Careless Management of Water Poses India an Existential Threat

A systemic approach to managing resources should include plans to harness the impact of climate change for water security

- LEENA SRIVASTAVA

The warnings are dire. India is running dry. There is a looming water crisis—a threat to India's future. Alarm bells around a water shortage have become increasingly shrill and loud over the past few decades. Experts in India have long lamented the poor state of water storage capacities in the country, the extent of pollution in our rivers, the annual cycles of drought and floods, the over-exploitation of ground water and the provision of water as a free good—often exacerbated by free electricity for agricultural groundwater pumps given to farmers as an election sop.

India provides drinking water access to nearly 95% of its population, albeit at a fairly basic level. The World Bank's broadened definition of 'access' includes people using safely managed water services as well as those using basic water services, which is drinking water from an improved source (like a piped-in tap, borehole or tube-well, protected dug well, protected spring and packaged/delivered water), provided the collection time is not more than 30 minutes for a round trip.

The 79th round of the National Sample Survey 2022-23 brings out a paradoxical reality: 48% of rural India continues to be dependent on hand pumps or tube-wells for water, while nearly 15% of urban India is dependent on bottled drinking water. Both ends of the spectrum have their health and related problems, the first due to unacceptably high levels of physical, chemical and/or biological contamination reported from various geographies across India, and the other due to over-purification leading to the demineralization of water, presence of cancer-causing substances and plastic pollution at a very large scale.