THE SHAPE OF WATER WOES TO COME

Several big Indian cities could soon face the kind of water shortage Bengaluru is facing today. One solution could be to de-cluster habitations and go where the water is

- HARISH BIJOOR

YOUR big city and mine are facing big problems. Maybe the problem of Bengaluru is a whole lot bigger than that of Indore and Rajkot today, but the problems do potentially exist for every big city if you look beneath the earth we live upon. Of all the problems we face, the one that is about potable water is the most difficult one. Bengaluru is suddenly in the limelight for the wrong reasons. There is an acute shortage of potable water during the summer months, starting yesterday. All of a sudden, our borewells are drying up without enough rains to feed them. Groundwater is showing a nasty and elusive trend of being more difficult to reach. While in the early days of borewell craze, water was struck at 80-100 feet depth, today's water table is getting more and more elusive even at 1,600 feet.

The primary source of riverine water, feeding the city through a network of canals and reservoirs, is under stress. The newer areas of the city do not have access to Cauvery or Arkavathy water, and a whole new city has been built upon the seasonally hollow foundation of a borewell network that is acting difficult to tame and fill. And this is a tall city-a city full of flats and apartments that define the new image of Bengaluru as a city of tall stature. The city is, however, running dry. For a few months, at least.