SHORT STORY
AHWHAT
Bengaluru, a city of 13.5 million people, has faced a series of urban challenges—foaming lakes, inadequate public transportation, endless traffic snarls. A severe water crisis is the latest woe.
WHY
Bengaluru faced sub-par monsoon in 2023 and received little rain since November. Half the city is dependent on groundwater, but a large number of borewells have run dry.
NOW
The state has stepped in with curbs and fines. Housing societies and businesses are monitoring their water usage. But a long-term solution is in higher water literacy.
large parts of the city face severe flooding. But these problems are interconnected, stated the WELL Labs report.
Bengaluru is located on a ridge, with a series of valleys acting as water conduits to rivers such as Cauvery. Lakes were built across these valleys and floodwater flowed through them. When the valleys were encroached upon, the flow of rainwater was impeded causing flooding and stagnation in these areas. Similarly, with a limited supply of fresh water piped from Cauvery, the city’s groundwater table has been over-exploited. Many of the lakes, which help in groundwater recharging, remain unusable.
“Extraction, pumping and usage of water continued without any special protocol or judicious distribution. As a result, it reached a tipping point, when borewells ran out of water,” Raj Bhagat Palanichamy, senior programme manager, GeoAnalytics, at WRI India, another research organisation, said.
“Water is there but is limited. This makes it costly. Desiltation process is on-going in many lakes, which means water couldn’t be stored,” he added.
Desilting removes sediment from a water body to restore its natural capacity.
Less-than-average rainfall last year, and no rain in many months, exacerbated the water shortage with no replenishment of groundwater.
FINES AND THREATS
fter the public outcry, the state has stepped in. BWSSB, last week, introduced fines, beginning at ₹5,000, for nonessential use of potable water, including for gardening and car washing. It has also threatened legal action against those drilling unauthorized borewells within city limits.
In addition, the Karnataka government has capped water tanker prices based on distance travelled to avoid customers being overcharged. A 12,000 litre water tanker will cost ₹1,000 to travel a 5-km distance; if it has to travel between 5-10km, ₹1,200 can be charged. The state government has stated that many tanker companies were operating illegally and began charging as much as ₹5,000-₹6,000 per tanker when the water shortage crisis erupted.
To curb such practices, the government has made it mandatory for the private water tankers in the city—there are over 3,500—to register with the civic body.
In the medium term, a private marketplace to buy and sell treated waste water may come up, Vikram Rai, president of Bangalore Apartments Federation (BAF), said. Around 1,300 housing associations, including 300,000 households, are registered with BAF.
New guidelines around this are expected from the government soon, Rai added. A housing society, with a sewage treatment plant (STP) that treats water, can sell excess water to external parties. Treated water can be sold to agencies like BWSSB, other housing societies without STPs, or the civic body. It can then be used to water parks, or even construction sites.
HOME ADVISORIES
ousing societies, meanwhile, are shooting advisories to residents on how to save water.
On 6 March, residents at Purva Graces, a gated community in north Bengaluru’s Amruthahalli area, received a message that underlined the severity of the crisis. The
vendor’s borewell supplying to the complex had gone dry. The complex receives Cauvery water only thrice a week. “The committee has decided to use rain water harvesting tanks to store water. We request all residents not to waste water,” the message stated.
A ‘water conservation alert’ message by Prestige Wellington Park in Jalahalli, stated that BWSSB had abruptly reduced water pressure in its supply, impacting the quantity of water. The property manager will henceforth monitor use of water by residents, the notice further said.
Meanwhile, a number of gated communities have said no to Holi parties this year and urged residents to not play with water. “Adjustments have to be made. It’s not business as usual. But the government also has to do the needful,” Vikram Rai of BAF said.
Bengaluru has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of India’s on-going residential real estate boom. Around 63,980 homes were sold in the city last year, 29% more than 2022. This year, Anarock Property Consultants expects roughly 51,680 units to be completed in Bengaluru. When people start living in these apartments, it would only add to the stress.
“Bengaluru has seen a massive growth in the number of houses. Yet, a lot needs to be done on the infrastructure front,” said Saurabh Garg, founder and chief business officer at proptech company NoBroker. The company, through its society management app NoBrokerHood, is building content to convey good practices in water usage through push notifications to residents.
It is collaborating with housing societies to install water sensors in overhead tanks or digital water metres to monitor consumption.
Businesses, meanwhile, are also stressing on water conservation. The Bengaluru chapter of the National Restaurants Association of India (NRAI), an industry body, is advising member restaurants to curb the usage of water in various ways. Dry mopping and drinking water served only on request are two of them.
“Restaurants mostly have borewells of their own, many of which have gone dry. Those that get Cauvery supply can’t reply on it entirely because it’s not uninterrupted,” Chethan Hegde, the Bengaluru chapter head of the association, said.
WATER LITERACY
The privileged don’t always understand that some resources are finite. They need to be mindful of how they use theseresources,includingwater.
S. Vishwanath, advisor, Biome Environmental Trust, a non-profit, said that a key step is to create water literacy— people must know the source of water, where it goes after usage, how much we consume, the cost of production, and the price we pay.
Treatment of water, enforcing rainwater harvesting systems and installing sewage treatment plants would be critical, going forward.
“Treated water can be a good source for non-potable purposes. We are hopefully learning how important lakes are to both managing droughts and floods. Lake rejuvenation is critical, as is rainwater harvesting and we need to do a lot more,” he said.