Mumbai, Bengaluru worse than Dhaka in water access: Report

Taps running dry, lakes reduced to puddles, citizens queuing up for their daily water quota. Yes, we have witnessed such "Day Zero" moments in Chennai and Cape Town not in the too distant past.

What's frightening is that the major economic hubs of Mumbai and Bengaluru too are struggling to access safe, reliable and affordable water for daily use, and may soon meet the same fate as Chennai. Though both metropolitan cities get flooded during monsoons, residents also face acute shortage of drinking water on the other hand.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) Ross Center for Sustainable Cities collected data from 15 major cities in the Global South and found that on an average, half of the households in these cities lack access to piped utility water, affecting more than five crore people. Mumbai and Bengaluru are the only two cities in India which were part of the study.

Comparison of Global South countries shows that sub-Saharan cities are the worst performers.

Global South is a term used by the World Bank to refer to countries located in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean and considered to have low and middle income.

Those who have access to piped water, like in Mumbai and Bengaluru, are forced to rely on irregular supply of water, with high possibility of contamination that poses a threat to human health, the report said.

Comparison of Global South countries shows that sub-Saharan cities are the worst performers with 22 per cent households having piped water, whereas Latin American cities have performed fairly well with 97 per cent. South Asian cities have 63 per cent piped water accessibility on-premise.

Mumbai and Bengaluru have worse pipe water facilities compared to cities such as Colombo (Sri Lanka), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Caracas (Venezuela) and Sao Paulo (Brazil). These cities have regular water supply, whereas residents of Mumbai and Bengaluru receive irregular supply of water.

Mumbai, with 82 per cent piped water facility, is a little better than Bengaluru.

Bengaluru, where 70 per cent households have piped water facilities on-premise, receive only three hours of water thrice a week. Rest of the people rely on paid water tankers that source their water from boreholes.

Mumbai, with 82 per cent piped water facility, is a little better than Bengaluru. However, with a daily water supply for seven hours, Mumbai is way behind most Global South cities such as Colombo, Dhaka, Caracas, and Sao Paulo. Colombo, Sao Paulo and Dhaka enjoy 24x7 water supply.

The National Family Health Survey data of 2015-16 shows that 31 per cent of urban households lacked access to piped water, and the gap between water supply and population has been shrinking for the last 20 years.

An estimated 1.8 billion people globally drink water from contaminated sources.

The rich-poor gap in water supply

Within the cities, there is huge difference between the rich and poor in terms of allocation and duration of water supply. Many informal settlement areas, or slums, receive lesser on-premises piped water facilities compared to the city average.

People from informal settlements, which constitute more than half of a city's informal economy, obtain their drinking water from a wide variety of risky and expensive sources. These sources are associated with a higher risk of exposure to microbial contamination resulting in water-borne diseases. An estimated 1.8 billion people globally drink water from contaminated sources.

The slum population mostly depends on sources such as bottled water and tankers.

For instance, Bengaluru's Koramangala slum cluster experienced water access for an average of two hours per day for less than three days in a week, while the city in average gets three hours of water supply per day for three days of the week. The slum population mostly depends on sources such as bottled water and tankers.

In contrast, all five informal settlements in the Latin American cities included in the study had high access to piped water (above 85 per cent), similar to what was reported for the city as a whole, most likely because of their central location. Two other informal settlements in Maputo (Mozambique) and Nairobi (Kenya) had higher access to piped water than the city average.

Mumbai and Bengaluru do not have a continuous supply of water and pose significant risk of contamination. The report said that intermittency is caused by various factors, such as inadequate water and energy supplies, pipe breakages and leaks, and the desire to manipulate or control factions of the urban population politically.

How much does water cost?

Geographically, water is most costly in Latin American cities and least expensive in Mumbai, Dhaka, Lagos and Bengaluru. The most expensive type of water is bottled water, but this is not usually purchased in large quantities.

Tankers are the lifeline for one-third of Bengaluru city.

Water sourced from tankers is more expensive than piped water. In Mumbai, people are paying 52 times more for tanker water compared to piped water connections, while Bengaluru residents are paying 12 times more for tanker water. Reportedly, tankers are the lifeline for one-third of Bengaluru city.

Water tankers supply at least a third of Bengaluru's water needs (some estimates put this as high as 50 per cent). But most of the estimated 4,000-5,000 tankers have been operating illegally.

If households are dependent on water tankers only to meet their daily needs, they are bound to spend more than 3-5 per cent of their monthly household income, which is more than the World Health Organization's (WHO) recommendation for water and sanitation.

Affordability of quality water

The price of coping with poor quality water supply was found to be significantly high for low-income households in India. For example, the report said that in India, there was "an increase in the income/cost ratio for low-income households, and coping costs comprised 15 per cent of income for lower-income households, compared to 1 per cent for wealthy households".

Though long-term financial costs such as the effort to access, waiting time and cost-to-health are not reported, however, the short-term consequences appear significant.

According to WHO, the cost to achieve universal drinking water coverage in urban areas in five years would be US$141 billion. Otherwise, the world would be bound to bear almost double (US$260 billion) annually for total global economic losses because of polluted water.

"Cities need to rethink how they view equitable access to water," said Victoria A Beard, co-author, fellow at WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, and professor of city and regional planning at Cornell University.

"In many developing countries where urban residents lack access to safe, reliable and affordable water on a daily basis, these are the same countries that have made huge strides in guaranteeing universal access to primary education. Equitable access to water requires similar levels of political commitment," Beard added.