According to the 2018 NITI Aayog Report, Delhi is among 21 Indian cities that is poised to run out of groundwater by 2020. It has also been reported that Delhi has been drawing 25 percent more groundwater than the natural recharge rate. Though it is the job of Central Ground Water to stop the exploitation of groundwater, their actions have not been effective. 60 percent of the water supplied by Delhi Jal Board comes from the Yamuna, around 34 percent from Ganga, and the rest is from groundwater. Yamuna river, the major provider of the city’s drinking water, runs heavy with pollutants and is thick with toxic waste and it becomes toxic because of all the sewage that is dumped into the river.

Manohar Khushalani, Rajeev Babar, Kuldeep Kumar and Sanjeev Kaushik were the four panelists invited for this discussion, for an expert opinion, on the dirty water problem faced in Delhi. This video gives an insight into the perspective of the general public and how they’re facing this problem.

TV9 has conducted surveys in 8 parts of Delhi, namely, Laxmi Nagar, Sangam Vihar, Chandni Chowk, Lajpat Nagar, Pitampura, New Delhi, Narela, and Yamuna Vihar. During this survey, they have asked people about their opinions on a few questions about the water and air pollution in Delhi. More details on this is given below.

They had also collected water samples from these areas and gave it for testing. After the results came out, they found out that all the samples that were collected from the 8 parts of Delhi which were surveyed had contaminated and undrinkable water.

Questions asked by TV9 to general public:

Is the water that you receive dirty or unfit for drinking?

	Yes	No	Don’t Know
Laxmi Nagar	80%	7.5%	12.5%
Sangam Vihar	75%	15%	10%
Chandni Chowk	80%	15%	5%
Lajpat Nagar	80%	16%	4%
Pitampura	57.5%	35%	7.5%
New Delhi	90%	5%	5%
Narela	92.5%	5%	2.5%
Yamuna Vihar	45%	40%	15%

This means that on an average, 75 percent of the people said yes, that the water they receive is unfit for drinking, 17.3 percent said no, the water they receive is fine and the rest of 7.7 percent said they’re not sure.

Does the dirty water make your family fall ill?

	Yes	No	Don’t Know
Laxmi Nagar	75%	7.5%	17.5%
Sangam Vihar	82.5%	12.5%	5%
Chandni Chowk	72.5%	10%	17.5%
Lajpat Nagar	70%	20%	10%
Pitampura	55%	40%	5%
New Delhi	90%	7.5%	2.5%
Narela	95%	2.5%	2.5%
Yamuna Vihar	50%	47.5%	2.5%

This means that on average 73.8 percent of the people said that yes, the dirty water makes some of the family members fall sick, 18.4 percent said no, it doesn’t make them fall sick, and the rest 7.8 percent said they’re not sure.

Do you want to leave Delhi because of the water and air pollution?

	Yes	No	Don’t Know
Laxmi Nagar	52.5%	42.5%	5%
Sangam Vihar	75%	17.5%	7.5%
Chandni Chowk	70%	25%	5%
Lajpat Nagar	60%	36%	4%
Pitampura	32.5%	65%	2.5%
New Delhi	55%	32.5%	12.5%
Narela	70%	7.5%	20%
Yamuna Vihar	37.5%	47.5%	15%

This means that on an average, 57 percent of the people said yes, they want to leave Delhi, 34.1 percent said no, they’d like to stay there itself and 8.9 percent of the people said they’re not sure.

Do you feel the air in your locality is still polluted and it’s becoming hard to breathe?

	Yes	No	Don’t Know
Laxmi Nagar	82.5%	15%	2.5%
Sangam Vihar	80%	15%	10%
Chandni Chowk	85%	10%	5%
Lajpat Nagar	68%	30%	2%
Pitampura	82.5%	12.5%	5%
New Delhi	92.5%	2.5%	5%
Narela	90%	2.5%	7.5%
Yamuna Vihar	87.5%	7.5%	5%

This means that on an average, 83.5 percent of the people said yes, they feel the air is polluted and it is becoming hard to breathe, 11.8 percent said no, they do not find it hard to breathe and the rest 4.7 percent said they’re not sure.

BTP Students: Sejal Kumar, Aysha Fazilath, Vyshakh Dharan, Rahul Patwardhan

Lok Sabha TV conducted a panel discussion on the study on Water Management of the Indus River System and its Implications for India’s Foreign Policy. The invited panelists were Prof. Manohar Khushalani, Sushant Sari  and Akshay Singh.

Manohar Khushalani started the discussion by describing the Indus Water Treaty.

The Indus Waters Treaty is a water-distribution treaty between India and Pakistan, brokered by the World Bank, to use the water available in the Indus System of rivers. It was signed on 19 September 1960 by Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minister of India, and Ayub Khan, the President of Pakistan.

• Eastern Rivers
  • Sutlej
  • Beas
  • Ravi

• Western Rivers
  • Jhelum
  • Chenab
  • Indus

The Treaty gives control over the waters of the three eastern rivers — the Beas, Ravi and Sutlej with a mean annual flow of 33 million acre-feet (MAF) — to India, while control over the waters of the three western rivers — the Indus, Chenab and Jhelum with a mean annual flow of 80 MAF — to Pakistan. According to treaty, all the water of eastern rivers shall be available for unrestricted use in India. India should let unrestricted flow of water from western rivers to Pakistan. This does not mean that India cannot use the western river’s water. They are allowed to use it for limited irrigation and non-consumptive needs such as for generating electricity. This means that the treaty has allocated Pakistan 80 percent of the water from the six-river Indus water system. China has been kept out of the treaty even though Indus originates from Tibet because the topography of the Indus Water System does not allow China to change or stop the flow of the water. Neither of the countries can unilaterally walk out of the pact.

Indus Water Treaty is considered to be one of the most successful water-sharing endeavours in the world today. For 56 years, both India and Pakistan have been peacefully sharing the water of Indus and its tributaries, thanks to The Indus Water Treaty (IWT). But since the ratification, there have been a number of issues raised by both countries over the ethical use of the treaty and the water itself.

India has always treated the security issues and water issues as 2 different subjects.

The discussion also gave insights into the disputes and objections raised over this treaty.

The most frequently raised issue by Pakistan is that India can stop the water flow to Pakistan. Can India stop the water flow to Pakistan? No. Not as per the treaty. India can only utilize the provisions of the treaty to reduce the water flow by a small number but cannot completely stop the flow. India has in fact built many hydro power projects to which Pakistan has objected repeatedly. Even if India decides to reduce the water flow by a large amount, they do not have enough infrastructure to use the additional water and it may even create floods in Kashmir. The decision of not giving water to Pakistan may further enrage the terror elements in the country, making them intensify their attacks on India. This decision can also affect India’s relations with other countries like Nepal and Bangladesh with whom they have water treaties as well. 

Most of the issues have been resolved with legal procedures and mutual understanding from both sides. Though after the 2016 Uri attacks, India threatened to revoke the Indus Water Treaty but so far the threats have not been materialised.

BTP Student: Sejal Kumar, Aysha Fazilath, Vyshakh Dharan, Rahul Patwardhan

NDTV 24×7 conducted a live debate on 18th June 2019 from 8.30 to 9 pm. The Program was titled Reality Check. It was anchored by Vishnu Som. The panelists in the discussion were S Muralidharan, Prof. Manohar Khushalani and TKS Elangovan.

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NDTV has conducted a survey in chennai asking the general public about various problems that they are facing related to water. The residents then told the channel that they have to wait for hours in line to collect some water for every 2 days. Some of them even said that they don’t get enough water to bath. 

According to a london-based risk analytics firm, Chennai is facing “the most extreme risk” of water stress and that this situation could be the new normal for millions of people.  Chennai, he said, gets an average of 54 days of rain per year, yielding an average rainfall of about 140 centimeters (55 inches). Its failure to collect the rain that falls, especially during poor monsoons such as that of last autumn, leads to what he called a “man-made” crisis of scarcity. Less than four years ago, Chennai saw devastating floods that took at least 422 lives in Tamil Nadu and caused up to $14 billion in damages. But most of that rainwater flowed into the sea, lost forever to Chennai’s parched groundwater reserves. As the coastal city anticipates its upcoming autumn monsoon season, residents and experts have criticized authorities for failing to rehabilitate a notoriously mismanaged water supply.

Unless we capture the rain that falls in those monsoon days, we will run out of water

Manohar Khushalani stated that the big factors that have led to this crisis in Tamil Nadu are deforestation and mining, in other words construction of buildings for development is in the process.. These types of constructions have halted the recharge of lakes and reservoirs that  supply water to the households, and since the recharge has stopped, the major lakes and reservoirs have gone completely dry. Even the amount of rainfall has been declining and that amount was not enough to recharge the lakes.

Water tankers are being called into most of the areas of Tamil Nadu which are facing drought. However, government tankers can take up to a month to appear after requested, so some families, wealthy residents, and business owners have opted to pay for costly private water tankers. The poor who live in slums do not have this option; a family in Chennai’s slums may receive as little as 30 litres (7.9 US gallons) of water every day compared to an average American household which uses 1,150 litres (300 US gallons) of water a day.

S Muralidharan mentioned the fact that Tamil Nadu contains 6 percent of India’s population and it covers 4 percent of India’s land area but still the state only receives 2-2.5 percent of the water provided. This tells that Tamil Nadu has already become a dry state and is facing water crisis currently.

What steps have been taken to improve the situation?

The Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewage Board, which is responsible for the city’s water supply, has pushed for lakes to be desilted, allowing them to be used for water storage. The state government said in response it has begun to set up 270 water purification centers and has recently begun construction on Chennai’s third desalination plant, after which the government said the city will no longer have to rely on monsoon rains.

Under former Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa, who served in the role for over 14 years, Chennai made rainwater harvesting compulsory, requiring every building to install a water catchment system on its rooftop and pour the collected rainwater into the ground. However, when a survey was conducted regarding this, only 40 percent of the buildings were found to be complying with this law. The following three years brought heavy rains and, he said, dramatically raised the groundwater level, filling dry open wells for the first time in decades. Though the 40 percent compliance rate was a good start, it wasn’t good enough for the state to come out of the water crisis.

The city already has two desalination plants with capacity of 210 million litres a day that service the northern suburbs. A third 150 million litre plant costing nearly Rs 1300 crore would be ready next year. 2 new recycling plants are also being built which will have a capacity of 120 million litres a day. This will free up domestic drinking water supplies and reduce the reliance on the already stressed ground water resources.

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Manohar Khushalani was one of the panelists who appeared live on NDTV for a panel discussion on the water crisis faced in India. This video gives an insight into the problems faced by Indians when it comes to water as well as some expert opinions on this matter. Some of the other panelists are Raghav Chadha, VK Madhavan, Medha Patkar, Dr. Vaman Acharya, and Arunabha Ghosh.

India is facing a major water crisis. People are facing drought-like situations and running out of tap water in major cities like Bengaluru, Chennai and even in the capital, Delhi.

Raghav Chadha started the discussion by giving facts such as, the water availability has increased in Delhi in the last 4 years from 50 percent of the population receiving usable water to 80 percent. He also said the government is planning to rejuvenate lakes and also create new lakes as resources for freshwater. He also mentioned that the condition of south delhi districts, which earlier faced the problem of clean water and also improper sewage treatment, has now been fixed and will be provided with usable fresh water in the upcoming months.

Prof. Manohar Khushalani mentioned the fact that India as a country consumes more groundwater than any other country. He also stated that water should now be treated as a subject for the central government instead of being treated as a state subject. The states do not have enough coordination and are busy in handling the inter-state water disputes while the residents are still suffering. He also mentioned the fact that there needs to be more research put into methods for getting water from rivers and other sources.

VK Madhavan then gave some key perspectives such as, that the water crisis is caused not only due to excessive use of water but also improper distribution and conservation of water. He argued that the source of tankers that provide water to communities is uncertain, and there are still major areas that don’t have assured access. At a later stage of the discussion he also mentioned that cities are largely dependent on groundwater but do nothing when it comes to implementation methods like drip irrigation to conserve water. India receives a huge amount of rainfall which doesn’t necessarily seep into the ground and thus should be stored and filtered in an efficient manner.

Medha Patkar emphasised on the fact that the current structures and working of dams and related buildings are destroying the rivers. She also highlighted that the government should be focusing more on mini and micro water shedding instead of macro water shedding. She also said that the government’s main strategy should revolve around controlling the access to water on a per house basis and that for major changes the community itself should play a big role.

While water scarcity in India as an issue has not been discussed as topmost important matter, it is high time the people should focus on this subject, or else it’ll be too late to realise and it will affect India and its people way more than it is doing today.

Chennai, the fourth largest city in India, is the worst hit city when it comes to water crisis. Chennai city officials declared that the day when almost no water is left, had been reached, as all the four main reservoirs supplying water to the city had run dry. Two years of deficient monsoon rainfall, with a rainfall deficit of 55 percent, particularly in late 2017 and throughout much of 2018 had led to this crisis. This has impacted millions of people who are left with inconsistent access to water. This is said to be the case of current developed states like Karnataka and Maharashtra in the future. Karnataka has very small amounts of resources left and soon will be piling their hopes on Maharashtra to receive water. On the other hand, Maharashtra because of its size and location, is under immense pressure to provide not only to its residents but also neighbouring states. The rainfall in these 2 states has also started declining in the past few years which only has caused more problems.

Some of the other valuable points that are mentioned by the panellists are; controlling the use of water in the agriculture industry. Sugarcane, which is a crop that depends on water heavily, is grown in parts of the country that have a scarcity of supply. This reduces the availability of water for the people for their personal use; recycling and recharging should be the topmost priority of any water management organisation, i.e. filtering out the water received by rain and distributing that water to the households that don’t have access to groundwater; the yearly monsoon pattern shows that the rain is declining in most parts of India and this also should be a major concern; even though the government is planning on making new residential buildings for development, they are not checked about proper water consumption levels and are sometimes specified with uncertain sources of water so as to receive license to build those structures.