case study on water in india

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Ganga Pollution Case: A Case Study

This article is written by Abhinav Anand , a student pursuing B.A.LL.B(Hons.) from DSNLU, Visakhapatnam. The article deals with the Ganga pollution case and the peruses into reasons behind the pollution. It also discusses some of the schemes of the government to purify the river and critically analyses its impact. It further suggests changes that should be done to make the effective implementation.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Water Pollution has become a global crisis. The perennial threat of the water crisis is exacerbating because of uncontrolled and unbalanced development of the allied sectors such as industries and agriculture. According to the reports of NITI Aayog, 21 major Indian cities, including Delhi will completely run out of groundwater. This article deals with reasons behind the pollution of the river Ganga and it examines the effective measures taken by the government. It also suggests changes to expedite the cleaning process of the river.

Reasons behind the Pollution of Ganga

There are 4600 industries in Uttarakhand out of which 298 are seriously polluting industries. There are many industries which have not taken permission from the Uttarakhand pollution control board for their operations and they started their operation based on the advisory of the government in which the government exempted certain classes of industries from taking permission. The sewage treatment and advanced technology for the treatment of the wastes are not used despite government strict regulations.

Sewage is an important source of pollution and contributes 75% to the pollution caused by all sources of pollution. Urban development of different sizes contributes to sewage pollution in the river. The considerable efforts by the Ganga Action Plan are not able to improve the situation.

The report says that despite the failure of the Ganga Action Plan there is no disapproval on the part of the citizens as well as their representative living in urban areas on the banks of the river. The failure is on the part of the government agencies responsible for the effective implementation of the plan.

The urban citizens residing near the river show a lack of interest in the cleanliness of the river. The representatives of the urban areas are not receiving enough complaints from the citizens and as a result, they refrain from raising this issue to the higher authorities. Based on the analysis done by the independent authorities, the political parties show reluctance to increase the taxes because they may lose the support of their voters. The taxes will help the authorities to have financial validity. The Kanpur Nagar Nigam has to pay operation and management taxes to the Uttar Pradesh Jal Nigam for the operation and maintenance of the services in the Ganga Action Plan.

However, the Kanpur Nagar Nigam is unable to collect taxes from the users of the services of Ganga Action Plan to pay to the Uttar Pradesh Jal Nigam. So, the government directly transfers the money to the Uttar Pradesh Jal Nigam by cutting the share of the Kanpur Nagar Nigam.

It has been contended that the decentralisation of funds and functionaries will help in improving the condition of the governance at Urban Level. But, it is evident that the urban local bodies are neither motivated nor passionate to do the assigned duty.

Municipal Corporation

These are the following factors contributing to the waste in the river:

The use of plastic by people at large and its improper disposal ultimately reach in the river. Plastic pollution has been considered as one of the significant reasons for the pollution in the river. The government has failed in the implementation of Management and Sewage Waste Rules to curb the menace of plastic pollution.

The state should declare a complete ban on the use of plastic. The authorities pay no attention to the rampant use of plastics and the improper treatment of wastes before releasing them in the river. The pollution level of water has exponentially risen because of plastic wastes. The Tribunal while dealing with the matter of pollution on the ghats has banned the use of plastic in the vicinity of ghats.

However, the ban imposed by the tribunal has no effect on the ground level and the plastics are used rampantly. The plastic bags can be replaced by the jute bags which are nature friendly.

The Ghats are also one of the major sources of pollution in the river. Ganga is one of the important parts of our Indian culture due to which different kinds of pujas and other religious tasks are performed on the ghats, and the materials used are disposed of in the river. The materials are non-decomposable, highly toxic and hence pollute the river.

Agriculture Waste

Agricultural water pollution includes the sediments, fertilizers and animal wastes. The unbalanced use of inorganic fertilizers and other fertilizers have immensely contributed to water pollution. The fertilizers rich in nitrates create toxic composition after reaching several other entities. Large quantities of fertilizers, when washed through the irrigation, rain or drainage to the river, and pollutes the river. The fertilizers rich in nitrate content are used to get more productivity from the land. This led to pollution in the entire food chain wherever the by-product of the produce is consumed. When these fertilisers wash away due to rain or other factors and pollute the river.

Effective Measures by Government to stop the Pollution

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Ganga Action Plan

The Ganga Action Plan was started in 1986 for control of water pollution in the river Ganga. The main function of this plan was to make Ganga River free from the pollution from the disposal of waste from the cities settled on the banks of the river. The plan was to make Ganga pollution free from Rishikesh to Kolkata. The central pollution control board had prepared a plan of 5 years in 1984 to make Ganga pollution-free. The central Ganga authority was formed in 1985 and a Ganga action plan was launched in 1986 to make the Ganga pollution free.

The first phase of the Ganga action plan was inaugurated by late Rajiv Gandhi at Rajendra prasad ghat of Banaras. The National Protection Agency was constituted for its implementation. During the first phase of Ganga Action Plan 256 schemes of 462 crores were undertaken in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. Special stations have been created to check the quality of water.

The experts from Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited and National Environment Engineering Research Institute were appointed to check the quality of the water. Despite so much effort, the Ganga action plan failed miserably and crores of money were spent on the Ganga action plans. The failure of such a big plan has led to economic pollution.

The government launched the second phase of the Ganga Action Plan in 2001 wherein the central pollution board, central public works department and public works department are the bodies to carry out the plan.

Namami Ganga Programme

A flagship Namami Ganga Programme was launched under separate union Water Ministry created under river rejuvenation programme. The project aims to integrate Ganga conservation mission and it is in effect to clean and protect the river and gain socio-economic benefits by job creation, improved livelihoods and health benefits to the population that is dependent on the river.

The key achievement of the Namami Ganga projects are:

Creating sewage treatment capacity- 63 sewerage management project under implementation in the states of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. 12 sewerage management projects launched in these projects.
Creating riverfront development: 28 riverfront development projects and 33 entry-level projects for construction, management and renovation of 182 ghats and 118 crematoria has been initiated.
River surface cleaning: The river surface cleaning is the collection of solid floating waste on the ghats and rivers.after collection, these wastes are pumped into the treatment stations.
Public Awareness: Various activities such as seminars, workshops and conferences and numerous activities are organised to aware the public and increase the community transmission.
Industrial Effluent Monitoring: The Grossly Polluting Industries monitored on a regular basis. Industries are following the set standard of the environmental compliances are checked. The reports are sent directly to the central pollution control board without any involvement of intermediaries.

Suggestions

These are the following suggestion for making the existing machinery robust to expedite cleanliness process of the Ganga:

Development of a comprehensive and basic plan

We need to develop a plan by which we can reach the problem in a holistic way. The already devised plans involve many intermediaries wherein the transparency factor is cornered and only paper works are shown to the people at large.

The strategy should be formulated for different areas according to their demand. The people having apt knowledge of that area should be involved to know the actual problem of pollution in the river. A thorough check should be done and a customer-friendly platform should be formed wherein the views of every individual should be considered.

Measurement of the quality

The apt instruments are required to measure the quality of the water. We have many schemes for the cleanliness of the Ganga but the officials assigned the duty of measuring the quality of water either have authoritarian pressure or lack of knowledge to assess the quality of water. The quality of water should be measured by a recognised testing agency. Further, the research should be made to evolve better machinery for precision in quality measurement.

Getting the institutions right

The main task is to get the involved institution on the right path. The river cleaning task demands leadership, autonomy and proper management. The cities need to be amended. Ultimately they will be the custodians of the networks developed for the cleanliness process. Many cities have weak financial powers and their revenue generation is also weak so they should be given extra incentives. An awareness campaign should be launched in small cities where people have no idea about the pollution of the river and how it affects the environment.

Engaging and mobilising all the stakeholders

The inhabitants of the river Ganga are people, elected representatives, and the religious leaders who consider the river as a pious and clean river. The mass awareness campaign can launch only when these people will be under sound financial conditions. So, if a portion is invested in these people, then it will help to develop their thinking on a large scale.

A similar situation has arisen in Australia where the government has invested 20% of the funds in creating mass awareness among the people for the cleanliness of the Murray river basin. It has shown a great impact on the productivity of the programmes implemented in Australia. So, when we promote all the stakeholders in one or the other way we can see a holistic development in the situation.

Rejuvenation requires equal attention to quality and quantity

The rejuvenation of rivers requires quality and quantity at the same time. The old adage of “ solution to pollution is dilution” should be kept in mind while making any kind of plan.

The improvement of water quality in Ganga during the Kumbh Mela is the result of the release of water barrage of the water upstream. The water in the upper stream is used in the agriculture process by the respective states. So, if the water is released on a regular basis it will also help to improve the quality of the water and reduce the pollution level in the water.

Ganga is considered a pious river in the religious scriptures. The current situation demands holistic accountability from the authorities and people to make it clean. The global image is projected by the cleanliness of our rivers. The river Ganga is a part of our culture and it is our duty to maintain its sanctity. The government should formulate a more stringent policy to develop the quality of the water in the river. The environmental laws should be strictly followed and the violators should be punished.

https://www.theigc.org/blog/ganga-pollution-cases-impact-on-infant-mortality/

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Urban water crisis and the promise of infrastructure: a case study of shimla, india.

$\r\nSoma Sarkar$

School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India

Urban water configurations evolve through synergetic relationships that are non-linear, spatially variable, and temporally contingent. As urban development grows in complexity, dense water flow networks intensify within the urban landscape and pose a major challenge to urban water governance. At this junction, this study takes up the specific case study of the water crisis in Shimla, a city situated in the Western Himalayas, which was once the summer capital of British India. Shimla witnessed two significant episodes of a severe water crisis in 2016 and 2018, respectively. While the mainstream discourses identified erratic rainfall due to climate change, urban growth, and tourism as the prime causes, the crisis was not marked by absolute scarcity. Multitude configurations of infrastructure politics, distribution, and access produced scarcity, which differentially impacted the people in the city and continues to do so. Marginalized social groups (class, caste, gender, and religion) and people living on the periphery, such as slum dwellers, daily wage laborers, and informal sector workers with inadequate economic and social safety nets seem to have been missing from the discourse. In addition, the crisis events in Shimla have led to institutional changes in the governance of water by establishing a parastatal body for a water utility in the city and the proposal of mega water infrastructure projects for the bulk supply of water from the Sutlej River. Deriving from a situated urban political ecology approach, this study presents an in-depth empirical understanding of the complex urban waterscape of Shimla city, where the tourism industry is a major stakeholder, and a critical analysis of the emerging “new” politics of water, which is also a politics of infrastructure in Shimla's post-crisis phase. It adopts a qualitative research design involving in-depth interviews with different stakeholders in urban water governance in Shimla and a neighborhood-level case study to understand the post-crisis water scenario in the city. Locating the Shimla case study within the broader planetary geography, this study argues that the water crisis, as a context, is dialectical. Despite the implementation of several hydraulic projects and the financialization of nature, the inherent fissures of inequality within the city that cause differential access to water remain.

1. Introduction

Water has become a pressing concern in the Anthropocene for billions of people across the globe, as it threatens the survival of humankind in the next century. In the Global South, millions of people (mostly the poor and children) die annually due to inadequate access to clean water ( Mollinga et al., 2007 ; Enqvist and Gina, 2019 ; Enqvist et al., 2022 ). Approximately 785 million people lack even a basic drinking water service, including 144 million people who are dependent on surface water ( World Health Organization., 2019 ). It is a prime urban challenge since infrastructural and spatial planning often falls behind the rapid scale of urbanization ( Bakker, 2010 ). However, the urban water challenges resulting from urbanization are not absolute scarcities but are often primarily the question of distribution ( Mehta, 2005 ). There is an agenda setting and framing of a “crisis” discourse to usher in large infrastructural developments ( Giglioli and Erik, 2008 ). Along these lines, studies in urban political ecology have explored the material flows that unevenly shape the urbanization process while focusing on objects in the context of capitalist power relations. Large infrastructure networks, mainly water infrastructure, have been a frequent site of inquiry ( Swyngedouw, 1997 , 2004 , 2006 ; Gandy, 2004 ; Kaika, 2004 ; Loftus, 2012 ). Going back in time, we see that water and urban environments have co-evolved continuously through intricate interrelationships that are temporally contingent and spatially variable, moving across non-linear progressions leading to unceasingly embryonic urban and resource configurations. However, in recent times, these relationships have intensified because of the urban communities' increasing dependence on water to first satisfy their own basic needs and then feed into the increasing large-scale production and consumption of water-based goods and services ( Castro, 2013 ). Over the years, however, the scholarship on water has shifted from viewing water as a material substance to an understanding of the complex assemblages that water forms, linking the social, political, economic, and cultural systems, which then govern the different flows of water through societies, thereby shaping urban environments ( Cook and Erik, 2012 ). As new urban development grows in complexity, dense networks of water flows intensify within the urban tissue and pose a major challenge to urban water governance.

Water crises have become frequent in recent times in cities around the world (e.g., Bangalore, Chennai, Mexico City, and Cape Town), as they struggle with over-extraction of water, contamination, shortages, and flood risks ( Colven, 2022 ). With reference to Cape Town's “day zero”, scholars have argued that the water crisis of 2015 to 2018 cannot be understood outside its already precarious and contradictory water governance system, which is defined by multi-scalar fractures in conjunction with historical and persistent inequality (race and class) ( Enqvist and Gina, 2019 ). Rather, the crisis was situated within an existing reliance on the path that was shaped by a conflicting paradigm of governance, one characterized by ongoing tensions between imperatives of ecology, economics, and equity ( Bigger and Nate, 2020 ). In Cape Town, the transformations were commensurate with that of the corporatization of water services by establishing a competitive atmosphere, performance-based management, and cost recovery policies aimed at reducing public sector inefficiencies ( Smith and Susan, 2003 ). In the context of the Flint water crisis, critics argued that the relics of segregation and discrimination present in Flint made it an exclusive target, and this would not have been the case if Flint had been wealthier and white ( Anand, 2017 ). In São Paulo, water shortages were felt across the city in 2015, and cuts in the supply of water were felt overwhelmingly by low-income residents and those living outside the urban center. Although, in the urban outskirts of São Paulo, there was no systematic rationing of water, the combination of less water storage space, further distance from treatment centers, and more insecure hook-ups meant that peripheral residents experienced longer periods of scarcity ( Millington, 2018 ).

In India, water is listed in the Indian Constitution as a state subject, and with the state, the executive control over the production and management of water resources is concentrated. The state can legislate on who should have ownership, access, and user rights and what should be the mechanisms for distribution. This arrangement changed after the 74th constitutional amendment; thereby, municipality bodies are in charge of the above activities but with state control mechanisms. Among the previous studies, Zérah (2000) illustrated the differences between the water network connection and supply adequacy in New Delhi, highlighting that 50% of Delhi's residents do not have a reliable water supply despite having piped water connection. Anand (2011 , 2012) explored the hydraulic infrastructural practices in Mumbai and the critical role of pumps, pipes, pressure, and water expertise in managing the city. Biswas and Druti (2021) further argued that groundwater will be extracted and depleted more in Delhi if the percentage of piped water network does not increase in tandem with the rapid urban transformation. However, Drew (2020) argues for a shift from “pipe politics” to “catchment politics” or the “politics of water capture” in her case study of the Hauz Khas Lake in New Delhi. Such explorations are possible in regions where traditional water management infrastructures are considered to be wiser ways of using resources.

In the context of Chennai, Niranjana (2021) explored the role of water works engineers within the fragmented water infrastructure of the city and highlights the fragmentary and pluralistic epistemologies that make up modern infrastructures. On the other hand, Coelho (2022) conceives urban waterlines as dynamic assemblages that employ water circulations in projects of transmuting territories and re-valuing urban nature and also as an analytical tool to capture the dialectic hybridity of water and society that reflects the power relations of capitalist development. In India, research has focused on big coastal cities such as Mumbai ( Shaban and Sharma, 2007 ; Cooper, 2011 ; Ranganathan, 2014a , b ; Anand, 2017 ), Kolkata ( Das, 2009 ; Allen et al., 2017 ), and Chennai ( Coelho and Venkat, 2009 ; Srinivasan et al., 2013 ), but there has also been an emerging focus on the small and intermediate level towns. Chatterjee and Kundu (2022) explore the changing power relations between actors within the locality (which they call “para”) and their differential access to water services in their case study of Baruipur town, in West Bengal, India. They critically engage with the two cases of the stand post and the packaged drinking water in analyzing the relationship between public actors and private water vendors in the town. Sarkar (2022) problematizes water as a socioecological space of caste and gender and explores the differential access to water within communities at the level of neighborhoods (para) in the Purulia district of West Bengal, India.

Despite the huge spectrum of water research in India, most of it focuses on the plains or coastal plains. Only a few studies have explored urbanization and the urban waterscape in mountain cities ( Boelens, 2014 ; Dame et al., 2019 ). In addition to the challenges of the landscape, this is important because of two aspects: verticality and seasonality. Verticality in the relational production of space is of significance in the mountains. Negi et al. (2017) call this “contoured urbanism”, where upward mobility entails new susceptibilities and where the everyday negotiations with inherited hierarchies through practices produce geographically situated forms of urbanization in parts of the Himalayas. In this vertical contoured urbanscape, water is a perennial challenge that is compounded by the neglect of traditional water systems, such as stone spouts and springs ( Wester et al., 2019 ), outdated and poorly constructed water distribution systems that get superimposed on traditional water systems, pipe leakages, and poor governance that puts primacy on piped water supply over other time-tested and sustainable sources. In Darjeeling, private water tankers provide water to millions of residents.

Second, there is a sense of seasonality attached to the mountain cities in India. In Mussoorie, for example, the number of tourists increases to 200,000 during the peak months of May and June, and this has, directly and indirectly, affected the region ( Madan and Laxmi, 2000 ; Koner and Gopa, 2021 ). In this regard, scholars have argued that tourism-led urban water use can significantly impact the regional level since it is concentrated in time and space ( Gössling et al., 2012 ). This is particularly the case with the Himalayan cities, which attract a large number of tourists amidst their dwindling water supply. It results in more urbanization and newer water-consuming urban amenities (swimming pool, western flush toilet, showers, etc.). This results in new uses, production, practices, management, and control of urban water flows, which pose a challenge to the current governance mechanisms. The Global Water Partnership rooted in the experiences of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) — World Bank Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) has been providing developing countries with technical assistance aimed toward the urban use of water ( Rana and Lauren, 2004 ). On the other hand, Biswas (2008) is critical of this partnership and the ambiguity around the concept of “integration” in Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM). He argues that its application to better manage macroscale and mesoscale water policies, programs, and projects has a dismal track record. Synthesizing the existing literature, this study argues that the flows of water in a city are complex in nature and the interconnected dimensions of the social, cultural, economic, environmental, political, and topographical arenas in which water is embedded need to be considered. Due to the lack of this holistic approach, discourse on the water crisis has often been recognized as a crisis of governance. This study furthers this argument by situating the Shimla water crisis within the broader planetary geography.

Shimla, the erstwhile summer capital of colonial India, has witnessed two major incidences of the water crisis in recent times. In 2015–16, contamination in Ashwani Khad, one of the major water sources of the city, caused a hepatitis outbreak affecting many lives. It also disrupted the water supply because a major source was cut off. This was followed by another incidence of the water crisis in the peak summer of 2018, when the city nearly reached “day zero”, as the water supply was disrupted for more than 2 weeks. In both incidences, the tourism industry was badly impacted, but the latter garnered immense social media attention as the residents urged the tourists not to visit Shimla that summer. These water shortages affect men, women, and marginalized communities differently. In most areas, the poor who live in marginal areas within the city, especially in the peri-urban areas outside the municipal water supply limits, pay a higher price for buying water from informal sources ( Wester et al., 2019 ). The same is true for residents who rent accommodation, even in the core city center—they often do not have guaranteed rights to use the municipal connection, which is reserved for the house owner, and end up paying more than double for water ( Wester et al., 2019 ). In Shimla, there have been major institutional shifts in the governance of water in the post-crisis phase.

Taking this as the point of departure, this study explores the complex urban mountain waterscape of Shimla city to understand the nature of the water crisis in the city, how it led to specific interventions and institutional responses, and how people's relationship with water in the city changed/evolved as Shimla underwent shifts in the water governance structure. Using an urban political ecology framework, it presents a critical analysis of the emerging “new” politics of water in Shimla's post-crisis phase. Urban political ecology investigates how a particular urban environment is produced and who gains and who loses due to particular power relations influencing changes within the urban environment and in the coproduction of urban society and environment ( Swyngedouw, 1996 , 1997 ; Braun and Castree, 1998 ; Swyngedouw and Heynen, 2003 ; Kaika, 2005 ; Heynen et al., 2006 ). More recent studies have also applied this framework for understanding nuances of water in smart city environments ( Drew, 2020 ), urban waterlines ( Coelho, 2022 ), and differential access to water ( Chatterjee and Kundu, 2022 ).

2. Materials and methods

The study followed a qualitative research design involving in-depth interviews with different stakeholders in urban water governance in Shimla. A total of 45 in-depth interviews were conducted with key government officials, elected political representatives, consultants, residents, migrants, representatives from the hotel associations, business owners, academicians, media representatives, and lawyers. In addition to this, 50 semi-structured interviews and two focus group discussions were conducted at the neighborhood level of the Krishnanagar municipal ward as a case study. The participants for the study were selected using the snowball method. The fieldwork was conducted in 2021 amidst COVID-19 challenges, taking all precautionary measures. The interviews were conducted in English and Hindi, which were later transcribed and translated into English. After identifying the broad themes from the narrative threads, an interpretive analysis was conducted. In this study, pseudonyms are used for the names of the participants. The transect walk method was used in mapping the different water practices in the localities, understanding pipe networks, and also understanding people's perceptions of the water infrastructures. The secondary data include gazettes, government reports, project DPRs (Detailed Project Reports), popular articles, and a rigorous content analysis of all the proceedings of the house of the Shimla Municipal Corporation from 2015 to 2021.

3. Results and discussion

3.1. situating shimla's waterscape.

The erstwhile summer capital of British India, Shimla, is situated on a transverse spur in the shape of an irregular crescent in the lower Himalayas, at a mean elevation of ~7,100 feet above sea level. In 1851, Shimla was first constituted as Municipal Committee and became a class I Municipality in 1871. In 1874, it was brought under the Punjab Municipal Act of 1873. After becoming a part of Himachal Pradesh and by the Himachal Pradesh Development and Regulation Act 1968, Shimla Municipal Committee was converted into a corporation in 1969. With the promulgation of the Himachal Pradesh Municipal Corporation Act of 1994, the number of wards was delimited to 21, and elections were conducted ( Kanwar, 1990 ). The main functions of the corporation included ensuring sufficient water supply, maintaining sewerage and drainage systems, preventing the spread of seasonal diseases and epidemics, and undertaking the construction of civic infrastructure facilities such as roads, bridges, schools, health centers, and commercial complexes. The number of wards later rose to 25 after some nearby areas were included in the municipality, and as of 2016, Shimla has 34 municipal wards.

The history of water supply in Shimla relates to great engineering feats. The city has one of the oldest lift water supply systems in India, which is 135 years old and pumps at an average head of 1,470 meters. Before British settlement in Shimla, the region depended on its 17 baolis and natural springs for water. As the demand for water grew, a water supply system, planned by the British, was set up in 1875 to cater to 16,000 people. In 1880, 15,000 acres of land were converted into a catchment forest in Seog, and a gravity scheme was introduced. In 1893, the catchment forest was extended and pumping engines were installed at Cherot Nallah. In 1899, this was further augmented. In 1914, electricity was introduced, and the Gumma Water Lift Scheme was introduced on the Nauti Khad between 1919 and 1924. It was the highest water lift scheme in the world at that time ( Buck, 1904 ). In total, two more rounds of augmentation were performed post-independence — first at Ashwani Khad in 1992 with an installed capacity of 10.8 MLD (millions of liters per day); second at Giri in 2007–2008 with an installed capacity of 61.3 MLD, taking the total installed capacity of the system to 61.2 MLD. In addition to this, the Municipal Corporation has 11 borewells providing 3–4 MLD of water and a buffer water scheme from Chaba with an installed capacity of 10 MLD.

At present, the drinking water for Shimla is lifted from seven sources, which are then treated in four water treatment plants. The treated water is sent through the network to the five major service reservoirs and then to 25 overhead tanks through gravity. The water from these overhead tanks is then supplied to the water connections in the city. The approximate capacity of water at the source is 51.5 MLD. Of the seven water sources, only two (Gumma and Giri) are reliable and contribute to more than 73% of the total water production. The following, Figures 1 , 2 , show the transmission of water from the source to the tank of the Gumma and Giri scheme.

Figure 1 . An outline of the Gumma water sourcing scheme. Source: Situation analysis report, 2018. Greater shimla water supply and sewage circle (GSWSSC), Shimla ( Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP., 2018 ).

Figure 2 . An outline of the Giri water sourcing scheme. Source: Situation analysis report, 2018. Greater shimla water supply and sewage circle (GSWSSC), Shimla ( Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP., 2018 ).

The socioecological configuration of water is complex in Shimla because of the terrain. The increase in population, urban expansion of the city, and the incoming tourist influx have put additional pressure on the existing water systems. Shimla was built to cater to the needs of a maximum of 25,000 (British) people, who considered the place their summer haven. Since then, the population has increased to ~1.7 lakhs or 0.17 million (as per the 2011 census), but the infrastructure has not been augmented accordingly. This results in Shimla often facing a shortage of piped water supply during the peak of summer, which is also the peak tourist season. There have been two peak water crisis scenarios in Shimla, in 2015–16 and 2018, and after each one of them, there were major institutional shifts in the governance of water in Shimla city.

3.2. Hepatitis outbreak and water crisis of 2015–16

Contamination in the Ashwani Khad in January 2016, which is the major water source of Shimla, caused a widespread outbreak of hepatitis in Shimla, infecting ~6,000–10,000 people. Before this, Shimla experienced episodes of contamination almost every other year (2007, 2009, 2013, and 2016), but the cause was not identified and the one in 2016 affected a significant portion of the population in Shimla and the neighboring districts of Solan. Several assessment reports have often highlighted the issue of contamination risk from untreated water and sewage. For many residents of Shimla, the term “water crisis” is still used to refer to the hepatitis outbreak of 2015–16.

Ashwani Khad is a major source of water for the residents of Shimla, providing 10.8 MLD of water, which is ~20% of Shimla's water requirement. It became operational in 1994. In 2005, a sewerage treatment plant was constructed 5 kilometers upstream of the water treatment plant in Malyana. In 2015–16, the Malyana Sewage Treatment Plant malfunctioned and discharged sludge into the Ashwani Khad. This led to an outbreak of hepatitis, mostly affecting the localities of Kasumpati, Vikas Nagar, Panthaghati, Chotta Shimla, New Shimla, and Khalini, and later spread to the entire city ( Sharma et al., 2021 ). After the contamination, a special investigation committee was constituted for inspection. Some of the main observations after visiting the Malyana Sewerage Treatment Plant were as follows:

1. The sewerage treatment plant at Malyana was underutilized and not functioning properly.

2. There is no approach road to the plant, causing difficulties in the lifting of sludge that was lying there.

3. Since there was no power backup, the plant becomes non-functional during a power failure, causing raw effluent to be discharged.

Due to this, the High Court ordered the Irrigation and Public Health Department (now Jal Shakti Vibhag) to stop lifting water from Ashwani Khad until the quality of water is improved to the drinking level. The general public was advised to clean their water storage tanks. Since a major water supply source was cut off, the city experienced severe water shortages for months. Water from only Koti and Brandi Nallah was tapped for potable purposes. Regular water testing was mandated.

What followed was a blame game between different authorities involved in the water lifting and distribution process. As per the institutional structure, the Irrigation and Public Health Department was responsible for lifting raw water and its treatment, along with the operation and maintenance of the transmission system, and the Shimla Municipal Corporation was responsible for the distribution, billing, and grievance redressal. Major questions of accountability, misgovernance, and failure of institutions were raised after the outbreak. Due to all this chaos, the city council demanded a change in the governance structure so that the entire water supply system could be handed over to the municipality. There was a change in the governance structure with the establishment of the Greater Shimla Water Supply and Sewage Circle (GSWSSC).

3.3. The urban conquest of water in the crisis of 2018

Shimla reached “day zero” at the peak of the shortage of piped water supply in May 2018, with several localities going without water supply for ~10–15 days. While the closure of Ashwani Khad in 2016 and the lack of precipitation are often cited as the triggers for this crisis, one cannot deny the role of the tourist influx, inefficient infrastructure, poor governance of the water supply system, and inequitable distribution. For many reasons, this crisis garnered extensive media and social media attention across the country and world and came to be known as the “Shimla Water Crisis” of 2018.

The official response from the water authorities attributed the water crisis to climate change, meaning less snowfall in the winter and scanty rainfall resulting in a shortage of water at the source itself. In doing so, they cast nature into pole position to explain scarcity. It is, thus, presented in a way where “nature” becomes the principal cause of water scarcity and not the existing political–economic configurations that lead to the urbanization of water in selective and uneven ways ( Kaika, 2004 ). This eventually results in “scarcity” of the poor and powerless and water abundance for the socioeconomic and political elites. Apart from the shortage of water due to the Ashwani Khad closure and scanty rainfall, the 24 h power cut near the Giri and Gumma pumping stations further aggravated the situation. The Giri and Gumma are major water sources in the city's supply. In the absence of power backup, it is a vulnerable dependency of the water-lifting process on electricity. The pumping of water is also affected during heavy rains because of high turbidity and over-siltation. However, that was not the case in the 2018 crisis. The 2018 crisis was instrumental in exposing the sectoral and spatial inequities in the water supply system of Shimla.

With regard to the commercial sector, the hotel industry incurred severe financial losses in the summer of 2018 due to tourists canceling their reservations due to the water situation. While interviewing members of the hotel association, it was found that none admitted to having water shortages in their hotels in 2018. It was informed that the hotel industry remains ever-prepared for the water uncertainties in the city and relies on private water tankers to suffice their needs. Many of the hotel owners had their own business of water tankers. These were used for their own needs and were also available for hire by the municipality when required. This crisis also brought to the forefront the networking of these tankers and people's gullible dependence on them. Transect walks in the Lower Bazaar neighborhood also revealed that some of the commercial water pipelines connecting the hotels had water running throughout the day, while those connecting the domestic connections had water for a limited time. The keyman in charge of the particular locality plays a significant role in this process.

Spatially, Shimla is divided into six water zones based on the areas under each overhead tank — Chaura maidan zone, Central Zone, Lakkar Bazaar Zone, Chotta Shimla Zone, New Shimla Zone, and Sanjauli zone ( Figure 3 ).

Figure 3 . Water distribution network of Shimla. Source: Shimla Jal Prabandhan Nigam Limited (SJPNL).

During the crisis, not all localities were impacted in a similar way. In one of the field interviews, a professor commented, “ the whole city does not experience water crisis in the same way nor does [sic] all sections of people. The elite localities and the hotels did not run out of water. The university guest houses and faculty quarters had sufficient water while the hostels had an erratic water supply.”

He was referring to inter-locality and intra-locality inequities in the water supply referring to the university located in the Summerhill area. In addition, the pertinent question that arises here is who is prioritized over whom? Similar narratives of inequitable distribution were found all over the town. Higher-income neighborhoods get a regular water supply. Lower-income neighborhoods, on the other hand, get water at intervals. Even within one single municipal ward, water supply frequency and pressure vary with localities. The reasons cited for this discrepancy were manifold. While the authorities concerned (SJPNL and the Municipal Corporation) blamed gravity, inaccessibility (no roads for tankers), congestion, and other technical glitches, there were a group of people who blamed the vested interests of the political party leaders who got water themselves and diverted the remaining water to the hotels.

This was also the time when several officials (Engineers to Keymen) who were in charge of the water supply and distribution and were handling it for many years were routinely transferred to other departments. Managing the water supply and distribution in a mountain city requires experience because it all rests on a delicate balance of which valve is to be opened and when, otherwise all the water will gush downstream due to gravity. This would result in neighborhoods located on the higher side of the mountain slope not getting water. The new appointees were unaware of this and could not manage the peak summer water demand in the city. As households went without water for weeks, many women took to the streets expressing their disappointment and demanding water. There were several protests and many were arrested. Mostly, it was women, who were at the forefront of the protests. In one such protest for water in the Bolieuganj locality, cases were filed against several women. The cases were heard at the Chakkar District Court on 9 September 2021. After the hearing, one of the women, aged 51 years old, who was also a shopkeeper by profession, shared, “ we absolutely did not have water in the house. What could we do? After reaching out to the councilor[sic], one water tanker was provided, but one water tanker was not sufficient for the whole neighborhood. Many women protested because we were not able to run our households. Cooking, bathing, washing, and everything else were on halt because we barely had water to drink.” It is evident from this that the issue of water is a personal issue for women because it disrupts the private sphere of the “household”. The 2018 water crisis exposed many fissures of inequality within the existing system, but most importantly brought the plight of women into the discourse.

3.4. Institutional shifts in response to the crises

In India, water governance is decentralized at the state level. The state governments receive financial support from the central government to implement national-level projects. In their administrative and physical borders, the states are in charge of developing and managing water resources. To develop and manage water resources, states have a variety of institutions at their disposal, including regulatory bodies, water departments, gram panchayats, irrigation departments, and public work departments ( Ahmed and Araral, 2019 ). Rural and urban areas have different water management systems at the state level. Water management in urban areas is handled by a variety of political and administrative institutions, including municipalities and districts, where both elected and appointed officials carry out their duties. State-to-state variations in these arrangements are possible. The formulation, execution, and delivery of policies are the purview of these municipal- and district-level bodies. Water infrastructure construction and maintenance, water distribution, and other related tasks are all included in the provision of services (ibid) .

In Shimla, historically, the entire water supply was managed by the municipal committee until 1979 when the Irrigation and Public Health Department (IPH) (now Jal Shakti Vibhag) was formed and took over the responsibility of creating the water supply and sewerage (WSS) infrastructure in the state of Himachal Pradesh. It was responsible for providing WSS services to the whole state, with the exception of Nagar Panchayats and Municipal Committee areas. Only bulk water was provided there. Within the city, the Shimla circle of the IPH department was responsible for asset creation (bulk water supply, distribution network, sewerage network, and sewerage treatment plants). The IPH was also responsible for providing treated bulk water and for treating sewage for the SMC area. The WSS department of the Shimla Municipal Corporation was responsible for the distribution of treated water and collection of sewage within SMC limits.

The hepatitis outbreak of 2015–2016 was the outcome of poor water governance, whereby the contamination of the water source remained unnoticed for days and later, the duality between the different authorities involved in the water lifting and distribution process was blamed. There were questions of accountability, misgovernance, and failure of institutions. This incident resonates with the water contamination case of Flint when its water source was switched from Lake Huron to the Flint River. Flint River's water was acidic compared to Lake Huron, and corrosion control chemicals were not added to the water. A lack of chlorine in the water resulted in bacterial growth, causing an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in 2014–2015, killing over 80 residents, and infecting more than 100 residents ( Anand, 2017 ). In the hepatitis outbreak in Shimla, ~6,000–10,000 people were affected, which led to major institutional shifts in the governance of water.

After the hepatitis outbreak of 2015–2016, the Honorable High Court of Himachal Pradesh ordered reforms in the water supply and sewerage administration of the city of Shimla specifically, and the State of Himachal in general. It wanted one statutory body/post to be manned by a competent authority and members along with requisite staff to deal with the entire water supply system of Shimla town and the entire water crisis relating to the State of Himachal Pradesh. The Greater Shimla Water Supply and Sewage Circle (GSWSSC), was created under the Municipal Corporation as a separate, ring-fenced body for the delivery of all integrated services related to water supply and sewage disposal in the Greater Shimla Planning Area. It was envisioned that the accounts for the circle would be ring-fenced from the rest of the Municipal Corporation. The GSWSSC was also envisaged to have standard operating procedures for the delivery of water and sewerage services. It was envisaged that the Government of Himachal Pradesh would support all initiatives to strengthen the circle by way of adequate and qualified personnel and adequate need-based financing. The GSWSSC was functionally, financially, and operationally ring-fenced within SMC, with a separate bank account. A director, deputed from IPH, was the head of the circle and would exercise all operational powers for WSS, and the IPH provided the staff required for the functioning of the circle. Most importantly, service levels and tariffs within the entire Greater Shimla area (GSA) were mandated to be uniform. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the IPH, Urban Development Department (UDD), and SMC was required to set up the GSWSSC.

Since 2016, the GSWSSC has improved the water supply and sanitation system in the city by repairing leakages and reducing non-revenue water. However, the 2018 water crisis called for another major institutional shift in the governance of water in the city, whereby there was a shift from this ring-fenced entity to an independent utility. The GSWSSC transformed into a company called the Shimla Jal Prabandhan Nigam Limited (SJPNL). The Government of Himachal Pradesh and Shimla Municipal Corporation jointly owns the company with the corporation having a 51% shareholding in the company, representing the interests of Shimla city, and the Government of Himachal Pradesh owning a 49% shareholding in the company, representing the interests of peri-urban areas. Today, the SJPNL is responsible for the management of the city's water supply. The core performance standards, as mandated by 2025 as a part of the Medium Term WSS Program funded by the World Bank are as follows:

1. Universal access to piped water supply and sewerage will be provided to all households in the Greater Shimla area. The safe and piped water supply of 135 lpcd per person per day and sewerage connection will be provided. The water supply standards in the entire Greater Shimla area would be uniform, and there would be no difference in standards between Shimla city and the peri-urban area, nor would there be different standards of supply for low-income neighborhoods/households.

2. Continuous pressurized water supply (24 × 7) will be provided. The supply of potable water to end users through a system of pipes — comprising interlinked bulk transmission and/or distribution systems — which are continuously full and under positive pressure throughout their whole length, such that the end user may draw off the water at any time of the day or night, 24 h a day, every day of the year. Continuous pressurized supply will be accompanied by 100% metering of all households and supply points and volumetric incremental block tariff.

3. In total, 100% water quality and effluent compliance with applicable potable water and environmental standards are specified by the Central Public Health Engineering Environmental Organization (CPHEEO), the Central Pollution Control Board, and the Himachal Pradesh Pollution Control Board.

The governance of the urban hydro-social cycle, the demand aspect, in particular, operates via public awareness campaigns about water conservation and attempts to increase water extraction or reduce consumption by technological fixes. There is always an inclination toward engineering solutions. The 2018 water crisis in Shimla paved the way to pitch the long-withstanding Sutlej project plan in front of the World Bank. While the core performance standards under the project are much needed, the concern is around the cost recovery aspect of the project. The cost of the project, which involves augmenting the water supply to Shimla from the Sutlej with an additional 67 MLD to meet the water demand until 2050 is Rs. 1,168 Cr (1 crore = 10 million). This amount will finally be recovered from the general public itself.

In Shimla, there is going to be 100% metering of the taps, and public taps are slowly being discontinued. This resonates with the prepaid water meter case from Phiri, Soweto, a low-income community in Johannesburg. The case involved a disagreement over water provision policies and the installation of a prepaid water meter system in Phiri, pitting five impoverished residents of Phiri against the City of Johannesburg, Johannesburg Water, and the national Minister for Water Affairs and Forestry ( Naidoo, 2005 ). The sufficiency of Johannesburg's Free Basic Water Policy, which only allowed 6,000 free liters of water per household per month, or 25 liters per person per day for a household of eight, was put to the test (ibid) . The case was taken to the High Court and Supreme Court and resulted in controversial shifts of legal opinions, but this was the first case where the court was forced to rule on the availability and sufficiency of water. In Shimla, the tariff for domestic water connection within the municipal area from 0 to 20 kiloliters is Rs. 17.55 per kiloliter. Water is no longer available for free. The question remains as to, in the absence of any tariff concessions for the low-income group of people in the city, how socioeconomically accessible the “new” water infrastructure is And what this entails for equity and water justice in the future. While services may become efficient under such a regime, the challenge of service delivery to the poor in urban areas remains. The following neighborhood case study further elaborates along these lines.

3.5. Life “below the Cart road”: a case study of Krishnanagar

In Shimla, the British left behind a very nebulous “way of life,” which was reserved for a section of Anglophiles and affluent Indians who now occupied the posh localities, which were previously only reserved for the British ( Bhasin, 1992 ). This spatial segregation, along with class lines, is visually evident in Shimla. The settlements have developed over the years with subsequent waves of urbanization. These spatial differentiations have deeper connotations when juxtaposed with social configurations. These are particularly visible when it comes to access to resources.

Krishnanagar municipal ward is located at the core of Shimla city along the sunny slopes of the Ridge. The mountain slope is divided by Cart Road, and Krishnanagar is located below it. Shimla was built by the British as a “hill station” and sanatorium for themselves. There was a particular sense of “seasonality” attached to its ontology since the city served as the summer capital of colonial India. In Shimla, the topography was used to carry out racial segregation by the elevation difference. An average Indian was an outcast in that colonial stratosphere who was more likely to service providers such as porters, rickshaw-pullers, clerks, etc. During the British time, while the officials resided in the Ridge and present-day Jakhu area, the Indian service providers had their settlements down the slopes, that is, how this slope developed as well. A steep road down the Cart Road near Mahamaya hotel takes us to Krishnanagar. The road is narrow and steep, so much so that car drivers from only that locality can drive on that slope. Some of the localities within Krishnanagar are Ghora Sarai, Mistri Line, Valmiki Mandir, Ladakhi Mohalla, Cowshed, Slaughter House, Lalpani, Gurudwara, and Gaddikhana. Most of the localities are symbolic of the occupation of the original residents. For example, Ghora Sarai was originally inhabited by horsecart pullers during the colonial period, and horses can still be found there. These horses are now used for tourism and recreation at Mall Road.

Krishnanagar is the largest slum in Shimla. Out of 2,758 houses in the slums of Shimla, 1,213 houses are in Krishnanagar. The area is often neglected in terms of basic amenities. In addition, the general perception of this locality among the Shimla residents is quite negative. The Valmikis (untouchables), the Ravidasis (leather workers), the Ladakhis, the Punjabis, and many others who live in Krishnanagar have lived there for generations. Migrant laborers from Nepal and Indian states also call Krishnanagar their home because of the low property value. There is also a Valmiki community, which was engaged in leather processing. It was found that there are variations within the neighborhood as well. Many businessmen live in the Gaddikhana area closer to Cart Road, and their perceptions about the neighborhoods situated downhill are often biased. This neighborhood was purposively chosen to understand the contours of social and spatial hierarchy across a slope and how it limits one's access to provisions.

The neighborhood-level study of 50 households revealed that the water source choices for the people living in Krishnanagar are municipality home connections ( n = 27), municipality joint connections ( n = 2), public taps ( n = 6), natural springs ( n = 4), municipality home connections and natural spring both ( n = 9), natural spring and public tap both ( n = 1), and not having any connection of one's own but sharing from the neighbor ( n = 1). In Krishnanagar, the ratio of water connections to properties is very low. This indicates that multiple properties are sharing one connection, and/or that several properties are without connection. For people depending on municipality home connections, water was received once every 3 days for a duration of 30 min to 1 h. They face a particular problem in the summer months of May and June because during that time, water is diverted to all the hotels located uphill from Krishnanagar, and much less water is given to the locality. Summer months are particularly challenging at the household level because many people have relatives/guests visiting, and the requirement for water in the house increases.

Figure 4 maps the daily water needs of the studied households in the Krishnanagar ward. Based on the amount of water they needed to run the household and the water they receive daily, they responded based on whether the water they receive is sufficient or insufficient for them. It was found that people with sufficient water needs are households of smaller family sizes who have a maximum cap of 1,000 liters requirement per day. Those with insufficient water are households of larger family sizes with an upper cap of 2,000 liters per day. Here, water sufficiency also includes their dependence on the natural springs/baolis. Springs are used alongside formal household water provisions as a backup. As the springs continue to supplement, complement, and substitute for formal piped water connections, even in households with municipality home connections, the waterscape of mountain cities such as Shimla becomes more complex ( Müller et al., 2020 ).

Figure 4 . Map showing the daily water requirements of residents in Krishnanagar, Shimla, India. Source: Author.

In a case study of the city's waterscape in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India, Biswas (2021) argued that the amount of storage available at the household level can significantly and long-lastingly affect the procurement burden placed on women in the case of intermittent water supply. Even though there is a difference in the quality of stored water and flowing water, under intermittent water supply, theoretically at least, if a household can store enough water to meet their entire water needs during the supply days, then the procurement burden on women can be minimized. In Shimla, access to storage is an important factor in water sufficiency as well. Households with sufficient water were also the ones with more than 1,000 liters of storage tanks. Such households often maintain dead storage of a minimum of 500 liters as a preparedness mechanism in anticipation of another water crisis. With regard to the 2018 water crisis, a middle-aged entrepreneur and resident of the Gaddikhana area of Krishnanagar remarked, “ we get water once every 3 days and we maintain storage of two thousand liters. With a newborn baby in the house, our water requirement is also high. It is because we maintain some water storage, we did not face many difficulties in the 2018 crisis but had to call water tankers twice.” Storage of water is essential, but not every household has access to it in a similar way. For low-income households without plumbing infrastructure, water is stored in drums, buckets, and cans, and the total storage capacity is within 250 liters. Similarly, people who reside in rented accommodations depend on their landlords for water. In many cases, even when the supply of water in the city is once every 3 days, the house owners release water to their tenants after meeting their own needs. Thus, the people without adequate storage are the first ones to be affected when there are disruptions in the city's water supply.

Apart from this, the timing of the water supply is an important factor. Water is mostly supplied in this locality between 4:00 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. The early morning timing for water is problematic for many residents whose water taps are outside the house or who are accessing public water taps. This is because the region has witnessed many human–wildlife conflicts with leopards. Since the opposite slope is forested, it becomes an easy passage for leopards to come to this locality to hunt for dogs for food. There have been incidences of attacks on children and the elderly as they come out of their houses at unusual hours (early morning or late at night) to access tap water or toilets. Being located downhill of the slope, water is first released in this locality phase by phase and then in the uphill localities. This is done to ensure that the water pressure is maintained and the uphill localities also get water. Otherwise, the entire water supply will gush downhill under gravity. This intricate balance of pressure and valves is regulated by the keyman of the locality. The timing, duration, and frequency of water supply often depend on them as they become the first point of contact for many people when it comes to grievance redressal. The keyman holds a certain level of power when it comes to the water supply in the city. Hansen and Oskar (2009) call them urban specialists or middlemen who form a bridge between the slum dwellers and the services of the city. Anand (2012) calls this “plumber raj” where the plumbers play a significant role in the water supply, where the formal water connections become complex. This is similar to the case of Shimla.

A major problem faced by the residents of Krishnanagar is getting a new water connection. Most of the constructions in this area are unauthorized and to get a water connection, the house deed is required along with proof of electricity payment. It is because of this challenge that many households in this locality are still out of the water supply network, and the role of the plumbers and keyman become significant. For many of these people and people for whom the supplied water is not sufficient, the natural springs are the only resort. After the hepatitis outbreak of 2015–2016, water testing was done in the natural springs in the city. Most of them were declared unfit for consumption. The spring upon which the people of Krishnanagar are dependent flows polluted water into the locality from the Mall Road above. Water from that spring is tapped through pipes and spread out within Krishnanagar, and the households depend on it for drinking, cooking, washing, and cleaning. Scholarly research engaging with urban waterscapes often overemphasize access to a particular quantity of water rather than the quality of that water for domestic use ( Lavie et al., 2020 ). There is a need to define access and adequacy in terms of the quality and source of water too, as in the case of Shimla.

An interesting response from one of the participants highlighted that when the water crisis in Shimla happened in 2016 and 2018, many people in this ward were not greatly affected because, either way, they were dependent on the natural springs and not on the supplied water. They were already “out of the network” Being out of the network of the water supply is not just about connectivity to the infrastructure, it is also symbolic of how a particular population group is viewed by the state and produced as abject to the modern city ( Anand, 2012 ). Hence, in Krishnanagar, we see a decentralized locally developed water alternative (natural springs) and subjectivities regarding service delivery thriving under the shadow of the large hydraulic infrastructural system. Radonic and Sarah (2015) , in their case study of Sonora, found that the steep eroding slopes were covered with networks of “illegal” PVC pipes, blurring the boundaries between humans and technology. The act of carrying water containers, filling rooftop cisterns, and carrying out manual waste disposal render bodies a part of the urban infrastructural fabric. This is different from mainstream infrastructural thinking, which surrounds the state and capital as sites of governance and the role of civil society in the everyday forms of water management where the state is perceived to be absent is less explored ( ibid ).

We know that urban societies both shape and are shaped by water both materially and discursively as water embeds social relations ( Gandy, 2004 ; Kaika, 2004 ; Swyngedouw, 2004 ; Loftus, 2012 ). Infrastructures also tend to reflect and reproduce social inequities within the city. Grounded case studies, such as Krishnanagar, offer a different lens to look at the production, politicization, and contestations around urban space. The “urban” provides a more nuanced understanding of urbanization, revealing how urban settings are shaped, politicized, and contested.

4. Conclusion

In the promise of infrastructure, while there has been an augmentation in the city's water infrastructure through large investments, this detailed fieldwork and literature review highlights the need to focus on the efficiency of the infrastructure and people's access to it. Despite the huge infrastructural technological fix as a solution to the city's water crisis, the water supply system of Shimla appears fragmented. The company claims to have eased out the water shortages and, to some extent, they have done so, but only in specific localities. “Geography” continues to be a barrier for certain localities. Volumetric tariffs levied as a part of cost recovery are making piped water a commodity of luxury for the marginalized and low-income groups of people without social safety nets and residing on the periphery of the city and in vertical orogeny in mountain cities. In short, the urbanization of water and the social, economic, and cultural processes associated with its domestication have brought access to and control over nature's water squarely into the realms of class, gender, cultural differentiation, and struggle. On top of that, the commodification of water incorporates the circulation of water with money circulation, and in doing so, makes access to water dependent on positions of social power.

Hence, in the case of Shimla, the “crisis”, as a context, is dialectical. The specific geographical characteristics of marginal settlements — poor location, difficult topography, and obsolete infrastructure — facilitate the continuing exclusion of the urban poor by reinforcing technical arguments and blaming the lack of investment funds as the main reasons for continued water deprivation. At the same time, despite the implementation of hydraulic projects and the financialization of nature, the inherent fissures of inequality within the city that cause differential access to water remain. While infrastructure is essential for a city's growth, people's participation and inclusivity are important for the infrastructure to be effective.

Data availability statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethics statement

Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent from the participants was not required to participate in this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements.

Author contributions

The paper is authored by SS and the research is derived from her ongoing doctoral research.

The author has been awarded the Dr. Ambedkar Doctoral Fellowship from DAIC, New Delhi, for her doctoral research. The fieldwork for this research was conducted from this grant. The author also extends her gratitude to the Frontiers Fee Support Scheme, Frontiers in Water, and TU Delft for their generous support in offering a full fee waiver for featuring this manuscript.

Acknowledgments

I am thankful to my doctoral supervisor Prof. Geetanjoy Sahu for his guidance in developing this paper.

Conflict of interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

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Keywords: water crisis, infrastructure, institutional reforms, financialization, equity

Citation: Sarkar S (2023) Urban water crisis and the promise of infrastructure: a case study of Shimla, India. Front. Water 5:1051336. doi: 10.3389/frwa.2023.1051336

Received: 22 September 2022; Accepted: 06 March 2023; Published: 04 May 2023.

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Copyright © 2023 Sarkar. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Soma Sarkar, somasarkar1990@gmail.com

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Helping India Overcome Its Water Woes

Urban Water supply in Belgaum District, Karnataka

Dipankar Ghoshal/World Bank

What are the challenges that India faces with water management, especially given that we often have too little or too much water?

India is home to 18 percent of the global population but has only 4 percent of the global water resources. Its per capita water availability is around 1,100 cubic meter (m3), well below the internationally recognized threshold of water stress of 1,700 m3 per person, and dangerously close to the threshold for water scarcity of 1,000 m3 per person.

Population growth and economic development put further pressure on water resources. Climate change is expected to increase variability and to bring more extreme weather events.

Paradoxically, India is also the largest net exporter of virtual water (the amount of water required to produce the products that India exports) and has one of the most water-intense economies. Despite looming water scarcity, India is one of the largest water users per unit of gross domestic product (GDP). This suggests that the way in which India manages its scarce water resources accounts for much of its water woes.

Government capacities are lacking as far as improving water management is concerned, while policies and incentives often favor inefficient and unproductive use of water. This is coupled with weak or absent institutions (e.g. for water regulation) and poor data collection and assessment.

What important lessons in water management can India learn from other countries?

We don’t have to go overseas to see good examples of water resources management. The Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority , established under a World Bank project, is putting in place policies, regulations, institutions and incentives that promote more efficient and more productive use of water, e.g., by ensuring the equitable distribution of water among users, and by establishing water tariffs.

Efforts to establish effective authorities are also underway in other states, and Maharashtra is disseminating the lessons learned from its experience.

In India, experience with improving water service delivery has been mixed as, only in rare cases, have efforts been embedded in a favorable policy and regulatory environment. When it comes to improving water service delivery, India can learn from Brazil, Colombia, Mozambique and New South Wales (Australia), among others.

Poor or absent water management policies also exacerbate the effects of climate change on water. On the other hand, sound water management can neutralize many of the water-related impacts of climate change. Vietnam, for instance, has implemented a comprehensive program to manage water-related risks and build resilience. Nigeria has helped prevent erosion, reclaim valuable land and focused on sustainable livelihoods to reduce the vulnerability of people, infrastructure, assets, natural capital, and livelihoods to land degradation. And the Philippines is implementing comprehensive urban drainage works to improve water management.

How is the World Bank supporting this issue?

The World Bank’s Country Partnership Framework for India recognizes the importance of the efficient use of natural resources, including water, in support of the country’s ambitious growth targets. Several World Bank projects support India’s efforts in the water sector:

Through the National Mission for Clean Ganga , the World Bank is helping the Government of India build institutional capacity for the management and clean-up of the Ganga and investing to reduce pollution. The $1-billion operation has financed investments in wastewater and effluent treatment, solid waste management and river front development.

Another World Bank project, the Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project , has improved the safety and performance of 223 dams in the country through rehabilitation, capacity-strengthening and measures to enhance legal and institutional frameworks.

The National Hydrology Project is providing significant support to strengthen capacities, improve data monitoring and analysis, and laying the foundations for benchmarking and performance-based water management.

The Shimla Water Supply and Sewerage Service Delivery Reform Development Policy Loan supports the Government of Himachal Pradesh in its policy and institutional development program for improving water supply and sewerage services that are financially sustainable and managed by an accountable institution responsive to its customers.

The West Bengal Accelerated Development of Minor Irrigation supports farmer-led irrigation by improving service delivery to farming communities and linking these to agricultural markets.

Innovative instruments are being deployed to finance these operations, such as the development policy loan in Shimla, the program-for-results financing in the Swachh Bharat Mission Support Operation and the National Groundwater Management and Improvement Project , and the use of disbursement-linked indicators in Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project-II.

Analytical work at the World Bank focuses, among others, on irrigation and water and sanitation service delivery. The results will be incorporated into future lending operations.

World Bank Water
Helping India Manage its Complex Water Resources
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Unprecedented drought in South India and recent water scarcity

Vimal Mishra 4,1,2 , Kaustubh Thirumalai 3 , Sahil Jain 1 and Saran Aadhar 1

Published 16 April 2021 • © 2021 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd Environmental Research Letters , Volume 16 , Number 5 Citation Vimal Mishra et al 2021 Environ. Res. Lett. 16 054007 DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/abf289

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1 Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar, Gandhinagar, Gujarat 382355, India

2 Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar, Gandhinagar, Gujarat 382355, India

3 Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, 1040 E. 4th Street, Tucson, AZ 85721, United States of America

Author notes

4 Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed.

Vimal Mishra https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3046-6296

Kaustubh Thirumalai https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7875-4182

Saran Aadhar https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1645-4093

Received 25 November 2020
Accepted 26 March 2021
Published 16 April 2021

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Method : Single-anonymous Revisions: 1 Screened for originality? Yes

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Peninsular Indian agriculture and drinking water availability are critically reliant on seasonal winter rainfall occurring from October to December, associated with the northeastern monsoon (NEM). Over 2016–2018, moderate-to-exceptionally low NEM rainfall gave rise to severe drought conditions over much of southern India and exacerbated water scarcity. The magnitude and dynamics of this drought remain unexplored. Here, we quantify the severity of this event and explore causal mechanisms of drought conditions over South India. Our findings indicate that the 3-year cumulative rainfall totals of NEM rainfall during this event faced a deficit of more than 40%—the driest 3-year period in ∼150 years according to the observational record. We demonstrate that drought conditions linked to the NEM across South India are associated with cool phases in the equatorial Indian and Pacific Oceans. Future changes in these teleconnections will add to the challenges of drought prediction.

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1. Introduction

Deficiency of the summer monsoonal precipitation is one of the main drivers of meteorological drought in India, which if prolonged, can transform into more impactful agricultural and hydrological droughts (Mishra and Singh 2010 , Mishra et al 2010 , Mo 2011 ). Agricultural and hydrological droughts can pose lasting impacts on food production and water availability, respectively (Van Loon 2015 , Samaniego et al 2018 , Mishra 2020 ). India experiences two major monsoon seasons—the Indian summer monsoon (ISM), also known as the southwestern monsoon and the lesser-studied northeastern monsoon (NEM) or the winter monsoon (Gadgil and Gadgil 2006 , Rajeevan et al 2012 ). The ISM is the major source of precipitation for much of India over the period of June to September (hereafter JJAS) and has been the focus of extensive study (Gadgil and Gadgil 2006 , Singh et al 2019 ). On the other hand, the NEM is more important in selected parts of India and is associated with rainfall during the period between October and December (hereafter OND) (Kripalani and Kumar 2004 , Zubair and Ropelewski 2006 , Yadav 2012 ). In particular, the NEM significantly impacts peninsular India, where certain parts of South India receive a majority of their annual rainfall totals during the OND season (Rajeevan et al 2012 ). Despite lesser precipitation totals compared to the ISM, the NEM is critically important for water availability, agriculture, and the livelihood of millions of people residing in peninsular India.

Previously, studies have indicated that both monsoon seasons have experienced profound changes over the past few decades (Mishra et al 2012 , Rajeevan et al 2012 , Roxy et al 2015 , Singh et al 2019 ). For instance, seasonal mean precipitation associated with the ISM has shown a declining trend leading to more frequent monsoon-season deficits (Mishra et al 2012 , Christensen et al 2013 , Roxy et al 2015 ). Similarly, the increase in precipitation associated with the NEM over the last few decades has been attributed to the warming of the Indian Ocean (Mishra et al 2012 , Roxy et al 2015 ). Furthermore, the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) phenomena are well-known drivers of deficits in monsoon rainfall (Ashok et al 2001 , Kumar et al 2007 ) and are also expected to undergo changes with ongoing increases in greenhouse gases (Cai et al 2018 , Timmermann et al 2018 ). Addressing the mechanisms of why and how these monsoon seasons are shifting under a warming world is critical for improving predictions of drought conditions in India.

Whereas previous studies have shown strong linkages between summer monsoon droughts in India and sea surface temperature (SST) variability in the equatorial Indian and Pacific Oceans (Kripalani and Kulkarni 1997 , Barlow et al 2002 , Niranjan Kumar et al 2013 , Roxy et al 2015 ), few studies have focused on the causes of rainfall deficits associated with the NEM (Dimri et al 2016 ). From 2016 to 2018, South India witnessed severe drought conditions, which significantly impacted agriculture and water availability in the region ('Chennai water crisis: City's reservoirs run dry,' BBC 2019 ). The densely populated states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu continuously declared drought in 2016, 2017, and 2018 related to the deficits in NEM precipitation. The drought caused water crises in both urban and rural areas (Aguilera 2019 ). Despite the profound impacts of the 2016–18 drought in South India, its magnitude, drivers, and mechanisms remain unexplored. In this study, we focus on the 2016–2018 drought, quantify its severity, and investigate its causes and relationships with regional and global ocean–atmosphere variability. We place this extreme event in the context of the previous droughts and conclude that its severity was unprecedented over the observational record.

2. Data and methods

The NEM (October–December) is a dominant source of rainfall in South India (Rajeevan et al 2012 ). South India (Latitude: 8°N–15°N; Longitude: 74°E–81°E)) comprises of five Indian states and three union territories. The region encompasses nearly 19% of India's area and harbors around 250 million people, which is one-fifth of the total population of India (Census of India 2011 ). South India is an agriculturally rich part of the country, with over 60% of its rural population engaged in agriculture (Aulong et al 2012 ). The population depends largely on the NEM for agricultural production. We used gridded daily precipitation data available at 0.5° spatial resolution for the period of 1870–2018 (Mishra et al 2019 ). Mishra et al ( 2019 ) used station observations from India Meteorology Department (IMD) to develop the gridded precipitation for the pre-1900 (1870–1900) period, which was merged with the gridded data available for the post-1900 period (1901–2018; (Pai et al 2014 )) from IMD. More details on the gridded precipitation data and evaluation of its quality can be obtained from Mishra et al ( 2019 ). The gridded data capture orographic precipitation along the Western Ghats, Northeast, and the foothills of Himalaya (Pai et al 2014 , Mishra et al 2019 ).

Total water storage (TWS) data were obtained from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE follow on (GRACE-FO) missions. TWS is available for the period April 2002 to June 2017 from the GRACE satellites. The GRACE-FO mission provides the data from June 2018 to present. Therefore, the TWS data for July 2017 to May 2018 is not available. We obtained TWS from GRACE and GRACE-FO from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL: https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/TELLUS_GRAC-GRFO_MASCON_CRI_GRID_RL06_V2 ) for the 2002–2019 period. The GRACE mascon product (RL06 V2) contains gridded monthly global water storage anomalies relative to mean, which is available at 0.5° spatial resolution (Wiese et al 2016 ). To remove the seasonal cycle from TWS, monthly mean TWS was removed from each month, and scale factors were applied.

To assess the influence of SSTs on the 2016–18 drought, we used monthly data from the HadSST dataset (Hadley Centre) for the period 1870–2018 at 2.0° spatial resolution (Rayner et al 2003 ). We obtained surface air temperatures (SATs) from Berkley Earth (Rohde et al 2013 ) to analyze anomalous temperature conditions during NEM droughts. Since SST data has a strong warming trend, we used Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD; (Wu and Huang 2009 )) to remove the secular trend (Wu et al 2011 ) from SST time series as in Mishra ( 2020 ). The EEMD method has an advantage over conventional detrending as it removes both linear and non-linear trends (Mishra 2020 ). We estimated SST and precipitation anomalies for the NEM (October–December) to diagnose the linkage between precipitation and SST. To examine the coupled variability of precipitation and SST, we use maximum covariance analysis (MCA; (Bretherton et al 1992 )). In addition, we used empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis to obtain the dominant modes of variability in rainfall during the NEM when SST was not used. The MCA, performed on two fields (here precipitation and SST) together, identifies the leading modes of variability in which the variations of the two fields are strongly coupled (Mishra et al 2012 ). Sea level pressure (SLP) and wind fields (horizontal, u and meridional, v) were obtained from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis version 5 (ERA-5; (Hersbach and Dee 2016 )) for the period 1979–2018 to understand the mechanism of the northeast monsoon. Further, SLP and wind fields were regridded to 2° to make them consistent with SST.

Towards predictability of NEM rainfall, we employed univariate and multivariate techniques. We use the lagged relationship between SST anomalies and rainfall over South Asia during the NEM as a predictor of OND rainfall. We used SST anomalies from the Nino 3.4 region and over the northern Indian Ocean (NIO; 6°–24°N, 40°–100°E) as a predictor of monthly NEM precipitation using the following three equations:

3.1. Unprecedented recent failure of northeast monsoon rainfall

South India receives more than 40% of its total annual precipitation during the NEM season (figure S1 (available online at stacks.iop.org/ERL/16/054007/mmedia )), and thus deficits in NEM rainfall pose significant water-related challenges in the region. To investigate the long-term observational history of NEM rainfall in the region, we used rainfall observations from the IMD (Pai et al 2014 ), spanning from 1870 to 2018. Domain-averaged precipitation anomalies associated with the NEM indicate that most of South India experienced exceptional (>40%) precipitation deficits during 1874–1876 and 2016–2018 (figure 1 ). We calculated precipitation anomalies during the NEM for one, two, and three consecutive year durations over the 1870–2018 period to estimate abnormal deficit-years in the long-term record (figures 1 , 2 and S4, table 1 ). There are five pronounced periods of drought (>29% deficits) in the overall record including the recent drought of 2016–2018, the droughts during 2001–03, 1949–1951, 2002–04, and the well-known Great Drought of 1876–78 (Cook et al 2010 , Singh et al 2018 ), which was associated with the Great Madras Famine (Blanford 1884 , Mishra et al 2019 ). Among these events, our analysis indicates that the Great Drought and the recent event of 2016–18 are the most severe (figure 1 ). During 2016–18, South India experienced the worst NEM drought over the last 150 years with a precipitation deficit of 45%, whereas the 1874–76 drought was the second-worst, with a deficit of 37% (table 1 ). We note that the 1-year and 2-year duration NEM deficits for 1876 (69%) and 1876–77 (54%) were comparable to the deficits during 2016 (63%) and the 2016–17 (52%) durations (table 1 , figures S2–S4). However, the consecutive 3-year NEM deficit for 2016–18 was more significant than the Great Drought. We find that annual rainfall anomalies additionally indicate drought conditions in 2016, 2017, and 2018 (figure S5). Moreover, 2 and 3-year annual rainfall anomalies for 2016–17 and 2016–18 also show a major rainfall deficit in South India (figure S5). Thus, we conclude that the 2016–18 drought caused by the failure of the NEM also contained severe annual rainfall deficits.

Figure 1. Three-year cumulative precipitation anomalies (mm) during the Northeast monsoon (NEM, October–December). (a), (b) The spatial pattern of 3 year cumulative precipitation anomalies (mm) during 1874–1876 and 2016–2018 periods, respectively, in southern India (denoted by the green box). (c) Area-averaged (over the green box) 3 year moving-mean precipitation anomalies (%) for the period 1870–2016. Red dots in (c) demarcate the two periods of interest, and show that the 2016–18 was the 1st and 1874–76 was the 2nd worst drought in last 150 years. Long-term precipitation data is based on station observations from the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD).

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Figure 2. Total water storage (TWS) anomalies from the GRACE and GRACE–FO during 2002–2019. (a)–(c) TWS anomalies (cm) during December 2016, June 2017, and June 2019. (d) 12-month moving-sum precipitation anomalies (cm, in blue) and monthly TWS anomalies (cm, in red) aggregated over South India (south of 15°N). Note that the July 2017 to May 2018 period contains missing data as the GRACE-FO dataset is only available from June 2018 onwards. The Pearson correlation coefficient between TWS anomalies and precipitation anomalies is 0.63.

Table 1. Top five driest years for one, two, and three-year cumulative northeast monsoon (OND).

		2 year cumulative		3 year cumulative
Drought year	Precipitation anomaly (%)	Drought year	Precipitation anomaly (%)	Drought year	Precipitation anomaly (%)
1876	−68.82	1875–76	−54.37	2016–18	−45.40
2016	−62.84	2016–17	−51.73	1874–76	−37.52
1938	−59.71	1988–89	−41.29	2001–03	−29.56
1988	−53.74	2002–03	−39.50	1949–51	−29.55
1974	−49.31	1908–09	−37.91	2002–04	−29.55

Over individual NEM seasons, the two most extreme dry events occurred in 1876 and 2016 with precipitation deficits of 69% and 63%, respectively (table 1 ). The rainfall deficit in 2016 was more severe in comparison to the lack of precipitation in 2017 and 2018 (figure S2). The failure of the NEM in 2016 as well as relatively low rainfall totals over the consecutive years were the main causes behind the 2016–18 drought in South India (table 1 ). Overall, the 3-year NEM drought of 2016–2018 was more severe than the Great Drought of 1874–1876. Infamously, the 1876 drought resulted in famine and the deaths of millions of people (Mishra et al 2019 , Mishra 2020 ). The more recent 2016–18 NEM drought considerably influenced water availability in the region and caused a water crisis across South India ('Chennai water crisis: City's reservoirs run dry,' BBC 2019 ).

Furthermore, the 2016–2018 NEM drought in South India was unprecedented in the last 150 years and had severe implications for water availability. TWS from the GRACE and GRACE–FO satellites showed a considerable loss in South India due to the recent (2016–2018) drought (figure 2 ). Twelve months moving precipitation anomalies pinpoint the onset of drought in South India during October 2016 and show that it continued till October 2018 (figure 2 ). Although there was a weak recovery from drought conditions for two months in November and December 2018, these rainfall totals were not enough to negate the influence of the overall event (2016–2018), which continued till August 2019 (figure 2 ), and was only alleviated by stronger NEM rains later that year. We also note that 12-month precipitation anomalies and TWS anomalies are well-correlated ( r = 0.63), where local observations indicate that rainfall is the major contributor of TWS (Asoka et al 2017 ). Thus, we attribute the loss in regional TWS to the long-term 3-year drought, which was precipitated by the lack of NEM rainfall.

Total water loss in South India estimated from the GRACE satellite was 79 km 3 in December 2016 (figure 2 (a)). Similarly, GRACE–FO data reveal that total water loss in June 2017 and 2019 was 46.5 and 41.7 km 3 , respectively (figures 2 (b) and (c)). Recovery in TWS occurred in late 2019 due to improved NEM rainfall over the region. The 2016–2018 drought caused a significant loss in TWS, which also likely resulted in a significant depletion in groundwater across South India. We caveat that we did not estimate the overall loss in groundwater due to uncertainty in soil moisture (Long et al 2013 , Castle et al 2014 )—an estimate outside the scope of this work—however we suspect that the groundwater depletion was driven by the drought in addition to increased groundwater extraction (Thomas et al 2017 ) during the drought (Asoka et al 2017 ). Despite the uncertainty in the estimation of total water loss from GRACE satellites (Long et al 2013 ), the combined influence of depletion in surface-water and groundwater during this event led to unprecedented water scarcity in South India (Aguilera 2019 , 'Chennai water crisis: City's reservoirs run dry,' BBC 2019 ).

3.2. Mechanism of deficit during the Northeast monsoon

We examined circulation patterns to understand mechanisms behind variability in NEM rainfall. To do so, we first examined climatological surface temperatures (SAT and SST), sea-level pressure (SLP), and wind fields at 850 hPa during the OND season (figure 3 ). SLP and wind fields were taken from the ERA-5 reanalysis dataset (Hersbach and Dee 2016 ) whereas SSTs and SATs were taken from HadSST (Rayner et al 2003 ) and Berkley Earth (Rohde et al 2013 ), respectively. Climatologically during boreal fall, cooling SATs over the northwestern Pacific and northern latitudes alongside comparatively warmer mean-annual SSTs over the northern Indian Oceans set up easterly wind flow across the Bay of Bengal (figures 3 (a) and (b)). In particular, warm SSTs in the western Indian Ocean can elicit easterlies across the Indian Ocean and favor moisture transport from the Bay of Bengal into peninsular India. These moisture-bearing winds, which become northeasterly before landfall, bring NEM rainfall to South India (Rajeevan et al 2012 ). Strong winds from across the South China Sea, driven by the underlying SAT and SLP patterns ultimately facilitate NEM rainfall. Thus, El-Niño-like conditions in the Pacific with cooler SSTs in the northern portion of the western tropical Pacific Ocean, juxtaposed with cooler SSTs in the eastern Indian Ocean and warmer SSTs in the west (i.e. resembling positive IOD-like conditions), all serve to enhance NEM rainfall over South India. It is to be expected that circulation patterns which weaken these processes ought to yield diminished NEM rainfall.

Figure 3. Atmospheric and oceanic patterns during the 2016–18 drought in South India. (a), (b) Climatological mean surface-air temperature (SAT, °C) and sea-surface temperature (SST, °C), mean sea-level pressure (SLP, Pa) and wind at 850 hPa (in (b)) during the October–December (OND) season. (c), (d) SST, SLP, and wind anomalies associated with the NEM during the OND season of 2016, (e), (f) 2017, and (g), (h) 2018. Mean SLP and wind fields were obtained from ERA-5 whereas SST was taken from HadSST and SAT from BEST.

To better understand the causes of rainfall deficits, we investigated anomalous patterns during the NEM season for 2016, 2017, and 2018 (figure 3 ). In 2016 and 2017, as expected, cool SST anomalies prevailed in the tropical Indo-Pacific and were associated with La Niña conditions in the central Pacific along with negative IOD-like conditions in the Indian Ocean (figures 3 (c)–(f)). Both years witnessed anomalously cooler SSTs in the eastern tropical Indian Ocean and western tropical Pacific, and warmer SSTs in the western Indian Ocean and central Pacific. These SST patterns, alongside SLP and adjacent continental SAT patterns, gave rise to anomalous westerlies in the equatorial Indian Ocean, which weakened moisture transport from the Bay of Bengal during the NEM season of both events (figures 3 (c)–(f)). Moreover, both years were associated with anomalously low SLP and cooler surface temperatures across the Indian sub-continent and Bay of Bengal, sustaining an anomalous anticyclonic pattern which inhibited moisture transport into South India (figures 3 (c)–(f)). In 2018, the rainfall deficit conditions were slightly alleviated due to favorable warm conditions in the western tropical Indian Ocean and cooling in the East (development of a positive IOD event) alongside the development of El-Niño-conditions in the Pacific. However, it should be noted that western Indian Ocean warming was not particularly pronounced that year and alongside cooler temperature anomalies in the northern Indian Ocean, resulted in an overall deficit in NEM rainfall that year.

Next, we analyzed surface temperature and precipitation anomalies for the five most severe dry events in South India over the 1870–2018 period during the NEM season (figure 4 ). The major droughts in South India occurred in 1876, 2016, 1938, 1988, and 1974 (in order of severity). Out of these five droughts, four occurred during La Niña conditions. In contrast, the well-studied drought of 1876 during the NEM was linked with El Niño (figure 4 )—a finding reported previously (Cook et al 2010 , Singh et al 2018 , Mishra et al 2019 ). However, it should be noted that cool SST conditions prevailed in the Pacific Ocean over the 1870–1876 period and the transition from the cool to warm phase occurred during the NEM season of 1876 (Singh et al 2018 ). Additionally, the western Indian Ocean was not anomalously warm as it typically is during El Niño years (figure 4 (a)). Nevertheless, temperature and SLP anomaly composites for the most severe dry and wet NEM years reveal a general propensity for cooler SSTs in the Indo–Pacific (i.e. La Niña conditions) to be associated with precipitation deficits over South India (figures S6 and S7). On the other hand, warming in the central Pacific and Indian Oceans is associated with a stronger NEM and surplus precipitation (figure S7). Overall, OND cooling in the Indian and central Pacific oceans results in lower SLP and weaker wind fields, which ultimately drive rainfall deficits in South India.

Figure 4. Sea surface temperature (SST)/surface air temperature (SAT) and precipitation (P) anomalies for the top five droughts that occurred in South India during the northeast monsoon for 1870–2018 period. SST and SAT datasets were obtained from Hadley Center and Berkley Earth, respectively. SAT data over few regions are not available for 1876.

3.3. SST variability during Northeast Monsoon

To clarify the relationship between SST and precipitation anomalies associated with the NEM, we performed MCA, which helps delineate the leading patterns responsible for co-variability between South Indian NEM rainfall and tropical SSTs. The first leading mode exhibits typical ENSO-like patterns of covariance and explains 77.2% of total variance (figure 5 (a)). As demonstrated above with patterns of the major droughts (figure 4 ), MCA also indicates that negative SST anomalies over the central Pacific (i.e. La Niña) and Indian Oceans (negative IOD) result in below normal NEM precipitation over South India (figure 5 (b)). The second leading mode of MCA exhibits a relatively weaker relationship between precipitation and SST anomalies during the NEM (figure 5 ). The second mode fingerprints the role of SST warming in the Indian Ocean as a driver of increased NEM precipitation in South India (Roxy et al 2015 ). We also note that there appears to be a slight dichotomy between northern and southern South India, where NEM precipitation in the latter region is more strongly linked with ENSO (figure 5 ). On the other hand, precipitation over the northern parts of South India is more strongly associated with the second leading mode (figure 5 ). This finding might help explain some of the ambiguity surrounding the mechanisms of the impact of the 1876–78 Great Drought on South Indian rainfall. Overall, the leading mode of SST and precipitation variability during the NEM shows that cold SST anomalies in the Indo-Pacific facilitate drought conditions over South India.

Figure 5. Links between South Indian precipitation and sea surface temperature (SST) during the Northeastern Monsoon season. (a), (b) Correlation patterns obtained from the first leading mode of maximum covariance analysis (MCA) performed between precipitation across South India (8°N–15°N and 74°E–81°E; see Green Box in figure 1 ) and SST during the October–November–December (OND) season over 1870–2018. (c), (d) Same as in the above panels but for the second leading mode of MCA. Rainfall was obtained from the IMD dataset whereas SST was retrieved from HadSST.

We performed EOF analysis to identify the dominant patterns of NEM rainfall in South India (figure 6 ). The first leading mode from the EOF analysis picks out rainfall variability across the entirety of South India and explains 50% of total variance (figure 6 (a)). The second leading mode reveals a bipolar rainfall pattern across the northern and southern parts of South India and explains 11% of the total variance (figure 6 ). We note that the characteristics of rainfall variability derived from the first and second modes of EOF analysis are consistent with the leading modes obtained from the MCA (figure 5 ). Taken together, our findings inferred from both EOFs and MCA show that the first leading mode affects rainfall across South India, whereas the second leading mode delineates opposing rainfall trends in the North versus the southern parts of South India (figure 6 ).

Figure 6. The leading modes obtained from the empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis of rainfall during the NEM for the 1870–2018 period. (a) The first leading EOF mode of NEM, which explains 50.6% of the total variance in NEM rainfall in South India. (b) Lagged correlation between the first leading principle component (PC 1) and 3-month mean SST anomalies over different regions (Nino 3.4 (5°S–5°N, 120–170°W), North Indian Ocean (NIO; 6°–24°N, 40–100°E), North Pacific Ocean (NPO; 30°N–50°N, 120°E–175°W), North Atlantic Ocean (NAO; 6°–24°N, 10–60°W), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and Southern Oscillation Index (SOI)). (c) and (d) same as (a) and (b) but for the second leading EOF mode and the corresponding PC 2. Year − 1, Year + 0, and Year + 1 represent the previous, current, and next year of the NEM season, respectively.

We calculated principal components (PCs) associated with the leading modes of variability derived from the EOF analysis (PC1 and PC2) to examine the predictability of NEM rainfall using SST anomalies (figure S8). We also computed the correlation between PC1 and SST anomalies in addition to oceanic indices (table S1) at different time lags (tables S2 and S3). We find that the first principal component (PC1) is strongly correlated ( r = 0.23, P -value < 0.05) to SSTs from April–June (AMJ) in the Nino 3.4 region (figure 6 ). However, PC2 is more appropriately delineated by ( r = 0.33, P -value < 0.05) SST anomalies from OND in Nino 3.4 and in the NIO (figure 6 ). We use this lagged relationship between oceanic indices and SST anomalies with PCs to establish a predictive model for NEM rainfall (as in Zhou et al 2019 ). Focusing on the first mode of variance, we used climatological Nino 3.4 SSTs from AMJ to predict rainfall in South India during OND (figure S9). We find that the OND rainfall is more skillfully predicted using AMJ Nino 3.4 anomalies in comparison to SST anomalies over OND NIO (figure S9). We also note that there is no significant increase in prediction skill when both AMJ Nino 3.4 and OND SST anomalies were used as opposed to Nino 3.4 SST anomalies alone (figure S9) due to high year-to-year variability between Nino 3.4 and NIO (figure S10). Overall, our analysis shows that SST anomalies at Nino 3.4 and over NIO can be used to predict rainfall during the NEM over South India with limited prediction skill.

4. Summary and conclusions

South India faced a severe water crisis during 2016–2018. In June 2019, a 'day zero' was declared in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, due to groundwater depletion and drying of four major reservoirs that supply water (Murphy and Mezzofiore 2019 ), largely induced by this event. We have shown that this extreme deficit was brought about by one of the worst droughts in the last 150 years. The 2016–2018 drought was worse than the 1874–1876 Great Drought, which was linked to the Great Madras famine and the deaths of several million in South India (Mishra et al 2019 ). The severity of the 2016–18 event during the NEM season peaked in 2016—the second singular driest year on record (after 1876). Dynamically, our study implicates negative IOD and La Niña conditions as facilitators for NEM rainfall deficits, where landward moisture transport from the Bay of Bengal into peninsular India is inhibited. The prevalence of La Niña throughout 2016 and 2017 (DiNezio et al 2017 ) further worsened the drought that started in 2016. Such rainfall deficits over consecutive years can result in multi-year drought, which have substantial and adverse impacts on surface and groundwater storage, and profoundly affect water availability and agriculture in the densely populated South Indian region. Although the intensity and timing of this recent event raise the possibility of anthropogenic forcing influencing NEM droughts, future work focusing on detection and attribution is required to separate the influence of natural variability (Thirumalai et al 2017 , Williams et al 2020 , Winter et al 2020 ). Moreover, potential changes in future patterns of SST variability in the Indian Ocean and tropical Pacific will add substantial uncertainty to projections and prediction of NEM rainfall.

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the India Meteorological Department for providing the precipitation data. The last author appreciates financial assistance from the Indian Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). The study is partially funded by the Ministry of Earth Sciences and Ministry of Water Resources forum projects. KT was supported by NSF Grant No. OCE-1903482 and acknowledges the University of Arizona and the Department of Geosciences for support.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request from the authors.

Supplementary data

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Introduction

When Cape Town in South Africa faced a severe water crisis in 2018, it was predicted that soon many metropolitan cities across the globe would face the same fate. Unfortunately, this prediction came true for India as its third most populous city of Bengaluru has been facing the worst possible potable water crisis in its history since February 2024. [1] In fact it is not just Bengaluru, but the entire state of Karnataka which has been facing an acute water crisis. [2] The water crisis has impacted the people of the city, schools, hospitals, hotels, restaurants, fire department, offices, housing societies which have been affected by severe shortage of water due to demand and supply gap. [3] It has been estimated that the city needed 2,600 million litres of water per day (MLD) of which 1,450 MLD comes from the Cauvery River and 650 MLD from groundwater, hinting towards a shortage of 500 MLD of water. [4] It is important to note that the Cauvery River and groundwater are the two main sources of water for the city. [5] Additionally, out of the 14,000 government borewells in the city 6,900 have dried up. [6] The Karnataka water crisis has affected more than 7000 villages, 1100 wards, and 220 talukas thus far with several districts facing acute shortage of drinking water. [7] Schools were temporarily shut down due to shortage of water. [8] Many borewells on school grounds ran dry making it difficult to provide adequate water for students and staff during school hours. [9] Even the hospitals were grappling with acute scarcity of water leading to significant healthcare obstacles. [10] Apartment buildings which mostly rely on borewells for their daily water consumption, resorted to private water tanks for a hefty amount which were often inaccessible due to high demand. Farmers faced extreme hardship due to shortage of water for irrigation purposes. [11] As Bengaluru is a tech hub, many tech professionals called for a shift towards work from home. [12] These consequences transpired at the peak of the crisis during the month of February, March, and April. Although the extent of the crisis has toned down, it has not been completely averted. Certain short-term steps have been taken by the government and the people of the city to deal with the crisis. Additionally, the Chief Minister of Karnataka Mr. Siddaramaiah did mention about certain long-term actions to prevent future water shortages. [13] It is important to note that long-term strategies are key to avoid water crisis of such large scale.

The water crisis of Bengaluru can be considered to be an outcome of a combination of factors which include:

Unplanned urbanization [14]
Neglect of city’s water bodies [15]
Absence of conservation of water bodies [16]
Rainfall deficit in 2023 [17]
Groundwater depletion [18]

In order to bring some relief from the ongoing water crisis, some emergency measures were taken by the city and state authorities as well as the citizens of Bengaluru. Bengaluru’s resident welfare association (RWA) across the city implemented strict measures to conserve water such as initiating water rationing and imposing bans on non-essential water usage activities like vehicle washing and swimming pool maintenance. [19] Some apartment complexes also resorted to disposable cutlery and wet wipes to minimize water consumption. [20] The Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) as a significant step announced to reduce water supply by 20 percent to major consumers of water in Bengaluru from March 15 onwards which included companies, hospitals, railways, and airports. [21] Additionally, the BWSSB also prohibited the use of potable water for activities such as car washing and watering plants. [22] In case if any individual were found using drinking water for non-essential purposes they could face a hefty fine of Rs 5,000. [23] The authorities also fixed rates for water tankers supplying water to the residential areas as they were accused of charging hefty amount to the citizens. [24] The Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) also made it mandatory for the people to take prior approval to drill borewells. [25] Karnataka’s Chief Minister, Mr. Siddaramaiah on March 18 instructed the officials to increase the groundwater level by filling major lakes in Bengaluru with treated water. [26] He identified 14 major lakes which have dried up and needs to be refilled. [27] Mr. Siddaramaiah mentioned about the Cauvery Five project which is expected to begin in June this year which will help to resolve the issue of water crisis in Bengaluru. [28] He also emphasized the need for enhanced control rooms and swift response to water supply complaints. [29] He also announced the allocation of adequate funds for drinking water and planned to form an expert committee to prevent future water shortages. [30] This is the one and only long-term strategy which was announced by the honourable Chief Minister of Karnataka to prevent future water crisis situation. Educational institutions such as schools and colleges continued to operate in offline mode. [31] They are also opting for water conservation methods on their campuses. [32] Re-use of water has become the norm in the city these days. Measures such as not washing cars and balconies, bathing with half a bucket of water, mopping the floor and flushing the toilets from used water have been actively practiced by the citizens of the city. [33] The city’s tech professionals have also moved back although temporarily due to water shortage. [34]

Many a times when these kind of crisis occur, short-term actions are put in place, as the main focus is to avert the crisis. Rarely, the focus is on long-term solutions. Even in case of Bengaluru, the main focus was on short-term responses, however, it is interesting to note that the Karnataka Chief Minister did hint towards a long-term solution which is the key to solve any kind of environmental disasters that are taking place. When Cape Town faced the same fate in 2018, they did put into place immediate measures which helped to avert the crisis, at the same time they focused a lot on long-term solutions. For instance, the authorities of Cape Town paid attention to increasing and diversifying its water supply resources and also focussed a lot on inculcating water conservation practices amongst its citizens. In case of Bengaluru, some of the long-term and even permanent solutions given by the experts include:

Rooftop rainwater harvesting [35]
Rejuvenation of lakes [36]
Wastewater treatment [37]

In fact, one of the most effective methods which can be inculcated into every city’s long-term strategy across the world to deal with water crisis is the “Effective Communication Strategy”. Effective Communication strategy is a strategy by the government with the people in which the authorities keep it simple by telling the people how much water they really have. [38] Introduced as a short-term measure during the Cape Town water crisis of 2018, this strategy aimed to encourage water conserving behaviours amongst its citizens. [39] They introduced a simple information public website called Think Water which provided information on the water levels in the dams of the city and about the water-saving techniques. [40] Additionally, the city flashed the dam levels on electronic billboards across highways and within the city to let people know where the city stood in terms of water. [41] These short-term solutions can be turned into long-term and permanent solutions in order to deal with a water crisis situation in the cities across the globe.

According to Suparna Katyayani and Anamika Baruah, in their article titled “Water Policy at science-policy interface- challenges and opportunities for India” , persistent water scarcity is a serious concern in emerging economies. [42] They further argue that water scarcity in emerging economies does not only result from lack of physical water supply but also poor water quality, inefficiency of various uses and poor institutional capacity to manage water demands. [43] These arguments resonate very well with what is happening in Bengaluru. According to T V Ramachandra, Coordinator, Energy and Wetlands Research Group, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) 40 percent of Bengaluru’s water requirements come from groundwater resources and 60 percent come from the Cauvery river. [44] He further discloses that the Cauvery basin, because of deforestation over a period of time and changes in climate, has lost the ability to retain water. [45] In the last five decades, the Cauvery basin has lost 45 percent of forest cover, and today there is only 18 per cent of forest cover in the region. [46] Additionally, the landscape in Bengaluru has changed drastically over the years. [47] It is estimated that in the 1800s, Bengaluru had 1,452 water bodies and 80 percent green cover while at present there are about 193 water bodies and less than 4 percent of green cover. [48] Moreover, According to the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), there has been a 1,055 percent increase in paved surface (buildings, etc), with a substantial reduction in porous surfaces. [49] It is estimated that the city up until 1961 had 262 lakes, however, now there are only 81 lakes left in the city. [50] Out of the 81 lakes, only 33 are living just because they are located in zones where land cannot be reclaimed for any activities. [51]

Hence, an important lesson that can be drawn from the above facts and arguments is that the Bengaluru water crisis is a clear case of years of neglect of its water bodies and its environment. It has become extremely important to manage the available water well as the world is facing what can be described as a “climate emergency”. Climate change is expected to impact water security across the globe and especially affect the developing economies. The future requires better planning. Although there are institutions put in place to deal with such situations, they have clearly failed in managing water. At the same time, the fact that people themselves have forgotten to respect the environment and basic resources such as that of water has taken a toll on them. Environmental pollution is a huge concern and people have got a lot to do with it. Hence it is important that people become environmentally responsible. [52]

What Bengaluru has faced could become a norm for several cities across the country. It needs to be kept in mind that climate change is only going to make these conditions worse as rainfall patterns are changing and extreme events such as that of droughts are becoming much more frequent and severe. Additionally, it is being argued that many cities across the country have reached its ecological limits. [53] Hence any kind of additional stress will lead to more such events occurring in future. The biggest issue flagged by the experts as far as India is concerned, is its inadequate water management and governance problem. [54] The Bengaluru water crisis can be considered to be a classic example of this case. If this taken care of, India is unlikely to face this kind of situation in future. An inclusive approach is required in which the citizens must take part actively to conserve water and take responsibility to not waste water. As T V Ramachandran has stated that it is extremely important to make everyone environmentally responsible. [55] If people become environmentally sensible, they can manage water bodies, park in the neighbourhood and will refrain from polluting water bodies etc. [56] Lastly, what comes out from these discussions is that communication is key to dealing with this kind of water stress situation. All these factors can be accumulated as a part of long-term strategy for India’s urban water crisis.

[1] M Raghuram 2024, “Bengaluru water crisis: Is the southern metropolis heading towards Day Zero?”, Down To Earth , [Online] Available at: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/water/bengaluru-water-crisis-is-the-southern-metropolis-heading-towards-day-zero--94916 [2] Sushim Mukul 2024, “How Karnataka water crisis has become a fiery interstate issue”, INDIA TODAY , [Online] Available at: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/south/story/bengaluru-water-crisis-congress-groundwater-cauvery-river-bjp-dmk-aiadmk-karnatata-tamil-nadu-supply-2514186-2024-03-13 [3] Sanath Prasad and Kiran Parashar 2024, “From schools to fire department, how Bengaluru’s water shortage is driving the city to a Cape Town-like situation”, The Indian EXPRESS , [Online] Available at: https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/bangalore/schools-fire-department-bengaluru-water-crisis-cape-town-like-situation-9206395/ [4] THE HINDU BUREAU 2024, ‘Bengaluru facing shortage of 500 MLD water daily, admits Chief Minister Siddaramaiah”, THE HINDU , [Online] Available at: https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/bengaluru-facing-shortage-of-500-mld-water-daily-admits-chief-minister-siddaramaiah/article67964439.ece [5] Pratiba Raman and Saikat Kumar Bose, 'Don't Work-From-Home, Go Home': Water Crisis Drives Bengaluru to The Edge’, NDTV , [Online] Available at: https://www.ndtv.com/bangalore-news/bengaluru-water-crisis-bengaluru-residents-hospitals-cry-for-help-as-water-reserves-dwindle-5229006 [6] No 4. [7] THE HINDU BUREAU 2024, ‘Water Woes- A searing crisis in Karnataka and its IT capital, Bengaluru’, THE HINDU , [Online] Available at: https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/water-woes-a-searing-crisis-in-karnataka-and-its-it-capital-bengaluru/article67938701.ece [8] Sushim Mukul 2024, ‘How Karnataka water crisis has become a fiery interstate issue’, INDIA TODAY , [ONLINE} Available at: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/south/story/bengaluru-water-crisis-congress-groundwater-cauvery-river-bjp-dmk-aiadmk-karnatata-tamil-nadu-supply-2514186-2024-03-13 [9] Coovercolly Indresh 2024, ‘Bengaluru water crisis: BWSSB announces 20% water cut to bulk consumers; identifies areas bearing the brunt’, Down To Earth , [Online] available at: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/water/bengaluru-water-crisis-bwssb-announces-20-water-cut-to-bulk-consumers-identifies-areas-bearing-the-brunt-94973 [10] Ibid. [11] K. C Deepika and K.V Aditya Bharadwaj 2024, ‘Why is Bengaluru staring at a severe water shortage’, THE HINDU , [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eK76yNAM8A [12] Coovercolly Indresh 2024, ‘Bengaluru water crisis: Emergency forces metropolis residents to seek alternatives’, Down To Earth, [Online] Available at: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/water/bengaluru-water-crisis-emergency-forces-metropolis-residents-to-seek-alternatives-94944 [13] Business Today Desk 2024, ‘Bengaluru facing shortage of 500 million litres water shortage per day’, Business Today , [Online] Available at: https://www.businesstoday.in/india/story/bengaluru-facing-shortage-of-500-million-litres-water-shortage-per-day-says-karnataka-cm-421978-2024-03-19 [14] No 1. [15] M Raghuram 2024, ‘Water every other day: Bengaluru is drying up & destruction of lakes is the reason’, Down To Earth , [Online] Available at: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/water/water-every-other-day-bengaluru-is-drying-up-destruction-of-lakes-is-the-reason-94672 [16] Ibid. [17] Shashank Palur and Rashmi Kulranjan 2024, ‘A possible solution for Bengaluru’s water crisis: Data’, THE HINDU , [Online] Available at: https://www.thehindu.com/data/a-possible-solution-for-bengalurus-water-crisis-data/article67939268.ece [18] Sneha Mahale 2024, ‘6 factors that have contributed to Bengaluru’s water crisis’, money control’, [Online] Available at: https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/environment/6-factors-that-have-contributed-to-bengalurus-water-crisis-12485461.html [19] No 1. [20] Ibid. [21] No 9. [22] Ibid. [23] Ibid [24] No.5 [25] No.8 [26] MONEYCONTROL NEWS 2024, ‘Bengaluru water crisis: Karnataka CM directs filling of 14 major lakes with treated water’, money control, [Online] Available at:https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/technology/bengaluru-water-crisis-karnataka-cm-directs-filling-of-14-major-lakes-with-treated-water-12482411.html [27] Ibid. [28] No. 13 [29] Ibid. [30] Ibid. [31] https://www.livemint.com/news/bengaluru-water-crisis-from-using-milk-tankers-fixing-rates-filling-lakes-to-fines-how-the-city-is-tackling-drought-11710307306143.html [32] Ibid. [33] Ibid. [34] Fareha Naaz 2024, ‘Bengaluru water crisis: From using milk tankers, fixing rates, filling lakes to fines; How the city is tackling drought’, mint, [Online] Available at: https://www.livemint.com/news/bengaluru-water-crisis-from-using-milk-tankers-fixing-rates-filling-lakes-to-fines-how-the-city-is-tackling-drought-11710307306143.html [35] M Raghuram and Rajat Ghai 2024, ‘Rainwater harvesting and wastewater treatment best options for Bengaluru: T V Ramachandra’, Down To Earth, [Online] Available at: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/interviews/water/rainwater-harvesting-and-wastewater-treatment-best-options-for-bengaluru-t-v-ramachandra-94966 [36] Ibid [37] Ibid [38] Heena Samant, ‘Ending India’s Water Stress: The Road Ahead’, National Security , Vol.5, No. 2, April-June 2022, pp. 215-231. [39] Ibid. [40] Ibid. [41] Ibid. [42] Suparana Katyaini and Anamika Barua, ‘Water Policy at science-policy interface- challenges and opportunities for India’’, Water Policy, August, 2015, pp. 1-16. [43] Ibid. [44] Sanath Prasad 2024, ‘Bengaluru can become worse than Cape Town if mismanagement of water continues’, The Indian EXPRESS , [Online] Available at: https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/bangalore/bengaluru-water-crisis-cape-town-mismanagement-t-v-ramachandra-9250290/ [45] Ibid. [46] Ibid. [47] Ibid. [48] Ibid. [49] No 35. [50] No.15 [51] Ibid. [52] No 44. [53] The Neon Show 2024, ‘Bangalore Water Crisis Explained- Karnataka Government Failure?’, [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNS1oL0miu0 [54] Ibid. [55] No 44. [56] Ibid.

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Climate Change
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Interview for the U.S. Senate India Caucus

India's water crisis causes and cures.

Water touches every aspect of life, and in India uncertainty over access to and the availability of this basic resource may be reaching crisis levels. As India continues to undergo dramatic shifts caused by a growing economy and population, competing demands for this limited resource coming from households, industry, and agriculture have wide-ranging implications for the country’s future. Should no action be taken, there could be dire consequences. The World Health Organization estimates that 97 million Indians lack access to safe water today, second only to China. As a result, the World Bank estimates that 21% of communicable diseases in India are related to unsafe water. Without change, the problem may get worse as India is projected to grow significantly in the coming decades and overtake China by 2028 to become the world’s most populous country. For insights into what has led to India’s water crisis and what should be done to help alleviate it, NBR spoke with Kirit S. Parikh, chairman of Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRADe) and a former member of the Government of India’s Planning Commission in charge of water and energy issues. Dr. Parikh argues that the country’s water crisis has been caused by a combination of factors, including population growth, dwindling groundwater supplies from over-extraction by farmers, and insufficient investment in treatment facilities at the federal, state, and local levels. He highlights the roles of the central and state governments in addressing this issue and explains why tools like dams—although often opposed—are critical for ensuring the water storage and distribution needed to sustain India’s growth trajectory.

What are the root causes of India’s water crisis?

India’s water crisis is rooted in three causes. The first is insufficient water per person as a result of population growth. The total amount of usable water has been estimated to be between 700 to 1,200 billion cubic meters (bcm). With a population of 1.2 billion according to the 2011 census, India has only 1,000 cubic meters of water per person, even using the higher estimate. A country is considered water-stressed if it has less than 1,700 cubic meters per person per year. For comparison, India had between 3,000 and 4,000 cubic meters per person in 1951, whereas the United States has nearly 8,000 cubic meters per person today.

The second cause is poor water quality resulting from insufficient and delayed investment in urban water-treatment facilities. Water in most rivers in India is largely not fit for drinking, and in many stretches not even fit for bathing. Despite the Ganga Action Plan, which was launched in 1984 to clean up the Ganges River in 25 years, much of the river remains polluted with a high coliform count at many places. The facilities created are also not properly maintained because adequate fees are not charged for the service. Moreover, industrial effluent standards are not enforced because the state pollution control boards have inadequate technical and human resources.

The third problem is dwindling groundwater supplies due to over-extraction by farmers. This is because groundwater is an open-access resource and anyone can pump water from under his or her own land. Given how highly fragmented land ownership is in India, with millions of farmers and an average farm size of less than two hectares, the tragedy of the commons is inevitable. India extracted 251 bcm of groundwater in 2010, whereas the United States extracted only 112 bcm. Further, India’s rate of extraction has been steadily growing from a base of 90 bcm in 1980, while this rate in the United States has remained at more or less the same level since 1980.

What are the critical areas of concern stemming from India’s water shortages?

Of the many critical areas, the main concerns are the pressing need to increase irrigation and the difficulty of creating water-storage facilities. Of the 140 million hectares (mh) of net cultivated area in India, only around 60 mh are irrigated. In order for Indian agriculture to grow at its targeted rate of 4% per year, it needs to increase the area irrigated, introduce new high-yield technology, or expand cultivable land. There is no scope to expand the cultivated area, which has remained around 140 mh for the last two decades. Since rain is concentrated in a few months and unevenly distributed across the country, it is imperative for India to develop the capacity to store and transport water. Although water can be stored either above or below ground, there are limits to how much can be stored through groundwater recharge and water harvesting. The first step is to increase local storage and recharge through watershed development. However, in the long run, dams are inevitable. Even with full groundwater recharge, water harvesting, and recycling, there will still be a need to store water in reservoirs; otherwise, this water will drain into the sea during monsoon floods. The storage capacity in India was 258 cubic meters per person in 1997, compared with 2,043 cubic meters per person in the United States in 2002. Even on a per hectare of cultivable land basis, storage capacities were 1,474 and 3,287 cubic meters in India and the United States, respectively.

Many national and international environmentalists oppose dam construction. Storage dams, in particular, are controversial because they often submerge forests and reduce biodiversity by disturbing habitats. With India’s high population density, dams would also displace many people, often poor tribal communities. Even when these people are resettled and compensated properly, which frequently is not the case, their lifestyles, social support system, and culture are disrupted. Despite these objections, there remains a critical need for storage dams because climate change will increase the availability of water while greatly altering its distribution.

India’s future economic growth is also a concern. If the country cannot expand irrigation or increase agricultural productivity by other means, economic growth will be restricted. Given its size and humiliating experience of “ship to mouth” grain imports from the United States in the 1960s, India is likely to limit its dependence on imports. As stated earlier, agriculture needs to grow by at least 4% per year if India is to sustain its targeted economic growth rate (above 8%). With 8% growth, demand for agricultural products will increase. Limited land and restrictions on imports will limit the supply of agricultural products unless the expansion of irrigation makes it possible to double-crop more land or technical progress increases per-hectare output.

What steps are India’s central, state, and local governments taking to address these issues? Could you share examples of successful programs at the state or community level that can be replicated elsewhere?

There is emphasis throughout the country on watershed development. This involves leveling land and tapping rainwater in small ponds created by building small dams in the streams (called check dams). This water increases soil moisture, recharges groundwater, and permits a second crop to be planted. India’s eleventh five-year plan (2007–12) covered some 15 mh with watershed development, and many NGO-led efforts have shown the program’s success. For example, Anna Hazare has transformed the village of Ralegan Siddhi in Maharashtra into a model sustainable village through water harvesting and cooperation. Another example is Rajendra Singh, whose NGO Tarun Bharat Sangh has transformed the Alwar District of Rajasthan through community-based efforts in water harvesting and water management. Singh is known as the “waterman of India” and was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2001. Similarly, with the support of the government, NGOs, community groups, and other civil society organizations, the state of Gujarat has built over 100,000 check dams. Some economists have attributed Gujarat’s 8%-plus growth rate of agricultural GDP to these efforts.

The problem of urban water supply is due to poor and leaky distribution networks leading to large amounts of “unaccounted water.” Even though New Delhi’s per-capita availability of water is greater than that of Paris, the city does not provide reliable water. Inadequate pricing is one problem. Some cities have used private firms to help streamline distribution in order to provide reliable water and reduce waste. The city of Dharwad in Karnataka, for example, now has a constant water supply with the help of private consultants.

What are your recommendations to tackle the water crisis in India?

India’s twelfth five-year plan (2012–17) has focused attention on all of these issues discussed. The plan puts great emphasis on aquifer mapping, watershed development, involvement of NGOs, and efficiency in developing irrigation capacity. Because water is a state subject in the federal constitution, state governments are expected to play a large role in these efforts. At the same time, many active NGOs are now able to enforce compliance with environmental obligations through the right to information act, active and competitive media, and growing awareness on water issues.

The following recommendations address the most important issues in India’s water crisis. First, the central and state governments should empower local groups with knowledge, understanding, and real-time information on the status of groundwater so as to manage extraction in a cooperative way. Since groundwater is an open resource, farmers extract as much as they can. But when everyone does this, it leads to extraction above a sustainable level. This problem can only be managed by a cooperative agreement among the users of the aquifer, who should know how much can be extracted without depleting the resource. The state can monitor and provide this information. Mexico’s efforts at cooperative management of groundwater suggest that this practice can work.

Second, India needs to promote watershed development. The example of the state of Guajarat, as well as the efforts of Rajendra Singh and Anna Hazare, have shown that this approach is effective and profitable. Moreover, it can be undertaken at the local level all over the country and can be accomplished in a relatively short time.

Third, India must educate people about the need for dams to store water. The environmentalists and other groups who oppose dams should be engaged in a dialogue to work out alternatives and build a consensus.

Fourth, the government should strengthen state pollution control boards to enforce effluent standards. The technical and human resources currently available to the boards are inadequate to effectively monitor activities, enforce regulations, and convict violators. In addition, adequate sewage treatment facilities must be constructed. Many cities treat only a part, and some no more than half, of the effluent. Cities need to charge a proper price for water so that local sewage work operators have the income and resources to sufficiently maintain treatment plants. If necessary, India should work with private firms to modernize urban water-distribution systems.

Should India adopt these recommendations at all levels—federal, state, and local—it will be a great step toward addressing the most critical issues causing the country’s water crisis.

Kirit S. Parikh is Chairman of Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRADe). He received a ScD in Civil Engineering and an SM in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been a Professor of Economics since 1967. Dr. Parikh is widely recognized as the architect of India’s Integrated Energy Policy Committee.

This interview was conducted by Sonia Luthra, Assistant Director for Outreach, and Amrita Kundu, a former Intern at NBR.

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Ganga Pollution Case: A Case Study

Introduction

Reasons behind the Pollution of Ganga

Municipal Corporation

Agriculture Waste

Effective Measures by Government to stop the Pollution

Ganga Action Plan

Namami Ganga Programme

Suggestions

Development of a comprehensive and basic plan

Measurement of the quality

Getting the institutions right

Engaging and mobilising all the stakeholders

Rejuvenation requires equal attention to quality and quantity

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

1. Introduction

2. Materials and methods

3. Results and discussion

3.2. Hepatitis outbreak and water crisis of 2015–16

3.3. The urban conquest of water in the crisis of 2018

3.4. Institutional shifts in response to the crises

3.5. Life “below the Cart road”: a case study of Krishnanagar

4. Conclusion

Data availability statement

Ethics statement

Author contributions

Acknowledgments

Conflict of interest

Publisher's note

Helping India Overcome Its Water Woes

Unprecedented drought in South India and recent water scarcity

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Peer review information

1. Introduction

2. Data and methods

3.1. Unprecedented recent failure of northeast monsoon rainfall

3.2. Mechanism of deficit during the Northeast monsoon

3.3. SST variability during Northeast Monsoon

4. Summary and conclusions

Acknowledgments

Data availability statement

Introduction

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