Composite Water Management Index 2.0 | 24 Aug 2019

NITI Aayog in association with Ministry of JAL Shakti and Ministry of Rural Development released Composite Water Management Index 2.0.

India is experiencing a very significant water challenge, approximately 820 million people of India - living in twelve river basins across the country have per capita water availability close to or lower than 1000m3 – the official threshold for water scarcity as per the Falkenmark Index.

NITI Aayog first launched and conceptualized the Composite Water Management Index in 2018 as a tool to instil a sense of cooperative and competitive federalism among the states.
It provided actionable guidance to States on where they were doing well absolutely and relatively and what they needed to focus on to secure their water
The index comprises 9 themes.

CWMI 2.0 ranks various states for the reference year 2017-18 as against the base year 2016-17.
Gujarat (continues to hold on to its rank one in the reference year (2017-18), followed by Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Goa, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
In North-Eastern and the Himalayan States, Himachal Pradesh has been awarded rank 1 in 2017-18 followed by Uttarakhand, Tripura and Assam.
For the first time, Union Territories have submitted their data and Puducherry has been declared the top performer.
80% of the states have shown improvement in their water management scores over the last three years.

Falkenmark Indicator or Water Stress Index

It is one of the most commonly used measures of water scarcity.
It defines water scarcity in terms of the total water resources that are available to the population of a region; measuring scarcity as the amount of renewable freshwater that is available for each person each year.
If the amount of renewable water per person per year in a country is
- below 1,700 m³, the country is said to be experiencing water stress.
- below 1,000 m³, it is said to be experiencing water scarcity.
- below 500 m³, it is experiencing absolute water scarcity.