Dying over water in India
‘Worst crisis in history’ threatening lives and economy
NEW DELHI: Weak infrastructure and a national shortage have made water costly all over India, but Sushila Devi paid a higher price than most.
It took the deaths of her husband and son to force authorities to supply it to the slum she calls home.
“They died because of the water problem, nothing else,” said Devi, 40, as she recalled how a brawl over a water tanker carrying clean drinking water in March killed her two relatives and finally prompted the government to drill a tubewell.
“Now things are better. But earlier ... the water used to be rusty, we could not even wash our hands or feet with that kind of water,” she said in Delhi.
India is “suffering from the worst water crisis in its history”, threatening hundreds of millions of lives and jeopardising economic growth, a government think-tank report said in June.
From the northern Himalayas to the sandy, palm-fringed beaches in the south, 600 million people – nearly half of India’s population – face acute water shortage, with close to 200,000 dying each year from polluted water.
Residents like Devi queue daily with pipes, jerry cans and buckets in hand for water from tankers – a common lifeline for those without a safe, reliable municipal supply – often involving elbowing, pushing and punching.
On the rare occasions water does flow from taps, it is often dirty, lead- ing to disease, infection, disability and even death, experts say.
Water pollution is a major challenge, the report said, with nearly 70% of India’s water contaminated, impacting three in four Indians and contributing to 20% of the country’s disease burden.
Yet only one-third of its wastewater is currently treated, meaning raw sewage flows into rivers, lakes and ponds – and eventually gets into the groundwater.
“Our surface water is contaminated, our groundwater is contaminated. See, everywhere water is being contaminated because we are not managing our solid waste properly,” said the report’s author Avinash Mishra.
Meanwhile, unchecked extraction by farmers and wealthy residents has caused groundwater levels to plunge to record lows, says the report.
It predicts that 21 major cities, including New Delhi and India’s IT hub of Bengaluru, will run out of groundwater by 2020, affecting 100 million people.
The head of WaterAid India VK Madhavan said the country’s groundwater was now heavily contaminated with chemicals linked to cancer.
“We are grappling with issues, with areas that have arsenic contamination, fluoride contamination, with salinity, with nitrates,” he said.
Arsenic and fluoride occur naturally in the groundwater, but become more concentrated as the water becomes scarcer, while nitrates come from fertilisers, pesticides and other industrial waste that has seeped into the supply.
The level of chemicals in the water was so high, he said, that bacterial contamination – the source of water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea, cholera and typhoid – “is in the second order of problems”.
“Poor quality of water – that is loss of livelihood. You fall ill because you don’t have access to safe drinking water, because your water is contaminated.”
“The burden of not having access to safe drinking water, that burden is greatest on the poor and the price is paid by them.”