The Water Crisis in India by Prashant Nakwe

THANE, MAHARASHTRA, 1995: MARCH...sted in less than 10 minutes. .

THANE, MAHARASHTRA, 1995: MARCH 1995, MUMBRA (THANE DISTRICT): For Hasina, then 46, finding potable water for her family was the most important chore of the day, seven days of the week. Twenty-seven years later, not much has changed for the 250,000-plus residents of Mumbra, a sprawling suburb of Thane district, just 34 km from Mumbai, India’s financial capital. The advantages of proximity to Mumbai, however, never trickled down to Mumbra. Even for life’s basic needs.
In 1995, when I revisited Mumbra, the place I was born and raised in, hundreds of water tankers would traverse the 14 sq km outpost delivering barely-pure water to thousands of thirsty people who lived in mostly illegal constructions. They still do. Now, according to official estimates, there are more than a thousand water tankers that do the same. It is almost as if there is a mafia of water suppliers, conniving with local authorities, to throttle official water supply so that these tankers can operate with impunity. The situation becomes even worse during the unforgiving monsoon season when, ironically, people have to wait under thundershowers to get access to water.
In 1991, Mumbra’s population was 44,000. It was, after all, a little more than an expanded piece of agricultural land with little or no municipal amenities to speak of. The Mumbai communal riots of 1992 forced scores of Muslim families to move to Mumbra. By 2022, Mumbra’s population has risen to nearly 250,000 with a density of 17,000 persons per sq km, and the demand for potable water skyrocketed. For Hasina and her family – and thousands of Mumbra residents like them – there is no option but to wait for these 10,000-litre tankers whose supply gets exhausted in less than 10 minutes.
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MUMBAI, MAHARASHTRA, 1999:There...y to meet the same fate in 2041

MUMBAI, MAHARASHTRA, 1999:There is perhaps no greater example of disparity in India than the slums of Mumbai, a city with a GDP of $400 billion (purchasing power parity method), but where millions have to struggle for drinking water supply. Every day, this nameless slum dweller from hutments lining Mumbai’s famed suburban railway network, wakes up and rushes to the tracks to get a few litres of water leaked from passing train wagons. Like thousands like him, he puts his life at risk just so that his family gets to drink water every day. There are more than 4000 daily suburban train services in the city, and on average, a train passes these tracks once every three minutes. In 2019, before Covid struck and train services were curtailed, 2691 people died on the city’s railway tracks.
As of December 2021, the city’s daily demand for water was in excess of 4.2 billion litres a day, whereas, the supply was approximately 3.85 billion litres a day, according to the city’s municipal corporation, the richest in India and whose annual budget exceeds that of many Indian states. This shortfall is not uniform. Official estimates suggest that an average slum dweller receives 45 litres of water a day, while other residents average 150 litres a day. Moreover, much of the official supply is sent to the city’s high-rises, leaving the poor with little or no supply.
By 2041, this disparity could further widen as the daily demand for water is expected to touch nearly 6.5 billion litres a day, according to official projections in a December 2018 report titled ‘Towards Equitable and 24x7 Water Supply for Greater Mumbai’. The nameless slum dweller was parched in 1999, and his children and grandchildren are likely to meet the same fate in 2041

APRIL 2001, VIDARBHA, EASTERN M... do not own the land they till.

APRIL 2001, VIDARBHA, EASTERN MAHARASHTRA: A woman from an indigenous community in one of India’s most economically backward areas waits for a leaky valve to drip water into her bucket, a daily exercise that is as much dependent on luck as it is on the official water supply.
For over two decades, the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra (it has 11 districts and over 25% of the state’s tribal population), has been hit by a drought that has not only lowered the water table and made it almost impossible to extract water, but has resulted in an agricultural catastrophe leaving hundreds of thousands of farmers bankrupt. Between 2013 and 2019, official records say, more than 7700 farmers in this region died by suicide. These are just official estimates, because, in Maharashtra, thousands of suicides go unrecorded on account of a law that distinguishes ‘eligible’ and ‘ineligible’ farmer suicides. Only those farmers that have the so-called ‘7/12 extract’ – a priceless piece of paper issued by the revenue department to indicate ownership of the land parcel – are considered for the state government’s compensation. The number of suicides is likely at least double of the official estimates as thousands of farmers do not own the land they till.

RANN OF KUTCCH, GUJARAT, JULY 2...have stayed here for millennia.

RANN OF KUTCCH, GUJARAT, JULY 2005: In the western Indian state of Gujarat’s Rann (or desert) of Kutchch – an ecologically sensitive salt marsh spread across over 26,000 sq km or 10,000 sq miles – thousands of locals consider potable water to be their most prized asset. This has led to a culture of gifting stainless steel utensils at weddings. It is quite normal to see several of these utensils – primarily used to store water at homes – given pride of place along with intricately embroidered pieces of cloth.
These homes – called bunga in the local dialect – belong to the Maldhari community, an indigenous herding tribe that has lived here for thousands of years. There are other indigenous communities here – primarily the Agariya people – who have also lived here for a similar time period.
The climate of Rann of Kutchch is extreme – temperatures can reach 50 degrees Celsius in the summer and drop to or below freezing during winter. The short supply of drinking water, mostly due to the high salinity of the groundwater – means that families treat it like the above-referenced prized asset. But it is not only home for millions of Kutchchi people, but also their singular source of livelihood – more than 76% of India’s salt is harvested here. It is the perfect Catch-22 – you can’t leave the Rann of Kutchch and you can’t stay here without the associated problems.
While the Rann of Kutchch is no stranger to heavy rainfall and even flooding, the water supply is not uniform. Drinking water is not easy to find, even for tribes such as the Maldharis and the Agariyas that have stayed here for millennia.

ALANDI, MAHARASHTRA, ...o an unaffordable black market.

ALANDI, MAHARASHTRA, MARCH 2008,: For a town that is among the most revered in the state – it is where the state’s favourite saint Dnyaneshwar decided should be his final resting place – Alandi has the same concerns of drinking water supply like most other small cities in India, even though it is never short of rainfall. Seen here is a villager trying to fill water from a leaking check-valve of a pipeline in the dead of night along the Alandi-Pandharpur Road (Pandharpur is the state’s most revered pilgrimage town).
It is often alleged that the official water pipelines here are sabotaged by the local suppliers – termed the water mafia for their cartelization of water supply – who then sell the pilfered water for up to Rs 300 for a 25-liter can. Local villagers and tribespeople, who live on sustenance wages, cannot afford this price and resort to stealing the stolen water – resulting from a vicious spiral of official apathy and lack of law enforcement.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims of the Bhakti movement – called Warkaris – visit Alandi in reverence to Saint Dnyaneshwar. On average, officials say, close to 30,000 pilgrims visit each day, and this reaches a peak of 200,000 to 300,000 during the holy march in the months of June and July. Municipal officials have found it impossible to make drinking water available to these devotees, leading to an unaffordable black market.

MUMBAI, MAHARASHTRA, MAY 2009: ... poor with little or no supply.

MUMBAI, MAHARASHTRA, MAY 2009:
In May 2009, less than a year after a bloody terror attack (November 26, 2008) that devastated not only Mumbai, but the rest of the country, India’s financial centre faced a crippling water supply crisis. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, or BMC, often regarded as India’s richest civic body with a budget exceeding that of many states, imposed a 15% water cut during a scorching summer on top of what can euphemistically described as erratic water supply. In reality, Mumbai faces an uneven water distribution problem; the rich living in swanky high-rises have 24-hour water supply, while the millions who live in low-income housing units, barely get two hours of water a day, if at all.
The Swabhiman Sanghatana (loosely translated as The Dignity Association), led by politician Nitesh Rane, routinely organiser protests against the city’s erratic water supply. In May 2009, during one such protest, the Mumbai Police resorted to a baton attack (called a lathi charge in local parlance) on the hundreds of protesters. One person died of cardiac arrest in the ensuing melee, and several were injured and detained.
More than a decade later, in 2022, the disparity is even wider. As of December 2021, the city’s daily demand for water was in excess of 4.2 billion litres a day, whereas, the supply was approximately 3.85 billion litres a day, according to the city’s municipal corporation, the richest in India and whose annual budget exceeds that of many Indian states. This shortfall is not uniform. Official estimates suggest that an average slum dweller receives 45 litres of water a day, while other residents average 150 litres a day. Moreover, much of the official supply is sent to the city’s high-rises, leaving the poor with little or no supply.

LEH (UNION TERRITORY ...ter from a non-functioning tap.

LEH (UNION TERRITORY OF LADAKH),AUGUST 2010:
Leh, one of the two capitals of the currently centrally administered territory of Ladakh and earlier of Jammu and Kashmir state, is a strikingly beautiful mountain desert that attracts tourists from India and around the world. In the Tibetan language, Ladakh means “land of high passes”.
Despite its proximity to some of the biggest glaciers in the world, Ladakh’s water scarcity is one of the main consequences of climate change. Receding glaciers have meant that freshwater supply is reducing, and this has put immense pressure on the local agricultural economy. As a result of this shortage, potable water is also in short supply.
Climate change – a phenomenon the Ladakhis are acutely aware of – could have been the cause of the devastating flash flood of August 2010, in which 71 villages of the region, including the capital Leh, were damaged. According to official data, 255 people died and 29 were reported missing. One of the affected structures was the Druk Kapro Institute in Shey, where I spotted this student trying hard to extract the last drops of water from a non-functioning tap.

PULICAT, TAMIL NADU,APRIL 2014:... now mostly used to store water

PULICAT, TAMIL NADU,APRIL 2014:
Pulicat is best known for its large, brackish lagoon – the second largest in India with an estimated area of 450 sq km – and is counted as one of the country’s most important wetlands, housing hundreds of species of flora and fauna. Clearly, then, water should not be one of its main problems? That’s not the case. For over a millennium (some say even two millennia), the people here have learned to adapt to potable food and water scarcity by storing them in such urns.
Not much is known about these urns, except that they are over a thousand years old. In 2014, when I visited the place for a heritage walk, I found these urns in several homes; this one was inside a dilapidated, abandoned house. Originally fabricated to store food, they are now mostly used to store water

JULY 2015, NEW DELHI In 2021, w...t laws against water pollution.

JULY 2015, NEW DELHI
In 2021, when photographs emerged of people bathing in the toxic foam-infested water of the Yamuna River in New Delhi, India’s capital, it created a furore. Yet, for the millions of residents of Delhi, this did not come as any surprise. Yamuna, to be sure, is one of the most polluted rivers in the world – an ignominious honour that has been accorded to this sacred river by several research organizations the world over.
Hundreds of thousands of Delhi residents use the river as a dumping ground and even a crematorium. Though there is a government-provided crematorium adjacent to it, some people belonging to the Hindu religion believe that cremating a body in the Yamuna will provide eternal peace to the departed soul.
The Yamuna is 1376 km (855 miles) long, and nowhere is its pollution more pronounced than in Delhi where industrial effluents, human waste, fly ash and several other kinds of pollution make their way into these water despite stringent laws against water pollution.

MAY 2020, NAGPUR, MAHARASHTRA I...th floods and water shortages.

MAY 2020, NAGPUR, MAHARASHTRA
In 2019, the local administration of Nagpur, located bang in the centre of India, inaugurated what can simultaneously be a civic-minded innovation and a telling comment on the mismanagement of water supply in the city – a water ATM. In the next three years, several new water ATMs have been built, essentially to allow people to buy drinking water at much cheaper rates than retail bottled water.
Nagpur, where temperatures can go up to 50 degrees Celsius in the summer, has faced severe water crisis for over two decades.
In a public lecture in early 2020, just before the first Corona virus lock down in India, a well-known water conservation expert and a consultant to the state government Sandeep Shirkhedkar said the city could see concentrated spells of rain, rather than being spread across the monsoon season, thus causing a depletion in the ground water table as well creating water supply issues. He said though the amount of average annual rainfall is the same (approximately 1000mm), Nagpur has, over the course of two decades, seen an increase in intensity in spells, causing, simultaneously, both floods and water shortages.