Urban water crisis in Bengaluru, Mumbai worsening: Study

Fifty million people in 15 cities — including Mumbai and Bengaluru — of the ‘global south’ (Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America) lack access to safe, reliable and affordable water, a new working paper by the World Resources Institute (WRI) says.

While this is enough to ring alarm bells, the urban water crisis is much worse in Bengaluru, with the residents of the IT city having the lowest water availability across the surveyed cities, after Karachi. Bengaluru has water access for an average of three hours per day over three days of the week across locations, the paper says. This means that Day Zero predictions may be closer than anticipated.

Of the 15 cities analysed by the WRI, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Nairobi, Kenya and Bengaluru are experiencing severe water shortages. For households with access to piped water, intermittent service is common, which lowers water quality in 12 out of the 15 cities.

Siddharth Nagar in Mumbai and the Koramangala Slum Cluster in Bengaluru were among the 15 urban settlements surveyed by the WRI researchers. In both cities, lack of piped water from the government has made way for the local water mafia, illegal borewells, and expensive private water.

Over the past few years, Bengaluru, the paper states, has experienced increased flooding, dry wells, and decreased water availability from the Cauvery, while Karnataka’s three-year drought is associated with a 35% less rainfall and “unofficial rationing” in Bengaluru. Some neighbourhoods receive water for less than two hours per day, with reduced pressure and poorer quality. In response, households turn to tankers that source water from boreholes.

It is astonishing to have such poor provision for water and sanitation in two of the most successful and wealthy cities in India, David Satterthwaite, co-author of the paper, told ET via email. “India needs stronger, better-financed democratic city governments and strong community organisations and federations of slum/informal settlement dwellers to work with them. Do water, sanitation and drainage together, not separately”

Raj Bhagat Palanichamy, an Earth observation expert at WRI India, says efficiency in water use, rainwater harvesting, waste water reuse, improved infrastructure maintenance and access to sufficient financial resources should be the priority to deal with this crisis. “Cities need sustainable financial and political infrastructure for this. Resource availability is not the problem, its management is.”