A fifth of Indians happy with water supply

The pet grouse of politicians from Delhi's neighbouring states is that the Capital is pampered in terms of water and power supplies.

However, Delhi's citizens appear to be quite badly off, with just around a third of their demand of 825 million gallons a day being met by the Delhi Jal Board (DJB).

This, though, is much higher than the national satisfaction average of 20 per cent, according to the Bangalore-based Public Affairs Centre (PAC), which conducted an all-India survey last November in 24 states, across 2,500 villages and 107 towns. The PAC survey also showed that nationwide just about 27 per cent of users were satisfied with the quality of water, though there were wide variations from one state to the other.

A major reason for Delhi's water supply woes is the sheer mismanagement of the resource. While DJB manages to supply 650 million gallons of water a day, 179 million gallons do not reach users due to technical losses, while another 179 million gallons are lost because of unauthorised tapping of supply lines.

So poor is the efficiency of the existing system that DJB manages to provide water for just around 2-3 hours a day in most areas.

The Sonia Vihar plant, which is supposed to enhance water supply to the city by 140 million gallons a day, was scheduled for completion by January. The deadline has been missed. It will become operational by June, according to Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit.

With consumers resorting to tapping ground water to make good the shortage, water table levels have dropped dramatically.

In the 1960s, for instance, most parts of the Capital had water within 6 metres of the surface, with the deepest being 23 metres in Mehrauli. The north, central and New Delhi districts had water at 8 metres in 1995, and this fell to 11.63 metres in 2000 and further to 14.12 metres in 2002. In the worst-hit south district, the water table fell from 20 metres in 1995 to 24 metres in 2000 and 33.4 metres in 2002.

Almost 46 per cent of Delhi's population still does not have access to piped carriage systems, and there are huge inequalities in supply levels, from 29 litres per capita per day in some areas, to 509 litres per capita per day in the cantonment area.

It doesn't help that Delhi has amongst the lowest water tariffs in the country "" Delhi charges 35 paise per kilolitre for households as compared with Rs 22 in Kerala. Even Hyderabad charges around ten times what Delhi does, at Rs 3.7 per kilolitre.

Hyderabad: Though the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad have changed for the better in the last eight years, the drinking water problem of the citizens still remains unsolved. In fact, the demand-supply gap has widened. The state capital requires about 213 million gallons of water a day, whereas the authorities are able to provide a maximum of 162 million gallons a day from four sources "" Osman Sagar, Himayat Sagar, Singur and Manjeera reservoirs.

Till the end of the last decade, the availability of water in the city was about 145 million gallons a day, but this went up to 17 million gallons a day in 2002. Soon, however, the Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar dried up, and people had to be content with only 120 million gallons a day.

The situation was such that private individuals in the outskirts of the city were doing good business selling water.

The situation improved slightly in 2003, a year that witnessed a good monsoon. Since then, the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board, which handles the water supply for the twin cities, has been supplying about 138 million gallons a day.

Last year, the Andhra Pradesh government promised the residents of Hyderabad that the water situation would improve after March 2004, when a project to draw water from the Krishna river would be completed. While the project is coming up as per schedule, the government may not be able to sustain the supply as the Krishna and the reservoirs are going dry.

Inputs from B Dasarath Reddy in Hyderabad