Future- proofing India with water-from- air solutions

Arti is twelve years old. Like many girls her age across Bundelkhand, she should be in school, but instead, much of her mornings consist of carrying a pot of water on her head and walking miles to fetch water from a nearly dry well. Hundreds of kilometers away in Delhi, people are anxiously waiting for the tanker to arrive-hopefully filled with the precious commodity. Two lives, one issue: India lacks sufficient safe water.

- NAVKARAN SINGH BAGGA

We are a country that has 18 percent of the world's population, but only 4 percent of the freshwater resources. With climate change upon us -hot summer days, unpredictable rainfall, droughts followed by floods - what if the solution was not only in rivers, dams, or borewells, but in the very air?

That is what Atmospheric Water Generators (AWGs) do. AWGs extract moisture from the air and produce potable water. On the surface, it appears to be science fiction, but realistically, implementation has less to do with science fiction as it has already arrived. It is a real, tangible solution to one of our most pressing challenges.

Policy: Start in the cities, free the villages

There is no denying it AWGs need power. They are not a panacea for every part of India, but they are perfectly suited to cities, where the grid is reliable and consumption is high. If urban India adopts water-from-air solutions at scale, it eases the strain on state infrastructure. No endless pipelines, fewer tankers, less pressure on groundwater.