The Cities Of Woe

By 2050, at least 30 Indian cities will face a grave water risk, according to the WWF. The problems range from poor management of water sources, contaminated supplies, leaky distribution networks and vast volumes of untreated wastewater being poured into India’s rivers

- Kaushik Deka

In the summer of 2019, Chennai’s reservoirs ran dry, forcing the government to truck in 10 million litres of water a day. For a city that gets an average of 1,400 mm of rainfall a year—more than twice what London receives—this was unprecedented. And not just Chennai, cities across India have been facing acute water shortages due to massive population growth and rapid, unplanned urbanisation. A 2018 study published in Nature projected that by 2050, Jaipur would have the second-highest water deficit in the world, with Chennai at #20. A 2020 report by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) projected that 30 Indian cities would face a ‘grave water risk’ by 2050 due to sharp increases in population.

The situation is already alarming. In the 91 most important reservoirs tracked by the Central Water Commission, storage levels have never crossed more than half their total capacity in recent years. More alarmingly, the long-term, indiscriminate extraction of groundwater is making water tables fall rapidly in most Indian cities. According to a study by the Centre for Science and Environment, 48 per cent of India’s urban water supply comes from groundwater—and in seven of India’s 10 most populous cities, groundwater levels have dropped significantly over the past two decades.