The Great Indian Water Challenge

The Indian economy is growing at 6.5-7.5% for the past couple of years and economists are forecasting 8% growth for fiscal year ending in March 2007. Even as we are racing on this growth trajectory there are numerous challenges that face India in the 21st century; education, poverty, healthcare, AIDS and clean drinking water to name a few. New York Times was recently running a story on the water management crisis in Delhi and the sad state of the Yamuna River on whose banks Delhi was born. (The article is a good read)

Here is a gist of the article "The combination has left water all too scarce in some places, contaminated in others and in cursed surfeit for millions who are flooded each year. Today the problems threaten India's ability to fortify its sagging farms, sustain its economic growth and make its cities healthy and habitable. At stake is not only India's economic ambition but its very image as the world's largest democracy."

The article also says near the end "Yet the most telling paradox of the city’s water crisis is that New Delhi is not entirely lacking in water. The problem is distribution, hampered by a feeble infrastructure and a lack of resources, concedes Arun Mathur, chief executive of the Jal Board"

This water crisis exists in all the major Indian cities and it's worse as we go in Gujarat and Rajasthan. Inspite of heavy rains and floods last year on 26/7 in Mumbai, you could still see water tankers operating in Mumbai and supplying water to so many city buildings. Where's all the water going ? (read DailyPanga almost at the bottom of the page)

A World Bank report India's Water Economy: Bracing for a turbulent Future, by John Briscoe states (it's scary) "Unless water management practices are changed - and changed soon - India will face a severe water crisis within the next two decades and will have neither the cash to build new infrastructure nor the water needed by its growing economy and rising population". This is something that's predicted to happen within our life-span, so obviously I'm scared.

There are solutions to this problem and the Center for Science and Environment in New Delhi have a initiative called Rainharvesting, read more about it here and here
In short it means "In India the monsoon is brief. We get about 100 hours of rain in a year. It is this 100-hour bounty that must be caught, stored, and used over the other 8,660 hours that make up a year."

The problem at hand is serious; will need serious policy change and disruptive innovative water-management solution to yield successful results. But the least we can do is follow something we learnt in the 3rd or 4th grade, Stop wasting water!

Comments Welcome.