Watered down: Evaluating Bengaluru's future as India's IT capital

As Bengaluru segues from a parched summer to torrential rains, citizen groups and authorities evaluate the city's future as India's IT capital

In April, Nithin Kamath of Zerodha posted a series of tweets drawing attention to Bengaluru’s escalating water crisis. He mentioned a possible solution: Turning wastewater into drinkable water, which the city-based Boson White Water (BWW) is already doing.
 

The next day, phones at BWW erupted with calls. Apartment complexes, standalone homes, industries — everyone wanted to know more. Though BWW puts partially treated water through an 11-stage system until it comes out highly safe, founder Vikas Brahamavar understands there are miles to go before anyone is willing to drink what was once sewage. 
 

“Some years ago, we were supposed to supply our water in an apartment building at 10 am.  Very quickly, WhatsApp groups were filled with residents saying they were itching and coughing, but the funny thing is, our water had been delayed that morning and we didn’t actually start supplying until a week later,” says Brahmavar, who moved back from the United Kingdom 15 years ago to start up in India’s IT capital.
 

He remains hopeful: If industries start using high-quality treated water, the psychological barrier could change for people too. “Because water is so basic, perception is difficult to handle. Any problem people experience will be attributed to it,” says Brahmavar.
 

By all accounts, Bengaluru’s water system needs inventive upgrades. The city’s population has tripled since 1990, and it is estimated to require as much as 2,632 MLD (million litres per day) of freshwater — half of this comes from the Kaveri and the rest from groundwater. But even as its outskirts are expanding with residential developments, they rely too heavily on groundwater and remain exposed to infrastructure gaps. This became particularly apparent this year, amid heat wave conditions and delayed rains. 
 

“The maximum population is in the periphery, which is fast developing and is totally groundwater dependent,” says Rashmi Kulranjan, a research associate at WELL Labs and a PhD scholar at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment. “The city sits on hard terrain, so water is collected mostly in the cracks and sub-surface area. We had three years of rainfall, but with just one dry year there was severe shortage because we can't recharge groundwater at the rate at which we are extracting.”
 

Lost view
 

So how did a city known for abundant rains and a wealth of lakes get here?
 

As Kulranjan points out, the terrain is hard and, given increasing construction, much of the rainwater flows into drains rather than seeping into the ground. That leaves the lakes arid. The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) recently revealed that out of around 800 lakes under the BBMP and Bengaluru Urban limits, 125 have dried and 25 are at risk of drying. 
 

Water struggles have not dulled demand to live and work in the city. With offices calling employees back-to-work full time or on a hybrid basis, Bengaluru’s rental yield was the highest among Indian cities in the first quarter of 2024, says Anarock Property Consultants.
 

Demand has not only breached pre-pandemic levels but gone much above it. Some localities, IT hubs such as Sarjapur Road and Whitefield, for instance, have experienced a more than 60 per cent rise in rentals from the 2021 levels. This trend is likely to continue in the coming quarters, says Anarock Group Vice Chairman Santhosh Kumar, “given that Bengaluru continues to remain a vibrant market with ample job opportunities.”
 

The posh apartments are often serviced by migrants who live in low-income pockets nearby.
 

Kanaklata Parida, a domestic worker and single mother from Odisha, cooks in a dozen high-rise homes in Bommanahalli. For two months, her well-heeled employers were prohibited from washing cars and their kitchens had water cuts for six hours. But now there is regular access to tanker water, the price of which is easily afforded by the residents.
 

“The rain is here but my problems have not gone away,” Parida says. She has had to spend nearly Rs 10,000 so far on buying water after taps ran dry in her four-storey neighbourhood at the end of February. The arid spell has cost her in other ways too — she missed two work days queuing up for water, and suffered an injury when her scooter skidded under the weight of 20-litre cans from the supermarket. At least three migrant families in her building packed up and returned home this summer.
 

One answer to boosting water for this rising population, experts agree, lies in history.
 

Bengaluru’s founding father, Kempegowda, acting on his mother’s advice, had planted trees and built a network of lakes and wells. In the last few years, civil society groups have joined hands to revive wells and recharge lakes. The India Cares Foundation, for example, has built or revived 315 rainwater recharge wells in the last five years that feed lakes in the state, including at Cubbon Park and Lalbagh. BBMP permissions are hard to get, so the foundation often works at lakes overseen by panchayats, says CEO Meena Dave. 
 

“We started a few years ago, when there were reports asking if Bengaluru would become another Cape Town, saying it would run out of water in 2020. We had beautiful high rises promising a ‘lake view’ but nobody was taking time to do something for the lakes,” Dave says. 
 

At Rs 75,000 per well, she notes that the investment pays off, and is affordable for communities. Corporate funds are helping. Royal Challengers Bengaluru, which is having a rollercoaster at this year’s Indian Premier League, cheered fans by contributing to the revival of three city lakes through the programme. 
 

Multi-pronged network
 

This summer’s intense difficulties compelled authorities to push through policies that had been previously stuck in red tape. Unlike most cities, where sewage treatment is centralised, Bengaluru already has a wide decentralised network of 3,500 sewage treatment plants (STPs) across its apartment complexes. This April, the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board allowed apartment complexes and gated communities to sell 50 per cent of their STP water for commercial use.
 

“My estimate is that 700 MLD of treated water is available and it is definitely going to grow more,” says Satish Mallya, Vice President of the Bangalore Apartment Federation. “Half of it can be sold so 300 to 350 MLD can go to construction sites which need not use borewell water.” 
 

Mallya says the federation has further suggested investing in a pipeline network so that treated water can more efficiently be sent to industries. Dave of India Cares Foundation points to another possible use case: Diverting excess treated water from large apartments to low-income neighbourhoods for non-potable use.
 

Existing policies are marred by challenges, though. Rainwater harvesting was mandated in 2009 for residences built on a 30x40 feet site, but more than 39,000 such buildings prefer to pay the fines rather than set up the required infrastructure. Researcher Kulranjan notes that apartments have STPs, but they also need trained staff who can regularly monitor water quality. In her own field work, Kulranjan is looking at reviving lakes beyond Bengaluru, as that will secure “the cities of tomorrow.” 
 

Brahmavar’s BWW estimates it has saved 945 million litres of water that would otherwise have gone to the drains over four years. “If we can map this water to the requirement of industries, they don’t have to extract freshwater and buildings don’t have to waste treated water. So if you save 100,000 litres, you are actually saving 200,000 litres,” he says.
 

People are aware of the water wasted while using RO purifiers, because it is visible. “What we don’t notice is the large volume of wastewater we generate that isn’t visible — we need to start thinking about that,” says Brahmavar.

LAKE VIEW
 

Drained for desilting: Bellandur, Varthur lakes
 

Dried up:  Nallurahalli, Vibhutipura lakes
 

At risk:  Sankey Tank