the large rivers, found their sources of water drying up completely as irrigation canals upstream siphoned off what little water there was remaining for agriculture in the drier regions.
No intervention by the British, be it the waterways or railways, could inoculate the Indian subcontinent from periodic drought, caused by failing monsoons, and the resulting famine.
The pursuit of an understanding of the monsoon climate system
The railway infrastructure followed waterworks as a subcontinent-wide intervention by the British. The railways were, by British accounts, a great way to move food supplies from areas of surplus to areas of scarcity during a famine. Additionally, they moved cash crops such as cotton, sugar, poppies, and spices from agricultural centers in North and Central India to production and export centers along the Coast.
However, even after the railways had been built across most of the country, the droughts that came after (1860-61, 1876-78, 1896-97) decimated populations in affected areas by millions. The famines were not entirely a result of failing rains and drought conditions, a lack of action on the part of the colonial governance played a part here too.
An effort, then, to understand the occurrence of droughts, and the various storm conditions associated with the “untamable” monsoon climate was undertaken. The British were uniquely poised to conduct a study of this scale - their Empire then included outposts and naval or mercantile fleets dotted all over the Indian Ocean and South and South East Asia. This allowed them access to a variety of records and several logs that could be compared by a central (or, sub-central) weather monitoring body. It was only after a major cyclone was tracked along the Bay of Bengal by poring over weather forecasts and observations from the Andaman Islands to Pondicherry, and by comparing them to the ship’s logs from naval vessels in or around the Bay of Bengal. This was the beginning of an integrated understanding of the monsoons.
Data from far and wide (the extents of the British Empire) was tabulated and compared by statisticians, mathematicians and engineers, all placed centrally in some bureaucratic position with the government of the Raj (the field of meteorology was in it’s nascency at this time, and no bona-fide “meteorologists” existed). Each had seen the effects of droughts, famine, and storms on their provinces or presidencies. Each was aided (importantly) by local, Indian assistants and secretaries who had a keen understanding of the Indian climate, and were able to make connections between seemingly random weather events that spurred on the study of the monsoons.
Amrith’s painstaking effort to research and name each of these otherwise silent contributors to modern Indian meteorology is commendable. He has removed from anonymity several people who would have been lost under centuries of Western Progress and modern climate science.
Larger Associations of Global Climate phenomena with the South Asian Monsoon
As the knowledge of interconnected climate systems grew, more European scientists and researchers began engaging in meteorology. This included those who were able to observe global climate phenomena in conjunction with the South Asian monsoons, and draw inferences of connections. Gilbert Walker (a statistician and physicist), Director of Observatories in India first connected the El Nino effect with a subdued South Asian monsoon in 1920. Decades later, Jacob Bjerknes, a Norwegian scientist finally described the connection between the “Southern Oscillation” with changes in the atmospheric pressure over the Indian Ocean, which led to subdued or severe monsoons.
More mathematicians, scientists, and physicists from British and Indian backgrounds, persons of all walks of life, contributed to the understanding of the South Asian monsoon in the 1900s, bringing about a higher technical understanding of the climate system. Several models developed during this period form the basis of modern climatology and meteorology today.
Urban Interventions and Large-Scale Developments
Through the decades, although the understanding of the monsoons developed slowly, on land, the British brought new hydrological devices to bear in the battle against an unpredictable water supply: dams, reservoirs, and piped water. Cities and industrial towns, with dense populations and coal-fired-steam-powered engines driving mills and other industries required large amounts of water, necessitating the building of dams on mid- or large-sized rivers, and filling up reservoirs at a hitherto unheard of scale. Piped water supply to the masses - be they in rural areas, where the water was part of irrigation supplies; or cities, where the economic importance of the processing centers (especially textile mills) required that there be an abundance of water at all times - often, at the detriment of surrounding watershed basins.
The connection between monsoon, rivers, and land became more fractured, leading to a false sense of security on the part of the urban dwellers, and a dissociation from hydrological systems such as underground aquifers and river basins. The idea that piped water would provide a better, cleaner, and more consistent source of water meant that the urban citizens (and some rural citizens) began to take the rains for granted. Entire rivers were channelized into drains, and massive amounts of land reclaimed from marshy areas or the sea, changing the surface hydrology of cities. Stone and cement dams of larger magnitudes were conceptualized as a total solution to urban and rural water needs.
The Colonial Water Hangover
During the partition, canals and waterworks that were built by the British to irrigate territories were suddenly split by a border. Within India’s borders were the sources of the major rivers flowing westwards, as were all diversions and canal systems, creating geopolitical tensions between countries of the Indian subcontinent. Similarly, for the rivers that flowed into the Bay of Bengal, the appearance of near-arbitrary borders cut off trade, livelihoods and ecosystems at the deltas of these rivers, isolating millions of people from the source of water, creating more geopolitical tensions.
Under the new, independent Indian government, dam building was seen as the way towards a developed, modern country. Several dams were planned and built in the decades after the British departed; looked at as both a source of water stability for agricultural land and a stable source of water to the cities - with the additional benefit of potential hydroelectric power. The colonial hydrological intervention strategies remain, to this day, the most common way of garnering “Water Security” - dams, canals, river linking and reclamations.
Most interestingly, the author brings to the fore a variety of events and actors that influenced the economic development of the Indian subcontinent. This includes the accounts of hydrological engineers in newly Independent India who were tasked with visiting and understanding the CCP’s efforts to dam the Yangtse River in China, the geopolitical conflicts arising from rivers flowing across borders, and the many, many, (until now) nameless men and women who studied and understood the monsoons in various capacities through the centuries.
You can find more research on some of the topics covered in the book below:
Climate Catalogue Resource 3: The South Asian Monsoon
[A Lecture/Documentary]
Water is Earth's Blood - The Old and New Water Paradigms to Restore Our Planet's Health
An animated lecture by Zach Weiss on Water Stories YouTube Channel, 2022
This is a 20 MINUTE video.
This is an animated documentary that visualizes concepts spoken about by Water Stories founder, Zach Weiss. In it, he describes a paradigm shift in our approach to water conservation - an understanding of water as a part of planetary systems, as dependent on ecological diversity as the ecosystems are on it.
In this, he expounds on the “Biotic Pump” hypothesis, which theorizes that rainfall is affected by the presence of large swathes of forested land. The integrity of the hydrological cycle depends on the existence of green lands and ecosystems that can not only absorb and infiltrate water into the ground, creating drought-proof conditions in the regional ecosystem, but also release macromolecules and biological particles such as pollen and hydrophilic microorganisms that make atmospheric moisture condense on them, bringing rainfall. This is a departure from the traditional notions of climate and rainfall being a factor of physical and geological effects, limited to temperature differentials, thermal capacities and barometric differences.
The video illustrates the balanced conditions under which a positive hydrological cycle exists - moisture in the air condenses of hygroscopic nuclei > falls into forests and jungles > propagates life > creates larger rain catalyst ecosystems > replenishes groundwater aquifers > flows into the ocean through natural water systems. Then, further, an illustration of a negative hydrological cycle - denuded, deforested, cleared landscapes do not cause natural rainfall > the rain falls erratically > land dries out due to drought > water forms sheet flows over dry, cracked land, and causes flooding and soil erosion > the water does not percolate or replenish groundwater reserves > uncontrolled flooding destroys ecosystems downriver. Currently, several instances of the negative hydrological cycle are observed around the world, especially where concretization of the land and unsustainable agricultural practices have degraded natural watershed basins and infiltration areas such as swamps and riparian zones.
Weiss continues by explaining how land under stewardship of communities has the potential to restore watersheds and the hydrological cycle by creating large areas of managed ecosystems with managed watersheds. This can reverse drought, reduce the temperatures and boost the regional biodiversity.
The lecture also explains, with global-scale examples, how climate systems are affected by deforestation and other anthropogenic activities. Conversely, creating water retention landscapes and similar natural conservation strategies, affording stewardship of local water bodies such as pond, lakes and rivers to local communities is a movement towards what he describes as a new water paradigm, one that will help re-create a positive hydrological cycle.
You can learn more about Zach Weiss and Water Stories from the links below:
Water Stories Channel on Youtube
Water For The Future: Capturing Seasonal Rains for the Next Generation on Youtube
You can find research on Biotic Pumps and Hydrological Cycles below:
Climate Catalogue Resource 3: Hydrological Cycles
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