India is one of the world’s most water-stressed countries with pockets of population facing a severe water crisis. India resides within it 18% of the world population and has 4% of the global water resources at its disposal to service the population needs. With 4% of water resources, India should have been a water-adequate nation, however, the reality is quite the opposite. Its per capita water availability is around 1,100 cubic meter (m3), well below the internationally recognised threshold of water stress of 1,700 m3 per person, and dangerously close to the threshold for water scarcity of 1,000 m3 per person.

For any nation, its cities and towns are symbolic of its economic health, and it is no different for India as well. However, the majority of Indian metro cities suffer from lack of fresh water available for the daily needs of its population. Population growth and economic development has put further pressure on water resources. Climate change has  exacerbated the situation by increasing the variability and bringing more extreme weather events. Despite the looming water scarcity, India is one of the world’s largest water users per unit of GDP. Paradoxically, India’s net export of virtual water (the amount of water required to produce the products that India exports) is the largest in the world. This suggests that the way in which India manages its scarce water resources accounts for much of its water woes. It is believed that India does not so much face a water crisis as a water management crisis.

Water Crisis: Issues With Supply Management

Water supply is an important responsibility of every city government, and the method used to deliver it plays a crucial role in determining the water supply situation in the cities. For example, in Delhi, about 17 percent households do not have access to piped water supply. These households are largely unplanned and unauthorised colonies and slums. The law doesn’t permit provision of basic services in unplanned and illegally built structures. And this use case scenario stands true for every other city in the country. 

Now, typically for households with no piped water connection, water is supplied through water tanks deployed by the municipal corporation. However, this arrangement has its own set of challenges – irregular and inadequate water supply, impure water, struggle and long queues – are some of the common observed problems. On the other hand, households receiving water from piped networks face a different set of challenges – only two to four hours of supply every day, intermittent supply, low water pressure, and inferior quality. 

These problems force the residents to adopt various ways to fulfil their needs. Many install electric pumps to pull water directly from the municipal pipeline. This adversely affects the water pressure in the lines, and in turn hampers the supply to other consumers. Others install unregulated submersible pumps and extract groundwater for daily usage. This unregulated pumping of groundwater couples with inadequate rainfall adversely affects the groundwater aquifers. Inadequate supply of clean water has also led to the rise of tanker mafias that resort to illegal extraction of groundwater, which further strains the availability of the water.

Gaps In Wastewater Treatment & Reuse

At the same time, another potential source of water – wastewater, is highly underutilised in India. The World Bank Water and Sanitation Program points out that if India reuses 80 percent of its untreated wastewater from 110 of its most populous cities, 75 percent of projected industrial water demand can be met by 2025. There is increased scientific evidence that confirms that sludge from treated wastewater can irrigate close to one to three million hectares of land annually, while providing nutrients to crops and reducing fertiliser dependence by 40 percent. Moreover, usage of treated wastewater for non-potable industrial agriculture purposes frees up and allows freshwater for drinking water consumption. On an average India’s cities generate around 62,000 million litres of domestic sewage. To treat this wastewater, India has 920 operational sewage plants with a treatment capacity of close to 23,000 million litres per day, i.e. just 37% of the total generation. Only 33 percent of India’s urban wastewater is actually treated, and an even smaller portion is reused.

Improving Water Usage Efficiency

There is no denying that the deficit in the demand and actual supply exists and is widening with each passing day. The implications of the water deficit will run from present to the future with adverse effects, leaving us with not much choice but to act now. What we need is a paradigm shift, a shift or transition from “supply more water” provisions to measures that lead to water usage efficiency and recharging/restoring local water bodies. It is time that we adopt the traditional practice of rainwater harvesting again. We need to catch the water where it falls. Water conservation efforts such as rainwater harvesting that aid in recharging local water bodies and groundwater can address the issues related to the supply side, while technology based smart water management solutions can handle the demand side.

The need is to move towards a more empirical, realistic and effective approach that offers integrated solutions combining both supply and demand sides. Conservation of water resources plays an important role but to have a future where there is enough water, sustainable consumption of it in the present must be adopted now.