Need for Water

Since the population is increasing, the need for drinkable water will increase too. Providing free water to communities and an initiative to develop urban watersheds and wetlands to bolster freshwater conservation and are critical for maintaining the water balance of a city, flood cushioning, micro-climate regulation and protecting its biodiversity. Its high time people realize every drop matters.”

Mission to save water

Mr Rishi Agarwalla has taken an uphill task to save 30 top cities of India and 50 top cities of the world through his various campaign and has approached respective state govt to make water free of cost available for its citizens.

Status of India

India only has 4% of the world’s freshwater resources despite a population of over 1.3 billion people. “With high population growth in India and the world almost 400 million people living in 100 cities of international importance across the world are at immediate risk of a water crisis, as these cities face water scarcity, flooding, drying out reservoirs in several regions, lack of basic infrastructure and groundwater depletion and contamination has made all top cities in India water-stressed,” says Rishi Raj Agrawaal

Status of water scarcity

Nearly 600 million Indians are already facing high-to- extreme water stress where more than 40 % of the annually available surface water is used every year and about 200,000 people dying every year due to inadequate access to safe water.
The situation is likely to worsen as the water demand will exceed the supply by 2050, said the ‘Composite Water Management Index’ (CWMI) report, released on 14 june.

Groundwater

Water-intensive agricultural practices and growing water demand for industrial, energy production and domestic purposes are significantly stressing India’s limited water resource, and this could lead to many major issues ranging from health to the drop in the economy

DAY ZERO

• The day when a city’s taps dry out and people have to stand in line to collect a daily quota of water is called day zero.
•In 17 countries, that are home to one-quarter of the world’s population, there is extremely high-water stress, according to data from WRI’s Aqueduct tool.
•Cities like Cape Town & Chennai nearly ran out of the water, but theymanaged to avert Day Zero with solutions that were creative and effective but far from perfect.
•In Cape Town, there were mile-long queues of people waiting for hours for water. In Chennai, tanker trucks from faraway cities distributed water that was sometimes black and looked and smelled like sewage.
•But the crisis revealed a dire picture of social inequity in both cities. While the rich could afford their solutions, the poor had to wait for government help. For many of them, every day is Day Zero.

Role of Government

• The Indian government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken up an initiative to map the aquifers.
• NITI Aayog, in its report, warned that India was suffering from the worst water crisis in history and nearly 50 per cent of the Indian population are suffering from severe water stress.
• It further predicted that Delhi along with 21 Indian cities will run out of groundwater by 2030; nearly 40 per cent of the Indian population will have absolutely no access to drinking water by 2030, and 6 per cent of India ’ s GDP could be lost by 2050 due to water crisis. • Also, the National Green Tribunal observed that depletion of groundwater creates a crisis for drinking water. In the absence of inadequate surface water where there may be drought conditions, it also affects the flow in rivers and can also increase salinity in the soil.
• According to the Central Water Commission, the country requires at most 3,000 billion cubic meters of water annually and receives about 4,000 billion cubic meters of rain.

Top cities that are affected

•Delhi has over-extraction of groundwater and low rainwater retention, Bangalore is facing water shortage and can provide only up to 60% of the city needs. Chennai main reservoirs run dry, groundwater levels low and Tankers provide water supply.

Top 30 cities

•The WWF’ s Risk Filter analysis and SWSC has identified the top 30 cities of India with high water stress by 2050 are Jaipur, Indore Amritsar, Pune, Srinagar, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kozhikode, Visakhapatnam, Vadodara, Rajkot, Kota, Nashik, Ahmedabad, Jabalpur, HubliDharwad, Nagpur, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Chennai, Dhanbad, Bhopal, Gwalior, Surat, Delhi,Aligarh, Lucknow.