A water crisis in slow motion

India's struggle with flood management, climate change, and its misaligned priorities pose a serious threat to clean water supply in cities

One of the paradoxes that makes flood management so difficult is that clean water supply is inevitably affected. Floodwater is dirty and once it gets into the water supply, the choices are stark: Shut down water supply or deal with a cholera outbreak.

Delhi is currently facing this issue, and Bengaluru dealt with it last year. Himachal Pradesh is also going to have to handle this.  Given extreme weather events due to climate change, it has become a global issue.

India is especially vulnerable to climate change. It has terrible municipal infrastructure, guaranteed water stress, and poor or non-existent urban planning. 

The last 30 years have seen a steady migration of rural folks to cities in search of work. This has added over 150 million people to urban populations. In addition, villages have become towns and towns have become cities. As a result, urban demand for water has escalated.
 

At the same time, old, leaky water supply and sewage systems have been left to rot. Delhi loses 40 per cent of its water supply to leaks and pilferage, while Bengaluru loses 29 per cent. The situation in other municipalities is similar. Moreover, water treatment capacity and sewage disposal capacity have lagged behind. To top it, existing water bodies, which would help in terms of drainage and increasing water supply, have been drained to enable construction, or simply silted up due to neglect.

The old Mughal canal system of Delhi is in terrible shape, and the Yamuna is beyond description. Bengaluru has malls and apartments where there used to be lakes. Kolkata has seen wetland reclamation at breakneck pace. Drainage systems cease to work effectively as water bodies disappear. Instead of filling the lakes or flowing down canals to the river, rainwater floods the streets.

Renewing water bodies would be a task that would last generations. River cleanups in Europe and the US have usually taken 20-plus years to depollute. In addition to clean-up, India would need to desilt canals and rivers, prevent more untreated sewage and industrial effluent from flowing in, and ban the filling up of water bodies by builders to make a quick buck. Even water harvesting systems that can recharge falling water tables are still not mandatory everywhere, although they should be. 

That’s a huge task and it’s multi-pronged with the necessity for good engineering, smart planning, and strict regulations. Moreover, improving drainage, water supply and sewage treatment is financially thankless.

The return on investment is negative in financial terms and the socio-political returns are obscure and nebulous. Since it takes a long time to actually deliver results, it may not necessarily translate into votes for the party that initiates such projects. It might well be their successor that reaps the benefits two elections down the line.

You may argue that a city with better water and sewage services will attract more skilled resources, which, in turn, will eventually lead to higher tax revenues. But if at all this is true, it may take years to be visible and the counter-argument is that rural people who often live in dire circumstances will migrate anyhow in search of higher incomes.

On the flip side, a builder building anything would immediately mean money flowing to the urban local body, and perhaps more importantly, to the individuals who sanction it.  Plus the same arguments of higher tax flows would apply and quickly, since shops and services would spring up all round the new facility.

I’ve heard the story of the mall built on a lake. The municipality said it would inspect the proposed site some four months later. The promoters trucked in loads of soil and sand to fill up the lake in that period. A win-win situation for everyone except, of course, that was another water body lost.

The misalignment of financial and socio-political payoffs is a prime reason why this disaster has occurred in slow motion over decades. Unless this misalignment is stopped, degradation of water management systems will accelerate as urban density rises along with climate change.