People around the world face Water Crisis with some not able to access fresh water and some have to deal with contaminated water. The second most populous country deals with the largest problem of water needs with improper water management, pollution, and corruption.
Current Water Crisis in India:
According to a report published by NITI Aayog, an important government organization says that more than 600 million people of the country face “acute water shortages”, 70% of the water supply of the country is contaminated which leads to over 200,000 deaths per year (550 each day).
The report also claims that 21 major cities of the country including Bengaluru and New Delhi could run out of groundwater which is the main source of water in cities. It is also noted in the report that Forty percent of the country’s population will have “no access to drinking water” by the year 2030.
21 Cities that could run out of Ground Water in 2020:
- Agra (Uttar Pradesh)
- Ajmer (Rajasthan)
- Amritsar (Punjab)
- Bengaluru (Karnataka)
- Bikaner (Rajasthan)
- Chennai (Tamil Nadu)
- Gandhinagar (Gujarat)
- Ghaziabad (Uttar Pradesh)
- Gurugram (Haryana)
- Hyderabad (Telangana)
- Indore (Madhya Pradesh)
- Jaipur (Rajasthan)
- Jalandhar (Punjab)
- Jodhpur (Rajasthan)
- Ludhiana (Punjab)
- Mohali (Punjab)
- New Delhi (UT)
- Patiala (Punjab)
- Ratlam (Madhya Pradesh)
- Vellore (Tamil Nadu)
- Yamuna Nagar (Haryana)
India receives more water than its needs every year from the rain falls during the summer monsoon reason and the melting snow and glaciers from the Himalayan plateau, which fills up the rivers flows from the north.
The collection and supply of this water to the right places at the right time without wasting or polluting the water is a very heavy engineering challenge and the country seems to be failing in this process as India collects just a small portion of the rainwater other just goes to the ocean in the end.
Farming has become a greater challenge in the country which racks up only 15% of country’s GDP and Agriculture suck up 80% of the water supplies in India using the inefficient process of irrigation through subsidized electricity which allows the farmer to pump out as much as possible water from the ground.
Current situation of the water in India is already very and climate change is going to make it worse.
Effects of Climate Changes:
With rising temperatures the rise in floods and droughts is predictable and it also reported that India will get more rain on average in the upcoming decades. A report published last year in Geophysical Research Letters found that tear flooding will significantly increase in 78 of the 89 urban areas estimated if global temperatures accelerate to 2 ˚C above preindustrial levels which will lead to catastrophic effects to the poor people who live along the low-lying floodplains of major cities.
This 3D Model of classified images from 1975-76 shows that the Himalayan Glaciers are melting twice as faster as expected.
This new study found that the glaciers were losing about 8 billion tonnes of water a year – equivalent to the amount of water held by 3.2 million Olympic-size swimming pools.
The rising temperatures and reduction in snowfalls will lead to the melting of snow from the Himalayan Glaciers (the main source of water supply for the goddess rivers of India Ganges and the Yamuna) at a high rate and estimated to be half by the end of the mid-century and 95% by 2100.
Yet this flow will be providing more water to India but on the other side, this will become short to fulfill the need of 1.9 billion people by the mid-century. The Ganges basin alone supports 600 million people, provides 12% of the country’s surface water, and accounts for 33% of GDP.
India receives as much as the water it needs but 40% of all water gets lost by leaking and corroded old age pipes and hundreds of thousands get lost by community dug borewells and illegal tapping of the water by so-called “water mafia”. These water mafia’s or the entrepreneurs who fill the need for water in the cities by packaging and delivering to the cities and villages.
Effect of Growing Population:
India’s growing population has been another issue of why this crisis is outgrowing in the county. In 1990 India’s population was 873 million, in 2011 census it was recorded at 1.21 billion and it is expected that by the end of 2020 it will reach to 1.38 billion.
The growth rate is the highest in the world with more than 500 million expansion in just 30 years.
Strict rules and sustainable growth is mandatory for the country to survive the crisis that is coming closer in the future to the fastest growing nation in the world.
