India polluted rivers and poor storage infrastructure over the years has created a water deficit which may become unmanageable in the future.
Bharat from Sunder Nagri in East Delhi has a weighty kit bag which he carries around and opens alongside water taps in the area. Every day, he collects water from the taps and begins testing it for impurities. A part of ‘Youth User Group’ first set up in 2012 by Action India in Sunder Nagri with support from WaterAid India, Bharat utilizes his water testing kit to determine if the water is safe for drinking or not.
Unfortunately, millions of Indians across the country are not equipped with such facilities to test whether the water consumed and used by them is safe enough or not. The dual problems of not having access to water, or having access to unsafe water have resulted in safe and hygienic water, a basic amenity becoming a luxury.
While drinking water, people usually check if the water is clear. If it looks clean, they assume that it is safe to consume. But this is often not the case. Water looking clean might not be always safe, Bharat says.
Access to safe drinking water has been a grave problem for India, especially in rural areas where lack of usable water has resulted in decades-old sanitation and health problems.
Government records show that in 1980, just 1% of India’s rural areas had access to safe, usable water. By 2013, that had increased to 30%, but the majority of rural India continues to live without proper access to safe drinking water.
A WaterAid report in 2016 ranked India among the worst countries in the world for the number of people without safe water. An estimated 76 million people in India have no access to a safe water supply, and the situation is only getting more serious.
The Asian Development Bank has forecast that by 2030, India will have a water deficit of 50 per cent. The Union Ministry of Water Resources has estimated the country’s current water requirements to be around 1100 billion cubic metres per year, which is estimated to be around 1200 billion cubic metres for the year 2025 and 1447 billion cubic metres for the year 2050.
With a projected population growth of 1.4 billion people by 2050, the total available water resources would barely match the total water requirement of the country.
India is not a water scarce country. Along with having major rivers, we receive an average annual rainfall of 1170 millimetres. But lack of sensitization with regard to both conservation of water and pollution of water sources has resulted in a large part of the population for whom water has become more of a curse than a boon. Infrastructure for storage of water must be developed properly to ensure that people have access to safe water across the country, said Dr Narayan G. Hegde, Trustee of the BAIF Development Research Foundation and author of the report ‘Water Scarcity in India.’
Polluted Rivers, Shrinking Access To Water.
Water supply in India has two principal sources, namely water from rivers and groundwater. However, the rivers are shrinking because of pollution and industrialization, while the population keeps growing, pushing us towards an enormous water deficit.
Rampant pollution, dumping of sewage waste and abuse of the rivers has led to large sections of important rivers like Ganga and Yamuna becoming unfit for use. Take, for instance, the Ganga, which flows through 11 states of India and provides water to more than 500 million people.
Many parts of the Ganga in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have become completely unfit for use because of incessant waste disposal, ranging from dead bodies and to industrial waste. Earlier the water in many parts of these two states could be consumed and used for other purposes, but pollution has rendered the river water completely useless, said Vikas Chandra, an activist who has been campaigning for a pollution-free Ganga for the last 19 years.
Vikas, who has spent nearly all his life near the banks of the river in Patna, says that the gradual decay in the quality of the water due to pollution over the years has created a deficit between the population and the volume of clean river water they have access to.
Safe drinking water, a basic amenity has become a luxury in many Indian households, especially in semi-urban and rural areas. Official figures show that each day, approximately 500 million litres of wastewater from industrial sources is dumped into the Ganga. The Yamuna, similarly receives 850 million gallons of sewage every day from Delhi alone. For those who are dependent on groundwater sources, the presence of arsenic in the eastern belt in the Ganga-Brahmaputra region poses equally dangerous threats.
Arsenic is a major problem, especially for people residing in the Ganga-Brahmaputra belt in eastern India. Arsenic-laden water has many adverse health effects and affects over 900 million people in India. With India’s rivers becoming more polluted with every passing day, the dependency on groundwater resources is increasing. But steps must be taken to ensure that people do not end up using arsenic-laden water, as that would be more harmful than beneficial, said K.B. Biswas, Chairman, Central Ground Water Board.
Looking for water solutions beyond rivers?
Cleaning up rivers is not the only solution India should look at, as rainwater and groundwater resources of India are also facing risk.
Data collected from the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation states that 45,053 villages had access to piped water and hand-pumps by the end of 2016-17, accounting for 64.19 per cent of India. Almost 19,000 villages across the country still do not receive regular water supply.
In 2015, a report by the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation stated that though India receives an average annual rainfall of 1170 mm, poor storage infrastructure allows it to store only 6 per cent of rainwater, compared to 250 per cent stored by developed nations.
Rainwater storage and harvesting is still not a regular practice in India.
In 2001, the Tamil Nadu government made it compulsory for each household to have rainwater harvesting infrastructure and the results reflected in the improvement of overall water quality within 5 years. A similar experiment has been tried out in the cities of Bangalore and Pune, where housing societies are required to harvest rainwater.
However, apart from these few examples, there is no pan India infrastructure for rainwater harvesting. It is important to empower local people and enable them to save water for usage.
There Is a Solution…
ZharBiz WaterMicronWorld is the leader in the manufacture, marketing and distribution of highly advanced atmospheric water generators that extract the moisture from the air and converts it into clean, pure drinking water. Water, essential for all aspects of life, is the world’s most valuable commodity and is becoming increasingly scarce.
The population of the world continues to increase, yet the clean and drinkable water supply continues to decrease. Throughout history, humans have always looked down while looking for a source for their water needs. They have always extracted from holes in the ground, wells, ponds, lakes, rivers and aquifers. All of these sources have one thing in common, which is that we are taking water out faster than nature can replace it.
The solution is to extract water from a new source, one that is plentiful, renewable and accessible to most people around the world. ZharBiz WaterMicronWorld is committed to provide pure drinking water around the world to all those people that need it most and to provide critical emergency pure drinking water to first responders, relief agencies and government institutions.
At ZharBiz WaterMicronWorld, we bring an ecologically friendly and new source of pure drinking water to industry, businesses and home users alike. We provide truly affordable, state-of-the-art technology that is easy to operate and maintain. Our technology taps into a water source that does not place more demands on Mother Earth–Pure water from the air we breathe!
ZharBiz WaterMicronWorld Atmospheric Water Generators, AWG-C Series units can generate Pure Drinking Water from 30, 60, 100, 200, 250, 500, 1,000, 1200, 1500, 3000, 5000 litres of pure drinking water per day. Our unique compact systems are ideal for Hotels, Schools, Office buildings, Housing developments, Hospitals, Marine and small Municipal applications.