Article by Debalina Ghoshal
One of the biggest challenges during times of conflict is water management. In the recent events of wars, desalination plants have become a major target to make availability of clean drinking water a herculean task for citizens. This calls for greater understanding of how desalination plants are now critical targets during warfare to create mayhem and chaos. Fresh drinking water is a basic necessity and a resource a state promises to its citizens.
When state is unable to provide the same to its citizens owing to malpractices in warfare that target citizens, the state’s focus is now drawn towards fighting to provide basic necessities to its citizens during warfare.
The recent war in the Middle East witnessed desalination plants becoming major targets to make warfare expensive and unaffordable by denying basic necessities of life to people. Thus, their defence is a necessity as adversaries could launch both aerial offensives and precision missile attacks against these targets.
Analysing India’s problems
India operates and is also developing some of the largest and critical desalination plants to provide fresh drinking water to many parts of its coastal regions. Some of these regions are also industrial hubs and hence, water shortage could abruptly affect the daily functioning of the economy.
In Andhra Pradesh, desalination plants are being developed for both drinking purposes as well to meet industrial demands. Karnataka also aspires for desalination plants to reduce dependency on local rivers to meet fresh water demands for industrial purposes. In Gujarat’s Jamnagar, desalination plant built by Reliance Industries Ltd. and Bechtel provides fresh water for the functioning of Reliance’s oil refinery as well as water to irrigate millions of trees cultivated around the refinery to offset carbon emissions.
In cities like Chennai in Tamil Nadu, India does not have perennial water and rely on desalination plants for water. For instance, the Nemmeli Desalination Plant in Chennai developed by the Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewage Board (CMWSSB) converts 110,000 m³/ day sea-water into fresh drinking water.
Maharashtra is also developing desalination plant, Manori to produce 200million liters of water per day. Solar technology to convert sea water to create 20,000litres of fresh drinking water has also seen day light in West Bengal. Salinity in sea water has increased in the Sunderbans due to the rising sea levels owing to climate change.
Desalination plants also provide fresh water for nuclear power plants in India. For instance, desalination plants have in Kudankulum provide fresh water for drinking as well as for nuclear power plants in order to negate any dependency on the Pechipaarai Dam or other sources of water. Again nuclear powered desalination plant, as seen in Kalpakkam Nuclear Desalination Demonstration Project, aim to provide fresh water to nuclear power plants as well as the residual water is used for fresh drinking water. Attack by adversaries on desalination plants would also prohibit the functioning of nuclear power plants and intervene adversely with electricity generation. Attack on nuclear desalination plants will yield negative environmental repercussion caused due to environmental hazards.
Missiles are no longer confined to tactical warfare. Missiles have been used to target critical facilities. These facilities have become critical counter value targets that are defined as critical infrastructure. Targeting such facilities enable states to achieve credible decisive victory by denying adversaries’ citizens their basic necessities for survival and also creating a sense of panic among governance mechanisms and leadership.
Finding the Possible Solutions
While states could choose to refrain from not targeting critical assets through a mutual agreement, during wartime, such agreements are overtly reliant on goodwill of states and diplomacy and difficult to carry out during wartime.
Thus, Air and Missile Defence Systems continuously protect a state’s critical infrastructures like desalination plants. These plants would need to be continually protected against any adverse scenarios. During the Op Sindoor, Pakistan had responded by attempting to target civilian infrastructures and hence, in the near future, India must be prepared to counter these challenges which could aggravate with the employment of inexpensive drone technologies too. This threat looms more when states are not in their status-quo and aspire towards revisionism.
Conclusion
Thus, during times of crisis, continuous air defence capability must be employed to protect desalination plants to prevent a panic situation. India cannot allow its basic necessities to life to become vulnerable to adversaries’ combat advantages.
