India’s water crisis: will the country run dry?

More and more Indians are running out of water, said Ajai Sreevatsan on Livemint (Delhi). The inhabitants of Shimla, the summer capital of the British Raj, recently went without for more than a week, apart from the small amounts they were able to buy from tanker trucks at exorbitant prices.
Unable to cook, many ate only bread. Hygiene went out the window, as people couldn’t wash or flush toilets.

Schools were closed; tourists turned away. Even now, their taps only run one day in four. If Shimla, a small city blessed with five major water sources, can be hit this hard, what’s in store for megacities with just one or two? Many already have to pump water from elsewhere: Delhi’s water comes from 230km away. This is “the worst water crisis in India’s history”, according to a new government think tank report, said Jacob Koshy in The Hindu (Chennai). The study by NITI Aayog says critical
groundwater resources, which account for 40% of the water supply, are being depleted at “unsustainable” rates. Across the country, demand for drinking water will outstrip supply by 2030 at present rates. But for 21 cities, including New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, the crunch point will come in just two years, affecting 100 million people. For some people, India’s water supply is contaminated, killing 200,000 people every year.

In theory, India has plenty of water, said Moin Qazi in The Asian Age (New Delhi). It has high annual rainfall and the world’s ninth largest freshwater reserves. The problem is “chronic
mismanagement”. Half the water that water companies deliver through leaky British-era pipes is lost – a shocking figure compared with other countries. It also has poor water storage facilities,
just 213 cubic metres per head, while China has 1,111. Then there’s the burgeoning population, which puts ever more pressure on the “rickety” water infrastructure. What’s needed is political vision, said Kamakshi Ayyar in Time (New York). Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently announced an  ambitious $87bn scheme linking 60 rivers to provide better irrigation sources. State authorities are copying irrigation methods pioneered by Israel – treating waste water for farming, and applying water directly to the roots of crops instead of flooding entire fields. But much more is needed. India must rethink its traditional crops: rice, wheat and cotton are far too water-intensive to continue on the present scale. Only radical steps will “save the world’s second most populous nation from running dry”.