In finding ways to create affordable urban capacity (the subject of three earlier columns), we may discover that newer developments overshadow legacy issues. One such key development is water. Even before we figure out how to eliminate slums and prevent new ones from coming up, we will have to deal with an escalating water crisis across the country, one which invites analogies with Tughlaqabad and Fatehpur Sikri — both cities died when their water ran out. The media is full of reports of existing urban water-supply schemes based on river water being unable to meet rising demand, and the over-exploitation of groundwater sending water levels downwards and yielding contaminated water.
The issue of urban water is highlighted in a study entitled “Bangalore Water Famine 2020: A ticking time bomb”, conducted by the Centre for Policies and Practices and the Bangalore Environment Trust. The software capital of India, currently enduring episodes of water shortage, will get just enough water from next year, when some additional supply comes onstream. But with the city’s population growing at four per cent annually and no additional water supply available, by 2020 the per capita availability will go down to half. Meanwhile, virtually unregulated extraction of groundwater, currently at 2.5 times of recharge, will mean continuing consumption of more and more toxic water.
The study proposes a mixture of traditional and modern solutions. In the nineteenth century, the city formalised a system of cascading lakes for harvested rainwater, which has degenerated in recent decades because of encroachment and illicit building. To revive this system the encroachments have to be removed and the lakes rejuvenated through excavation and clean-up, while preventing the flow of sewage into them. Everywhere storm water and sewage have to be segregated and water treatment plants set up to reuse the sewage. Water harvesting through the lakes and at the household level will make for far better groundwater recharging.
On the consumption side, the highly successful World Bank-aided pilot water supply projects in northern Karnataka municipalities like Hubli and Dharwad will have to be replicated. Under those projects, a 24-hour water supply system laid out by professional contractors to eliminate leakage, with proper metering of consumption, has led to people consuming less water and paying bills on time. The report estimates that a project to address both demand and supply will cost around Rs 24,000 crore over seven years. For such funding, agencies like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank will have to be approached for not just resources but “supervisory discipline in execution”.
So we are back to the question of affordability. Is there a cheaper way? One clue lies in the finding that in large cities, nearly half the water consumed in homes is used for washing cars and flushing toilets. Car owners usually have unlimited access to groundwater extracted through privately owned deep tubewells. If there are fewer cars that are washed using hosepipes, that should help.
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Since leakages account for an astonishing 25 per cent of total supply, greater citizen vigilance in spotting leaking mains, reporting it and demanding immediate action can achieve a lot at little additional cost. A lot of rainwater can be saved for the lakes, and households can harvest rainwater and put it back into the ground at relatively low cost. A major contaminator of storm water is solid waste — uncleared garbage. Solid waste management is a relatively low-cost item in the overall scheme of things. Rejuvenating lakes and ensuring that sewage does not get into them are not very costly, either. Once groundwater is extensively recharged for several years by putting relatively clean rainwater into the ground – as has been done in Chennai – we can see a path to sustainability.
A desirable but costly solution involves totally separating sewage and storm-water carriage, and treating sewage and supplying it for non-personal use. This involves setting up a separate sewage network in which rainwater does not get in, water treatment plants, and a piping system for partially treated water.
Urban areas where there is enough affordable and clean water for growing numbers of people facilitate rapid economic growth. The underlying principle is to judiciously use what nature has provided, and to share it equitably by pricing it properly. This implies rejecting the resource-rich models of development and urbanisation (assuming unlimited supply of public goods like clean air and water) followed in the West for over half a century and unthinkingly adopted in India.
The author is a senior fellow with the Centre for Public Policy at IIM Bangalore working on urban issues.
