In New Delhi’s Vivekananda camp, the lack of water in public taps means that they only have the availability of brackish water for two hours a day, while water from the tanker is being supplemented. In Rajasthan, the tap water supply is available only once in four days, and residents would travel over a mile to reach their water source in rural parts of Murbad, in Thane District near Mumbai. In Bengaluru – the 4th most populous city in India with an estimated population of 14 million people – water shortage is critical this year.
The largest population still facing severe water shortages.
The country has been struggling with water shortages for many years. This year, the city was hit with a heat wave, which has further dried up rivers, lakes and threatened the subsoil water table, and therefore it is likely that India will face a lot of water scarcity. These shortages will impact food costs, which will also result in unrest that will further add to hardship on those struggling. Poor water quality is responsible for killing 200,000 Indian people every year.
While there are problems, there are also solutions that are being developed. The government has set a goal to reduce the share of wastewater that gets recaptured from about 20% today to over 75% by 2025, and also to cut the percentage of the water being extracted from the ground from 66% to under 50%. A new program at the village level also promotes a particular “crop pattern” according to local water availability. Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi has set up a programme to clean up or rebuild a minimum of 75 lakes in each of the 785 districts within the nation and has started or completed work on over 80,000 of these lakes.
India relies heavily on monsoon rain. But even during good monsoons, a lot of rainwater simply floods away into the sea, allowing it to complete its one-year journey to nowhere.
Its per capita fresh water availability has fallen by about 30% during the last decade, making it “water stressed,” as was pointed out by an expert committee in November, 2011. For example, in Mumbai’s Dandekar report, it stated that the per capita water availability in Maharashtra is 1,100 cubic meters (cum) per year/wide, which is less than the national average of 1,550 cum per year.
In Nagpur, Vishvaraj Group invested $100 million in building a facility that treats 200 million liters of sewage per day and sells 190 million liters of treated water for use in thermal power plants.
Tata Steel and JSW Steel have also continued to invest in projects to treat their wastewater instead of fresh water consumption.
Industry experts suggest that just over three-quarters of the average water supplied could realistically be reused in homes, but there is certainly a lot of work to do in order to ensure that water treatment and distribution infrastructures are capable of recycling and re-using water under any circumstance! The government is willing to invest $36 billion by 2026 on programs that provide clean, sustainable drinking water to all citizens and equally to invest in infrastructure for major Indian cities that ensure equitable distribution at the municipal level.
Agriculture, which mainly involves flood irrigation, is the key water user. A program that will provide for the nationwide rural and drinking water delivery system will define water budgets on a village-by-village basis, that will then help communities plan for water use in both irrigation and at home. Farmers and residents will challenge these new plans, but officials insist that India has no room left for argument – the water table is simply dropping too fast.
