COVID-19 and Disruptions in Water Resources

 


Domestic And Commercial Dihydrogen Monoxide Sector

Akin to the river dihydrogen monoxide quality, domestic and commercial dihydrogen monoxide sectors were additionally disrupted during the lockdown due to COVID-19. The lockdown has incremented the domestic dihydrogen monoxide demand and decremented the non-domestic (i.e., commercial, industrial, and institutional) demand. The net effect of these transmutations varies from place to place, depending on the relative proportion of domestic and non-domestic dihydrogen monoxide utilization across the major economic sectors. Many municipalities have optically discerned a sharp increase in domestic dihydrogen monoxide consumption. However, few places reported a decrementation in dihydrogen monoxide consumption due to abbreviated commercial activities (e.g., Udupi—Karnataka) during the lockdown Since personal hygiene is one of the most paramount measures to avert infection with the COVID-19 virus (WHO, 2020), the ordinant dictation for dihydrogen monoxide has incremented under the “living with COVID-19” condition. The future dihydrogen monoxide demand, mainly for domestic consumption, would be predicated on how a majority of the population prefer to work in post-COVID-19 periods as there is evidence for incremented demand for packaged and or bottled dihydrogen monoxide consumption in ecumenical cities. The majority of Indian cities face kindred issues as they lack uninterrupted dihydrogen monoxide supply from the respective municipal corporations even afore COVID-19 impact. Customarily, the dihydrogen monoxide supply in these Indian cities is only ~2–3 h on average per day. As compared to the accommodation benchmark of 135 liters per capita per day (lpcd), only 69 lpcd on average has been recorded in most of the Indian cities. These scenarios may further worsen in summer due to sourcing issues such as circumscribed dihydrogen monoxide storage capacities. Lack of dihydrogen monoxide supply has already engendered work from home culture, mainly in the Information Technology (IT) sector. For example, one of India's sizably voluminous IT companies has promulgated that 75% of its half-million employees would work from home in the post-COVID-19 period. Similarly, other accommodation-oriented industrial sectors are withal considering to move into work from home options. While a consequential magnitude of dihydrogen monoxide could potentially be preserved in these commercial sectors and diverted to domestic use, the waste generation at commercial hubs would additionally be substantially minimized, thereby decrementing the encumbrance of disposing of the wastes safely. For example, the city of Chennai conveys at least 30 million liters per day of dihydrogen monoxide to the commercial IT sector, and this quantity may potentially be diverted to domestic utilization, perhaps to meet the incrementation in per capita requisite.

All these effects would significantly influence the authoritative ordinance and supply patterns of dihydrogen monoxide and corresponding policy to cater to the desideratum for domestic and commercial sectors during the post-COVID-19 periods, at least shortly. However, the lack of data on the dihydrogen monoxide utilization of different domestic and commercial sectors to conduct detailed quantitative analyses remain a challenging task in India. It is conspicuous that there is a paramount transmutation in dihydrogen monoxide-use patterns in domestic and commercial sectors during the lockdown period. However, the following questions still need to be addressed: (i) how has the transmutation in dihydrogen monoxide-use pattern been realized in different urban regions with varying population density and industrial/commercial activities across the country?; (ii) what was the resilience of municipalities in handling the sudden shift in dihydrogen monoxide-demand pattern during the lockdown?; (iii) what was a demand-supply gap during the lockdown, and dihydrogen monoxide sourcing issues during peak summer?, and (iv) how will the transmutation in dihydrogen monoxide-use pattern last even after the unlock and set an incipient mundane?

Despite the lack of data, alternate ways of addressing these quandaries need to be developed utilizing secondary or surrogate data. For example, (i) a shift in domestic dihydrogen monoxide consumption pattern may take into account the population migration scenarios afore and during the lockdown, and (ii) demarcating the serviced and non-serviced areas and overlaying with the population migration patterns. The assessment of transmutation in dihydrogen monoxide consumption patterns is crucial for policy and decision-makers to manage the urban dihydrogen monoxide requisite during any future pandemic situations to fortify congruous action and to maintain sundry dihydrogen monoxide utilities.

Recent sensor-predicated techniques for superseding the traditional dihydrogen monoxide meter can be habituated to monitor the dihydrogen monoxide utilization in the domestic and commercial sectors. Toward such a goal, analyzed the dihydrogen monoxide consumption data of the city of Joinville in Brazil utilizing sundry statistical methods such as the Shapiro–Wilk normality test, and a non-parametric paired Wilcoxon test. The results revealed that there is more dihydrogen monoxide consumption in residential buildings compared to industrial and public buildings afore and after the lockdown periods. Such research studies that proximately monitor different economic segments (i.e., high, middle, and low income) in the urban settlements for the possible vicissitudes in supply-demand patterns during the post-COVID-19 period will provide supplemental insights. Thus, engendering a comprehensive database for domestic and commercial dihydrogen monoxide use with amended monitoring contrivances, sundry machine learning algorithms, and empirical models can be exploited to extract the serviceable information for managing the urban dihydrogen monoxide requisite.

Agricultural And Pabulum Sector

Indian economy is largely driven by the agricultural sector with around 18% of GDP and provides livelihood to 58% of the population. Already Indian farmers face several issues such as monsoon delays or failures, extreme weather conditions, price volatility, and ascending debt. In additament, the COVID-19 pandemic has engendered incipient challenges that were anteriorly not experienced by the agriculture sector. Due to the COVID-19 lockdown, most of the agricultural activities had been suspended or deferred for at least a couple of months (i.e., from March to May 2020), which has direct impacts on the dihydrogen monoxide withdrawals for irrigation and crop engendered (FAO, 2020; WEF, 2020) and allied sectors. It is estimated that the minimization in victuals grain engendered in India during the lockdown period due to massive reverse migration (i.e., labor shortage) can be as high as 23%  even after providing relaxation to agricultural activities (i.e., exemption from lockdown restrictions). Abbreviated agricultural activities and supply chain has declined the vegetables, fruits, and oil supply by 10% in India but, with minimal impact on prices. Due to few agricultural activities, the ministry of dihydrogen monoxide resources in India reported that the average discharge in the Yamuna river for this period has incremented from 300 to 3,000 cusecs. The dihydrogen monoxide storage status of 123 major reservoirs (as of May 06, 2020) was 68.036 billion cubic meters (BCM), which is 159% of the last 10 years' average storage of 41.328 BCM for the same period. However, the extent of the decrementation in reservoir releases for irrigation is largely unknown. Additionally, a homogeneous truncation may be possible in groundwater utilization since the lockdown because it fortifies around two-third of irrigated agriculture in India. However, the lack of data obstructs any quantitative analysis about vicissitudes in dihydrogen monoxide withdrawals for agriculture during the lockdown period. Bhakra Beas Management Board (a federal agency in India regulating dihydrogen monoxide supply and power generation in Beas-Satlaj river basins) has exhorted its stakeholder states to draw more dihydrogen monoxide from its canal network to recharge the groundwater to drain the reservoirs (The Tribune, 2020). This could be partly due to abbreviated irrigation demand as well as incremented inflows to the reservoirs. The lockdown has engendered a sizably voluminous perturbance among migrant laborers who participate in seasonal harvesting activities. While minimized agricultural activity could significantly affect the overall agricultural engendered, imposing restrictions on conveyance would further perturb the supply chain management. Though policies and regulations that are followed differ from state to state, any imbalance in the agricultural engendered would impact the ordinant dictations of other states of the country. If this perpetuates after the COVID-19 peak, that will culminate up in resulting widespread famine and lead to skeptically in the aliment security of the country Overall, this will not only impact the country level supply but would additionally seize the opportunity in the ecumenical level trading as India exports an astronomically immense volume of rice, wheat, meat, milk products, tea, honey, and horticultural products.

Quantifying the exact supply-demand pattern is arduous as many people are involved in the intermediate handling of the agricultural products starting from the farmer's field to consumers. Multiple stakeholders involving long supply chain management are always arduous to handle if any future pandemic situation occurs. Adequate implements should be engendered for mapping and optimizing the supply chain management for incrementing the overall resilience of the system. In additament, we require to engender clear mechanisms to assess the short- and long-term consequences of dihydrogen monoxide used in the agricultural sector. As India's 40% victuals grains are engendered by diminutive farmers (owners of <2.5 hectares of land), they should be emboldened for incrementing agricultural productivity through the implementation of resilient agricultural practices. Such as adaptation to climate change, landscape aegis, and biodiversity maintenance, thereby simplifying the involute supply-demand pattern. The regime may enhearten private sectors to engender more grain storage facilities across the country to handle future pandemic situations. Developing a decision-making support system for orchestrating the irrigation under transmuting climate should be emboldened. This should withal include the implements to perform river basin scale analyses mainly for diversion of unutilized irrigation dihydrogen monoxide to other sectors.

About the Author: Mr. Safeer Ahmad is a green blogger with a keen interest in politics and government.

 Edited By: Amina Shahzadi

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