The poor of India are hit the worst by the water shortage. Photo Credit: Flickr

New Delhi's water woes are typical of many parts of India. Most low- and middle-income neighborhoods in large metropolitan cities face similar shortages. But those worst hit by the shortage are the poor. The majority of slum areas in cities like Mumbai (Bombay) have no tap water; period. The water crisis, decades in the making, is getting worse just as India's economy is making impressive strides. A soaring population, rapid urbanization, and a thirsty farm belt are all putting enormous strains on India's anemic water infrastructure. The resulting water shortage could severely impact India's agricultural sector and thus hamper the country's ability to feed its billion-plus population and also cause internal and transborder conflicts.

Measured by conventional indicators, water stress, which occurs when the demand for water exceeds the available amount during a certain period or when poor quality restricts its use, is increasing rapidly, especially in developing countries like India and China. According to the 2006 Human Development Report (New York: UNDP), approximately 700 million people in 43 countries live below the water-stress threshold of 1,700 cubic meters per person. By 2025, that figure will reach 3 billion, as water stress intensifies in China, India, and sub-Saharan Africa.

A Tale of Uneven Access and Wastage

Uneven access to water, wastage, and widespread corruption in collecting water tariffs are compounding the waterscarcity problem, and no city exemplifies this better than New Delhi. According to a 2006 United Nations Development Program paper, New Delhi's water demand is estimated at 3,600 million liters of water per day (and rising); the highest of any city in the country. The local public-water utility, Delhi Jal Board, supplies approximately 3040 million liters per day, out of which only about 1,730 million liters reach consumers, because of massive distribution losses resulting, for example, from leaks from old pipes.

The majority of slum areas in cities like Mumbai (Bombay) have no tap water; period.

Access and use of water varies widely. The Delhi Development Report 2006 (Delhi government [New York: Oxford University Press]), published with the help of the UNDP, points out that almost 27 percent of homes in the city receive tap water for less than three hours a day, and 55 percent of households receive water for only three to six hours a day. In addition, almost 18 per cent of households receive less than 100 liters per capita daily (lpcd), while 31 percent of households get over 200 lpcd. Also, of the nearly 690,000 households living in slum areas, 16 percent receive less than 25 lpcd and another 71 percent receive between 25 and 50 lpcd. Not surprisingly, reliable access to tap water is a major sales pitch for the posh condominium and apartment buildings that are sprouting up in the suburbs of almost every big city. To guarantee 24-hour running water, contractors are digging wells deep underground. Not surprisingly, the water table in some parts of Delhi, for example, have dropped by as much as 30 meters, compared to levels in 1960, and is not getting adequately replenished. Experts fear that this supply will soon get exhausted. What happens after that is anyone's guess.

India's water scarcity is made worse by high levels of pollution in water bodies in all major cities. According to We for Yamuna, an environmental group based in New Delhi, their city dumps 950 million gallons of sewage into the Yamuna river, which flows through the bustling metropolis. Out of this, only 5 percent is treated properly before it gets dumped into the Yamuna, which supplies 75 percent of Delhi's drinking water. Sewage disposals from New Delhi neighborhoods, industrial effluents, chemicals from farm runoffs, and arsenic and fluoride contamination have made the Yamuna water extremely poisonous for both consumption and irrigation, and experts agree that the river is clinically dead. Millions have been spent on "cleanup efforts," but no one knows where the money went.

A Looming Food Crisis

Shortage of water no doubt has serious implications in a predominantly agricultural country like India. At present, the country's harvests of crops like wheat and rice are on the rise, mainly due to increasing access to modern farming tools and know-how. But within the next few years, environmentalists warn, the loss of irrigation water could override technological progress and start shrinking the harvest in some parts of the country, as it is already doing in China. Dwindling groundwater reserves have serious implications, because the majority of Indian farmers still rely on this resource for their irrigation needs.

Shortage of water no doubt has serious implications in a predominantly agricultural country like India.

According to the Central Groundwater Board, which collects groundwater data, 1,000 of the 5,723 geographic blocks into which India is divided are overexploited and are in danger of getting depleted. The majority of these blocks envelope big agricultural states, like Punjab—often regarded as India's breadbasket state, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Haryana, and Rajasthan. The combination of cheap electricity, proliferation of powerful electric pumps, and lack of restrictions on tapping groundwater has prompted farmers and residents to pump water with impunity—as long as they are digging on their own land. The Indian government, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has warned of the dangers of exhausting groundwater reserves and excessive pumping, but local officials are weary of taking any action, such as raising electricity tariffs, that may upset the powerful farm lobbies in their respective states. Besides, tightening water usage could also go against India's goal of raising food production.

Privatization May Take a Long Time

The privatization of public-water utilities has often been discussed as a way to curb wastage and improve efficiency. Privatization cheerleaders accuse state utilities of mismanagement, waste, leakage, corruption, overstaffing, and no accountability. The various water departments themselves agree that there is a desperate need for reform. The World Bank is spearheading the push for privatization, and the world's biggest water companies think they can make profits out of running India's water systems. But water privatization around the world does not have a good track record, and according to opinion surveys, most Indians are hesitant to hand over this commodity to private contractors, even as they suffer through one water crisis after another, fearing higher tariffs. Delhi residents, for instance, took to the streets in protest in late 2005 when they learned of a World Bank proposal to privatize water in parts of the city. The World Bank proposal for Delhi stated that water could be supplied all day, every day, but at a higher cost than presently offered. The Public Services International Research Unit in London, which has studied water privatization in India, says that while multinational corporations engaged in the water business are attracted by the size of India's market, they also fear that bureaucracy, corruption, politics, and slow progress of water reforms will make their business ventures unprofitable, much like what happened with India's muddled electricity privatization.

Technology to the Rescue

In addition to privatizing water utilities, India is also looking at sophisticated engineering solutions to better manage its water resources. The key question is this: Can massive canals be part of India's strategy to more efficiently use water by transporting cubic kilometers of water each year from wet regions to dry regions? Worldwide, there are no shortages of such schemes. The following are just a few bold examples of water resources engineering: The gigantic south-to-north water diversion project underway in China; large-scale water diversions away from the Aral Sea in the former Soviet Union; the Irtysh-Karaganda canal project in Kazakhstan; Israel's National Water Carrier; the Southeastern Anatolia Project in Turkey (also known as GAP); and Spain's National Hydrological Plan (currently suspended).

In addition to privatizing water utilities, India is also looking at sophisticated engineering solutions to better manage its water resources.

The most ambitious and much-talked-about scheme in India is the $112 billion Interlinking of Rivers (ILR) project, due to be completed by 2015. The megaproject, which is currently under review by the government, envisages linking all major rivers in India through an elaborate system of canals. Project planners hope to divert the "surplus water" in eastern river basins to parched rivers in the west and south. The proposal, which first came up in the early 1980s, has attracted its fair share of detractors. The project has strong backing from the government, including the president, but has been dismissed by civil society organizations as well as by the traditional water managers. Some argued that the interlinking project has the potential for generating conflicts amongst states, because major river basins in India are already ridden with conflicts over the sharing of water resources. Other argue that the project is simply too expensive and the goals unrealistic.

To Sum Up

India faces a serious water crisis, which, if it remains unattended, has the potential to threaten India's economic growth and create domestic instability and tension among its neighbors. The lack of water in the agricultural states has the potential to accelerate the demographic problem by hastening the migration of farm workers to urban centers, thus putting enormous pressure on city infrastructure. India's ballooning population, coupled with rapid industrialization, means that meeting the rising water demands will become an increasingly difficult task unless urgent steps are taken right away. Everyone agrees that building extensive canals by itself won't solve India's water woes. The first step, experts suggest, should be a massive public education scheme to teach people, especially wealthy farmers, the need for water conservation and thus reduce the per capita water consumption. On the policy front, India will have to take urgent steps to improve the management of water utilities and reduce wastage. In addition, technological innovation through further advances in desalinization, water recycling, deeper drilling, and water transportation techniques has to be stepped up. But these steps must be accompanied by traditional water-conservation means such as constructing water percolators to refill aquifers, switching to crops that need less irrigation water, reforesting hillsides, and restoring topsoil to increase the absorption of rainfall. Together, these steps will go a long way to alleviate the situation.




Contributed by Pramit Mitra, fellow in the Center for Strategic and International Studies South Asia Program, focusing on India-Pakistan relations. Reprinted with permission from CSIS.org.

To read another Global Envision article about water shortage, see Water Scarcity - Real and Virtual Implications.



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