New Delhi: As the mercury rises this summer, long multi-coloured bucket lines will begin to appear at community taps in cities and villages across the country. Tempers will fray as formerly amicable neighbours fight bitterly for their share of the precious commodity. Meanwhile, in affluent neighbourhoods, state-subsidized water will be used to wash cars and water gardens. As water tables sink and frustration increases, Mint looks at the conflict and politics surrounding water in an election year.
Short supply: Empty water pots lined up as people wait for their turn in the Amruthhalli area of Bangalore. Cities do not view resource planning for water as part of the master plan, points out an expert. Hemant Mishra / Mint
Numerous canals and reservoirs, some as far as the Bhakra dam in Punjab—about 360km away—provide water to the 16 million residents of Delhi, one of India’s wealthiest cities.
Along the way, the water passes impoverished rural communities, where piped water is often an unheard of luxury and rivers are so polluted that no one would consider drinking their water.
Meanwhile, ageing infrastructure and mistargeted subsidies ensure that a lot of water is lost forever, dripping anonymously out of the system.
Call it India’s water paradox: The country’s teeming cities, forever swelling with migrants, are dipping farther and farther into the hinterland to source water for their residents, often drawing it from rural areas at the cost of the rural populace.
It wasn’t always like this. In a not-so-distant past, New Delhi used to get its water from wells in the Yamuna floodplains and step-wells in the Capital’s so-called Ridge, a wooded area.
Delhi’s water utility, the Delhi Jal Board (DJB), is proposing to tap water from the Renuka dam in Himachal Pradesh. Chennai sources its drinking water from at least 235km away, Mumbai from 160km away and Aizawl from 1km down the valley, the equivalent of several hundred kilometres on the plains.
With nearly half the country’s population expected to be urban within the next four decades, cities will continue to cast their resource net way beyond their boundaries, escalating simmering tensions between urban and rural populations.
Traditionally, water bodies have been a source of conflict in the country, but the issue of cities tapping into reservoirs that supply water to farms is a sensitive one. “Now, when the farmer is deprived of water, he will put up his claim. In Mandya (a district in Karnataka), they (the government) wanted to implement a 40 million litres per day (mld) project, but farmers protested. Upstream people (those near the source of the water) are going to have a lot of say (in cities tapping water),” said M.N. Thippeswamy, ex-chief engineer, Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board.