India's Water Crisis : The Scary Truth!

Water is the most valuable asset and it is something that no one can even imagine living without. Water is more important than any cricket match, any statue, any temple or any mosque. Earlier, environmentalists used to worry about water not being available to our future generations but now it is looking that water will not be left for the present generation as well. The recent water crisis in India has exposed the Indian government's poor planning and management and on top of it, the government looks in no mood to even talk about this issue, forget about resolving it! So in this article, we are going to talk about this important issue.

What is the problem?

According to a NITI Aayog report, 21 cities will run out of groundwater by 2020 and 40% of the country’s population may not have access to clean drinking water by 2030. This will directly affect more than 600 million people in India. NITI Aayog has also stated that India stands on the 120th position out of 122 countries in water quality index.
Tamil Nadu is reeling under an acute water crisis for the past several months. The water crisis in Chennai is the most serious after Chennai's Porur Lake, which is considered one of the main sources of water, reached its lowest level. Four major lakes of Chembarambakkam, Poondi, Red Hills and Cholavaram that supply water to the city are almost dry. The city has not received any rainfall for more than 200 days, lakes have dried up, schools are getting closed and what not!
The problem is not only in the southern parts of India, but also in the northern parts, western parts and eastern parts. Basically, all of India is facing a severe water crisis. Delhi will run out of ground water by 2020 which is one year from now!
And we are not talking about the availability of clean potable water. There will be no water at all! None! Considering the fact that the population of India is rising at an uncontrollable rate, this problem is going to get worse if serious action is not taken.

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How it all started?

To be honest, there are actually no 'starts' to such problems. They just exist already and they worsen as the time passes and it is mostly because of the ignorance that people have about these small things like water. Everyone knows how important water is but no one actually cares. People just take things for granted and keep on wasting water. Overtime, a lot of water gets wasted and since no awareness is ever raised about such things, it just continues! Some reports show that 61% of the total groundwater reserves were wasted in the last 10 years.
Water pollution is also a big culprit. Rivers in India are not clean. India has one of the dirtiest and most polluted rivers in the world.
For such problems, blame games are very easy to play! You can blame your neighbour, your neighbour can blame you, politicians can blame the opposition parties, present generations can blame the past generations etc. 

Some boring but scary data

• Acoording to a 2015 study, 5 out of 20 world's most water stressed cities are in India. Delhi comes on 2nd rank on this list.
• In our country, more than 2,00,000 people die every year due to inadequate access to clean drinking water.
• More than 80% of the rural households lack piped water supply.
• More than 75% of Indian households do not have drinking water supply.
• 43% of Indian land is under drought conditions.
• Pre-monsoon rain has been the lowest in 65 years.
• More than 27,000 villages have dried up and more than 86 lakh hectares of land has been destroyed.

I have got unlimited water supply at my home! Why should I even care?

The adult human body is 60% water. Our hearts and brains are 75% water and our lungs, 85%. Our bones, the most solid thing we have in our bodies, are 30% water. So perhaps we should say that water is that liquid without which you and I will die. Medically speaking, most doctors agree that healthy humans can go up to eight weeks without food as long as they have water. Those same doctors agree that you cannot even survive for a week without water.
 Nothing is permanent and nothing should be taken for granted. You can lose whatever wealth or assets you have anytime. What are your plans for those bad times? What will you do if that unlimited supply of water runs out and you can't buy any water with millions of rupees of cash that you have? You can't drink 2000 rupee notes, can you?

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My religion requires me to use a lot of water in my religious practices? What should I do?

Religion can only exist if there are people to practice it and people can exist only if there is water to drink. I am not asking you to stop worshiping your God. What you can do is that instead of using let us say 1 litres of water, you can use one-fourth of that quantity. God has not specified the quantity of water that you need to use. Every drop of water is precious and just unnecessarily throwing litres after litres of water to worship your God makes absolutely no sense at all. Just imagine how much water you can save this way.

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And since we are talking about religion, religion requires you to respect the rivers. Rivers are considered holy in our country. If you really want to worship your God, start respecting the rivers and stop polluting them in the first place. Ganga is the second most polluting river in the world. More than 100,000 tonnes of plastic is flowing in it. Is this what your religious practices require you to do? Does your God say that it is OK to pollute the most sacred river in India?

What is the solution?

Solution is simpler than it seems - the same old water management tactics that are taught in 6th grade. More than the government, I believe it is the duty of the common people to take action. Using a bucket instead of shower to take bath, rainwater harvesting, closing the tap while brushing teeth, etc., they all work and work pretty well. Other than that, the waste water that you get after filtering the drinking water through the RO systems can be used to clean the floors and flush the toilets. Also, flush free bio-urinals help in reducing the water usage a lot. These might look like small and insignificant steps but they can make a lot of difference. Just imagine if each and every person in India just used 1 litre less of water per day. This amounts to more than 1.3 billion litres of water every day and more than 450 billion litres of water per year! 450 billion litres of water is enough to fill more than 80,000 Olympic standard swimming pools. Just to keep things in perspective, Delhi at the moment, requires 3,324 million liters of water a day. 450 billion litres of water can provide water to Delhi for more than 4 months! This is the difference that saving only 1 litres of water can make! Just imagine what can happen if the government also does something about it.
Despite the fact that this problem directly affects more than 600 million people in our country, which is about half the population of our country, no political party talks about it and no political party gives it the attention that it requires in their election manifestos. Our own Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Shekhawat says that the water crisis is not as bad as the hype that is being created.
The government should start taking some serious steps towards it. Putting efforts in cleaning the rivers is the best start. Our government should also start giving climate change the attention it requires. Unlike the Namami Gange Project which has failed miserably, the government needs to do something serious and something better. Spending money and energy on developing water management technologies, new irrigation techniques, cleaning rivers etc. is more productive than useless things like advertisements, statues, temples, making fun of opposition parties and fighting over religious issues. It should also organise awareness programs like it did earlier with Hum Do Hamare Do, Swachh Bharat, International Yoga day etc.

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Hi, I am Pranjay Varshney. I am pursuing my B.Sc. (Hons) in Electronic Science from University of Delhi. My dream is to join the Indian Army as an officer and I am very passionate about it. I like to write articles about Indian Armed Forces and various political and economic affairs. I spend my free time doing gymnastics, listening to music or watching movies.