Monsoon rains have been scanty in India for the second year in succession. The melting of snow in the Himalayas – the mountain holds the world’s largest body of ice outside the polar caps and contributes up to 15% of the river flow – has been delayed this year, says SK Haldar, general manager of the barrage. “There are fluctuations like this every year,” he says.

But the evidence about the declining water levels and waning health of the 2,500km (1,553 miles)-long Ganges, which supports a quarter of India’s 1.3 billion people, is mounting.
Part of a river’s water level is determined by the groundwater reserves in the area drained by it and the duration and intensity of monsoon rains. Water tables have been declining in the Ganges basin due to the reckless extraction of groundwater. Much of the groundwater is, anyway, already contaminated with arsenic and fluoride. A controversial UN climate report said the Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of the current levels by 2035.

The three-month-long summer is barely weeks away but water availability in India’s 91 reservoirs is at its lowest in a decade, with stocks at a paltry 29% of their total storage capacity, according to the Central Water Commission. Some 85% of the country’s drinking water comes from aquifers, but their levels are falling, according to WaterAid.
No wonder then that conflicts over water are on the rise.
Thousands of villagers in drought-hit region of Maharashtra depend on tankers for water; and authorities in Latur district, fearing violence, have imposed prohibitory orders on gatherings of more than five people around storage tanks. Tens of thousands of farmers and livestock have moved to camps providing free fodder and water for animals in parched districts. The government has asked local municipalities to stop supplying water to swimming pools.
States like Punjab are squabbling over ownership of river waters. In water-scarce Orissa, farmers have reportedly breached embankments to save their crops.
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“The river has very little water these days. It is also running out of fish. Tube wells in our village have run out of water,” he says. “There’s too much of uncertainty. People in our villages have moved to the cities to look for work.”
It is a concern you hear a lot on the river these days. At the power plant, Milan Kumar says he is “afraid that this can happen again”.
“We are being told that water levels in the Ganges have declined by a fourth. Being located on the banks of one of the world’s largest rivers, we never thought we would face a scarcity of water.

“The unthinkable is happening.”

Keep in mind this is just the tip of the rapidly melting iceberg…

If you think the world is unstable now, just wait until we add a few degrees and a few billion more people.

The middle east will be uninhabitable by the end of the century…

The current refugee crisis is pushing Europe towards fascism… What happens when the exodus increases 10 fold? And all this at the same time the coastal cities must cope with a meter or two of sea level rise and agriculture has to change dramatically due to changing temperatures and rainfall patterns…

I used to think immortality would be awesome… now I know better. The next generations- the next many generations- will be living in a rapidly worsening world…

We are facing a grim future under the best of circumstances… continued denial at this point is- LITERALLY- a crime against humanity.