Water scarcity in India is an ongoing crisis that affects hundreds of millions of people each year. In addition to affecting the huge rural and urban population, the water scarcity in India also extensively affects the ecosystem and agriculture. India has only 4/100% of the world's fresh water resources with a population of over 1.4 billion people. In addition to the disproportionate availability of freshwater, water scarcity in India also results from drying up of rivers and their reservoirs in the summer months, right before the onset of the monsoons throughout the country. The crisis has especially worsened in the recent years due to climate change which results in delayed monsoons, consequently drying out reservoirs in several regions. Other factors attributed to the shortage of water in India are a lack of proper infrastructure and government oversight and unchecked water pollution.
Several large cities of India have experienced water shortages in recent years, with Chennai being the most prominent in 2019. The shortage of water affected the entire city of 9 million people and resulted in the closure of several hotels, restaurants and businesses. Large cities are not the only ones facing this risk. As per a report by WWF, out of the 30 Indian cities at risk of ‘severe water scarcity’ by 2050, 26 are midsized or small cities like Dhanbad, Nashik, and Jabalpur.
The acute shortage of water for daily needs has prompted many government and non government organizations to take stringent measures to combat the problem, including the Government of India forming an entire 'Jal Shakti' Ministry to deal with the problem. The government has also insisted on techniques such as rainwater harvesting, water conservation and more efficient irrigation as agriculture alone is responsible for 80% of the country's water usage.
Due to increasing demands, it is estimated that India will become a water scarce nation by 2025. According to a 2019 report by the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog), the best estimates indicate that India’s water demand will exceed supply by a factor of two by 2030.
Impacts of water scarcity in India
People The scarcity of water in India affects hundreds of millions of people across the country. A major portion of the population does not have a reliable and constant means of getting water for their daily needs. In June 2019, 65% of all reservoirs in India reported below-normal water levels, and 12% were completely dry. Since tap water is unavailable in many cities including some megacities such as Chennai, residents are reliant on alternative water sources. The country has scattered public water pumps but a lot of them are located far away from cities and their water flow is intermittent and unpredictable. A lot of Indians are forced with the option of spending money to buy drinking water but the poor sections of the society are unable to afford it on a daily basis which creates a massive problem of water scarcity for the rural population of India.
Limited accessibility to water is a threat to the people's health. Insufficient water has the capacity to deteriorate the health of an entire city in times of a water crisis. In the city of Latur, the depletion of more than 90% of water sources resulted in a major health crisis and people were forced to dig borewells into the ground, exposing themselves to dangerous chemicals and risking contamination. Some local residents were forced to consume polluted water sources due to the crisis at hand. In June 2016, the count of health problems skyrocketed in Latur, with multiple people showing symptoms of fever, infection, dehydration, vomiting, and kidney ailments. In addition to this health crisis, hospitals were unable to safely perform any surgery due to the increased threat of post-operative infections and complications resulting from a lack of clean drinking water.
A similar crisis emerged in Chennai in 2019 resulting in violent incidents and protests amongst the residents of the city. In June 2019 in Chennai, a woman was stabbed by her neighbor as she attempted to dig a borewell for water.
In February 2016, New Delhi was led to the brink of a severe water crisis by some Jat tribe demonstrators who purposefully damaged the Munak canal, a crucial source of water supply for the city. The protests were in retaliation to the Supreme Court judgement which cancelled Other Backward Class (OBC) quotas for them.
The water crisis in India was also exacerbated by the emergence of the so-called water mafia or 'tanker mafia'. Tanker mafia refers to private water tank owners who smuggle clean water illegally and sell it to local people at expensive prices. The tanker mafia is notorious in the city of Bhopal, where the mafia has been reported to bully poor residents and competing businesses, creating an atmosphere of social instability.
Ecosystem Water scarcity also threatens the lives of wild animals across India. Wild animals are forced to infiltrate villages and cities in India as they attempt to find potable water. In 2016, the city of Mettur and Kolathur experienced an acute water shortage caused by a drought, which caused water bodies in nearby forests to dry out. Eventually, local wild animals like elephants, tigers, and spotted deer started to sneak into the cities in search of water. Some of these animals pose a threat to the citizens, as they can attack people. Some animals like spotted deer get physically attacked by dogs in the process, or they wind up injured or dead in accidents. In the Madurai district, the acute water shortage caused Indian gaurs to die by falling into wells as they looked for water.
Agriculture Water is essential to the popular occupation of agriculture in India. Farmers are unable to produce crops in the absence of water. The drought in 2019 even destroyed the supplementary crops in addition to the winter crops. The scarcity of water has rendered a lot of valuable farmland in India completely useless and much of the farming industry in these regions has ceased to operate. In 2016, the city of Latur witnessed mass unemployment, where about half of its workforce was threatened to be unemployed as the agricultural industry struggled. Much of the local economy and farming regions nearly collapsed as the citizens were left with no choice but to use the polluted water. This implied reduced job opportunities in rural areas, which pushed citizens to move to the cities in search of jobs. Such a trend only adds pressure to the already strained infrastructure as the demand for water in large cities continues to increase.
Reasons for Water Scarcity
Climate change Monsoon is defined as a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation. The North-East monsoon is responsible for 10%-20% rainfall of the total rainfall in India, while the South-West monsoon provides approximately 80% of rainfall. Therefore, the effects of climate change on the monsoon seasons is one of the important reasons for decrease in rainfall and water shortage in India. In recent years, monsoons in India have become more sporadic while also reducing in their length and hence reducing the total precipitation.
In 2018, the North-East monsoon decreased by 44% and the South-West monsoon was deficient by 10%. The summer South-West monsoon that usually results in rainfall from the months of June till September was delayed for 10 days, causing the rainfall in the area to decrease by 36 percent in comparison to the 50-year average. Because of the lower rainfall, water levels in reservoirs across the country decreased and led to extreme shortages of water in many major cities of India. During the first half year of 2019, 91 major reservoirs in the country recorded a 32% drop in their water capacity, resulting in disasters such as the Chennai Water Crisis
The economic impact of rising sea levels is substantially evident within India. The damage cost is estimated at between US$24 billion and US$36 billion. This is primarily due to the rate of high emissions in conjunction with the increasing instability of ice sheets. These rising emissions are a predominant factor behind why India is consequently facing higher temperatures. The ‘wet-bulb temperature’, an approximate tool that integrates heat and humidity is expected to be at a constant rate of 31 Celsius. That rate resembles an adverse impact on human life due to the impacts of climate change in relation to water.
Infrastructure issues
River pollution Due to the lack of a long-term water management plan, many of the country's rivers either run dry or have been polluted. Although one of the most important river in India, the Ganges is also the one that is most severely polluted. The pollution mostly results from untreated sewage from densely populated cities, industrial waste as well as due to religious ceremonies in and around the river. The Ganges is a holy river in Hindu mythology and during religious festivals, over 70 million people bathe in the Ganges, believed to wash off their sins. The bones and ashes remaining after Hindu cremation are also thrown into Ganges along with other religious waste. Sometimes, half-cremated bodies are also thrown into the Ganges in order to let them decompose in water.
Although the Ganga Action Plan was launched in 1984 in a bid to clean the Ganges River within 25 years, the river is still highly polluted, with a high proportion of heavy metals and lethal chemicals that can even cause cancer. The unsatisfying result of the Ganga Action Plan has been attributed to a "lack of technical knowledge" and "misplaced priorities". Other cited reasons also include lack of maintenance of the facilities as well as an inadequate fees for the services.
Groundwater extraction and irrigation India is the world's biggest groundwater user, extracting of groundwater in 2010, compared to of groundwater extracted by the United States. From 2007 to 2017, the continued exploitation of groundwater caused the groundwater level in India to decrease by 61 percent, according to the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB). The unmonitored and unregulated extraction of groundwater has diminished and contaminated the water resources, and therefore threatens the people who depend on these water sources for their daily needs.
According to a report by NITI Aayog published in June 2018, at least 21 major Indian cities, including the capital New Delhi were set to completely run out of groundwater by 2020, based on the estimates of annual groundwater replenishment and its extraction without taking into account the groundwater availability in the deeper aquifers. Since the report, there have been reports of ground water shortage in the listed cities like Bangalore, Chennai and New Delhi. However since the initial report, there has also been variations in groundwater levels. Bangalore, for example, experienced replenished ground water levels in 2021 due to COVID lockdown induced reduced demand and significantly increased rainfall. However, this rise in ground water level is not considered to be a reversal of the downward trend. Bangalore is reporting ground water shortage again in 2023. The Ministry of Jal Shakti (MoJS) has since published a press release on the updated information of groundwater levels as of 2020 and the steps taken to avoid the situation, including artificial groundwater recharge, water harvesting and aquifer mapping and management programs. The 2018 report also noted that approximately 200,000 people die in India each year due to the lack of access to safe drinking water.
Groundwater meets more than half of the country's need of water supply, and nearly 89% of the groundwater extracted in India is used for irrigation. The traditional techniques of irrigation are also to blame for the water crisis as they result in a majority of water loss and evaporation during the irrigation process.