11 ms·

Is India facing its worst-ever water crisis?

81 points by akbarnama 11y ago

pattisapu 11y ago
Not long ago, India was known as a land with lush rainforests. By some counts Sanskrit has over a hundred words for water.
- anonymfus 11y ago
  Do words for snow count as words for water?
  - shoo 11y ago
    Give it a few more decades, maybe so.
- rrrazdan 11y ago
  Ahh you couldn't have had rain forests in India. The Gangetic plain though was a thick forest, all chopped up for agriculture.
danmaz74 11y ago
The article doesn't contain a lot of hard data, but if this is a long-term consequence of the climate change instead of some unrelated temporary fluctuation, it's really worrying if you think about the size of the population affected.
- sametmax 11y ago
  There is more: - The effect is combined with most drinkable water source being poluted. - India has the same population than china, but on a much smaller surface. - China invaded Tibet and hence has access to the melting ice directly and basically can decide what to do with the water. - India is a mix of many different cultures, strong social tensions and a high level of poverty. - They got the nuclear weapon. You can only survice 3 days without water. Losing electricity is the least of their problem right now. It's very, very dangerous situation, whose effects may ripple through the entire world.
- Scarblac 11y ago
  It's also about aquifers running out, wells have to be dug ever deeper, then they run out too, etc. It's also about massive corruption, companies not following water regulations. And it's also about regions that used to be very forested but now are all concrete, which leads to less rain falling there. There are often threads on the /r/india subreddit, this one was a few days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/4c8ecf/india_is_dying_of_thirst_can_we_please_talk_about/ https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/4c8ecf/india_is_dyin...
lossolo 11y ago
It reminds me end of The Big Short, about what Michael Burry does now (for those that don't know it's one of the guys that predicted 2008 financial crisis a long time before it happened) "The small investing he still does is all focused on one commodity: water"
- jijoy 11y ago
  That's terrifying considering what happened in 2008
SixSigma 11y ago
When I was living in Goa there are multiple housing estates built without water provision, often reported in the newspapers. Corruption is rife so nothing ever happens to illegal builders. This is a place where the environment minister said asbestosis was a western propaganda story and people should keep using asbestos.
- puranjay 11y ago
  The city of Gurgaon didn't even have a municipal corporation or water until a few years ago, despite boasting a population touching 3M+ All the water was drawn from the ground by pumps. And now that water is expected to run out in 5 years.
  - rrrazdan 11y ago
    Gurgaon city population is around a million. Hard to believe but it is true.
  - jijoy 11y ago
    Same state or worse in Bangalore as well. Mostly depend upon water tankers.
- throwaway049 11y ago
  Who would buy or rent a place with no water provision? Or is there some other way the illegal builders or investors make money?
  - sumedh 11y ago
    There are private water suppliers who bring water in big tankers and fill the common water tank.
  - SixSigma 11y ago
    They run pipes and just add it to the network without permission so everybody loses.
lifebeyondfife 11y ago
A friend of mine was involved in this documentary about a similar situation going on in neighbouring Nepal: https://vimeo.com/115894458 https://vimeo.com/115894458. Interesting and sad to see the human side of how unreliable access to such a basic human need, affects life.
- oceankid 11y ago
  Thanks for sharing!
piyushpr134 11y ago
I think this is just flavour of the month FAD that media is making fashionable. Mind you, I am not saying there is no water shortage. There is acute water shortage in some parts of the country. India has faced two back to back deficient monsoon rain condition years (Last year was due to el nino). However, this is not something which is a permanent situation. On 1st June, Monsoon would break ground in Kerala. It should cover all of India by July. By all forecasts so far, monsoon should be normal this year. At that time, rain and water deficiency would be wiped off.
- i_feel_great 11y ago
  "However, this is not something which is a permanent situation..." The monsoon is not permanent either.
- signa11 11y ago
  > On 1st June, Monsoon would break ground in Kerala. It should cover all of India by July. May you please provide links to weather predictions on which you base your claims ? Given all weirdness surrounding weather-patterns due global warming etc, it seems a bit presumptuous.
- jussij 11y ago
  Northern Australia has it's monsoon period from October to April and it only got it's first real downpour this month. With only a few months to go it's going to be a rather dry monsoon for Northern Australia. So there are no guarantees the monsoon will arrive with such great force.
gexla 11y ago
> "The river has very little water these days. It is also running out of fish. Tube wells in our village have run out of water," he says. "There's too much of uncertainty. People in our villages have moved to the cities to look for work." Maybe this is what we need. More people move into cities rather than exploiting these critical resources at every stretch with little to no management. To go further, maybe we should be creating sanctuaries in these areas so that maybe wildlife (like fish) could make a comeback. Pie in the sky probably. Maybe creates other issues. Maybe not feasible. China has cleared large numbers of people for projects though. There is little resources for a project which doesn't make money or is not a source of national pride (like the largest dam in the world), but I imagine the value of water is dramatically increasing. We don't think much about this sort of thing in Western nations. I'm a U.S. citizen living in the Philippines. I'm pretty sure the only living things in the river going through the city I live in is tadpoles and bugs. What isn't killed by pollution is taken for food (though I'm not sure anyone catches anything in this river.) All along the banks of the river is squatter areas. They use the river for laundry, bathing, drinking, etc. When there is a flood, these areas get taken out and have to rebuild. In Manila, the river banks looked like the city dump from back home. We are also going through a rough time with water. The lack of rain has caused the price of everything which relies on water (food) to increase. This causes further problems for people living in poverty here. Global climate change is a likely cause. At some point, these nations may view water as a critical national resource and take action to protect it.
avip 11y ago
Yet another reason to relocate to Kerala.
- ocean3 11y ago
  Visited some relatives in Kerala. It seems municipality are pumping sea water. Pipe water is salty.
pigpaws 11y ago
While no one can deny the effects of changing climate, why has no one brought up the piss-poor management of the water they DO have? The river is used for drinking, as an open toilet AND as a 'burial' ground and people seem confused as to why it doesn't support the life it once did - and people mention it as an AFTERTHOUGHT. ah - we don't want to insult their culture, now do we? Come on. If you're going to address the problem, at least be honest about the WHOLE thing instead of hiding behind climate change - as if it were the ONLY issue. If they were serous about it, then they'd be implementing/encouraging water catchment systems at the local level, homes, etc...
- rrrazdan 11y ago
  No one is confused about the death of the river. The problem is clearly with Indian people itself, including me. There is a lot going on at the ground level and there is a lot more that should be done. I used to be as exasperated as you, but I have come to peace that this is all attributable to poverty. You cannot expect "rational" behaviour from people fighting for their next meal? As average incomes grow, people are going to care about other things and you can already see the shoots of this in India.
  - kamaal 11y ago
    >>You cannot expect "rational" behaviour from people fighting for their next meal? I completely refuse to believe this. Poor are no way to blame here. Its pretty much the upper middle class, rich and industrial waste that is polluting the rivers. In a city like Bangalore, most of the lakes have been destroyed to the point of no recovery. What were once places of recreation are now cesspool for all sorts of waste from high rising Apartment complexes.
    - srean 11y ago
      Could not upvote this enough !
  - pigpaws 11y ago
    It is not ALL attributable to poverty - There is no SINGLE factor (aside from Education). The poor are not the only ones using the river as a burial ground. do you understand what a single rotting body does to the water supply, let alone tens of thousands?
dharmach 11y ago
Give up your Abrahamic bigotry. Rivers are not used as burial ground but in Hindu traditions body is cremated and then remains are put in river water.
- pigpaws 11y ago
  Ah - the name calling... did you even READ the article? have you done ANY research outside of a reddit thread? or are you just a troll? Here's an article for you. It even has pictures so you can follow along. http://www.vocativ.com/culture/photos/photos-of-the-dead-in-varanasi-where-the-wealthy-are-cremated-and-the-poor-are-left-to-the-vultures/ http://www.vocativ.com/culture/photos/photos-of-the-dead-in-...
  - dharmach 11y ago
    Did you READ "the article"? Where it talks about "using the river as a burial ground"?
    - pigpaws 11y ago
      second paragraph down - "For the vast majority of the poor, however, their bodies are floated into the Ganges, exposed to the elements." now, if you want to be pedantic, no - they did not use the term "burial ground". That was me being nice and not saying "cesspool".
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - xlm1717 11y ago
      >"All of them said there had been a reduction in water levels over the years. Also when we were sailing on the Ganges, we did not find a single turtle. The river was so dirty that it stank. There were effluents, sewage and dead bodies floating," says Mr Theophilus.
  - sandGorgon 11y ago
tw04 11y ago
And here in the US we're allowing fracking to pollute our deep water wells because "it's not financially viable to use that water for drinking anyway". Let's pretend that it will NEVER be financially viable because it isn't right now!
workusername 11y ago
I'm not going to read the article because the question as a title suggests to me that the journalist could have done more research. That aside, this reminds me of the UK which regularly has floods in winter, and droughts in summer. Now if we have too much water in one season, and too little water in another, surely it's not too hard to figure out a common solution to both. I call it a "dam". Are there reasons the UK doesn't do this? Too much focus on trains?
- noir_lord 11y ago
  > surely it's not too hard to figure out a common solution to both If only we had expert engineers on civil projects, civil engineers if you will to look at this stuff eh. 1) We don't have that many rivers that would suit having a dam put in. 2) We are very densely populated, daming a river would require moving large numbers of people (time consuming, costly and likely to end up in court). 3) The areas most effected by drought are the south-east, they also get way less rainfall in summer and winter than the north-west which floods a lot more. http://www.coolgeography.co.uk/GCSE/Year11/Weather,Climate/Rainfall%20types/Uk%20precipitation.jpeg http://www.coolgeography.co.uk/GCSE/Year11/Weather,Climate/R... 4) Population pressure on water is vastly higher in the south east than in the North and south west. 5) Assuming you could dam the rivers and have a water reserve the most sensible place to do it would be the north-west, you then have to get the water hundreds and hundreds of miles down into the south east (which has been proposed but moving water is expensive relative to it's commodity cost, a 1m cube of water ways exactly 1 tonne). 6) The UK idea of a drought is very different to what most regions would call a drought, only in the absolutely worst years do we go beyond a host pipe ban and even then only for a few weeks. 7) Given the population density and the difficulty of moving vast quantities of water you'd need to put the dams in near to the densest population since the human impact of a damn is proportional to the population density that's not great 8) Dams cause widespread ecological change (sometimes a net benefit sometimes not).
known 11y ago
And Indian regime is giving just 18% credit to farmers; http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/may/18/psu-banks-fail-to-meet-farm-lending-target.htm http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/may/18/psu-banks-fail...

81 points by akbarnama 11y ago

Not long ago, India was known as a land with lush rainforests. By some counts Sanskrit has over a hundred words for water.

anonymfus 11y ago
Do words for snow count as words for water?
- shoo 11y ago
  Give it a few more decades, maybe so.
rrrazdan 11y ago
Ahh you couldn't have had rain forests in India. The Gangetic plain though was a thick forest, all chopped up for agriculture.

danmaz74 11y ago

The article doesn't contain a lot of hard data, but if this is a long-term consequence of the climate change instead of some unrelated temporary fluctuation, it's really worrying if you think about the size of the population affected.

sametmax 11y ago
There is more: - The effect is combined with most drinkable water source being poluted. - India has the same population than china, but on a much smaller surface. - China invaded Tibet and hence has access to the melting ice directly and basically can decide what to do with the water. - India is a mix of many different cultures, strong social tensions and a high level of poverty. - They got the nuclear weapon. You can only survice 3 days without water. Losing electricity is the least of their problem right now. It's very, very dangerous situation, whose effects may ripple through the entire world.
Scarblac 11y ago
It's also about aquifers running out, wells have to be dug ever deeper, then they run out too, etc. It's also about massive corruption, companies not following water regulations. And it's also about regions that used to be very forested but now are all concrete, which leads to less rain falling there. There are often threads on the /r/india subreddit, this one was a few days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/4c8ecf/india_is_dying_of_thirst_can_we_please_talk_about/ https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/4c8ecf/india_is_dyin...

lossolo 11y ago

It reminds me end of The Big Short, about what Michael Burry does now (for those that don't know it's one of the guys that predicted 2008 financial crisis a long time before it happened) "The small investing he still does is all focused on one commodity: water"

jijoy 11y ago
That's terrifying considering what happened in 2008

SixSigma 11y ago

When I was living in Goa there are multiple housing estates built without water provision, often reported in the newspapers. Corruption is rife so nothing ever happens to illegal builders. This is a place where the environment minister said asbestosis was a western propaganda story and people should keep using asbestos.

puranjay 11y ago
The city of Gurgaon didn't even have a municipal corporation or water until a few years ago, despite boasting a population touching 3M+ All the water was drawn from the ground by pumps. And now that water is expected to run out in 5 years.
- rrrazdan 11y ago
  Gurgaon city population is around a million. Hard to believe but it is true.
- jijoy 11y ago
  Same state or worse in Bangalore as well. Mostly depend upon water tankers.
throwaway049 11y ago
Who would buy or rent a place with no water provision? Or is there some other way the illegal builders or investors make money?
- sumedh 11y ago
  There are private water suppliers who bring water in big tankers and fill the common water tank.
- SixSigma 11y ago
  They run pipes and just add it to the network without permission so everybody loses.

lifebeyondfife 11y ago

A friend of mine was involved in this documentary about a similar situation going on in neighbouring Nepal: https://vimeo.com/115894458 https://vimeo.com/115894458. Interesting and sad to see the human side of how unreliable access to such a basic human need, affects life.

oceankid 11y ago
Thanks for sharing!

piyushpr134 11y ago

I think this is just flavour of the month FAD that media is making fashionable. Mind you, I am not saying there is no water shortage. There is acute water shortage in some parts of the country. India has faced two back to back deficient monsoon rain condition years (Last year was due to el nino). However, this is not something which is a permanent situation. On 1st June, Monsoon would break ground in Kerala. It should cover all of India by July. By all forecasts so far, monsoon should be normal this year. At that time, rain and water deficiency would be wiped off.

i_feel_great 11y ago
"However, this is not something which is a permanent situation..." The monsoon is not permanent either.
signa11 11y ago
> On 1st June, Monsoon would break ground in Kerala. It should cover all of India by July. May you please provide links to weather predictions on which you base your claims ? Given all weirdness surrounding weather-patterns due global warming etc, it seems a bit presumptuous.
jussij 11y ago
Northern Australia has it's monsoon period from October to April and it only got it's first real downpour this month. With only a few months to go it's going to be a rather dry monsoon for Northern Australia. So there are no guarantees the monsoon will arrive with such great force.

gexla 11y ago

> "The river has very little water these days. It is also running out of fish. Tube wells in our village have run out of water," he says. "There's too much of uncertainty. People in our villages have moved to the cities to look for work." Maybe this is what we need. More people move into cities rather than exploiting these critical resources at every stretch with little to no management. To go further, maybe we should be creating sanctuaries in these areas so that maybe wildlife (like fish) could make a comeback. Pie in the sky probably. Maybe creates other issues. Maybe not feasible. China has cleared large numbers of people for projects though. There is little resources for a project which doesn't make money or is not a source of national pride (like the largest dam in the world), but I imagine the value of water is dramatically increasing. We don't think much about this sort of thing in Western nations. I'm a U.S. citizen living in the Philippines. I'm pretty sure the only living things in the river going through the city I live in is tadpoles and bugs. What isn't killed by pollution is taken for food (though I'm not sure anyone catches anything in this river.) All along the banks of the river is squatter areas. They use the river for laundry, bathing, drinking, etc. When there is a flood, these areas get taken out and have to rebuild. In Manila, the river banks looked like the city dump from back home. We are also going through a rough time with water. The lack of rain has caused the price of everything which relies on water (food) to increase. This causes further problems for people living in poverty here. Global climate change is a likely cause. At some point, these nations may view water as a critical national resource and take action to protect it.

avip 11y ago

Yet another reason to relocate to Kerala.

ocean3 11y ago
Visited some relatives in Kerala. It seems municipality are pumping sea water. Pipe water is salty.

pigpaws 11y ago

While no one can deny the effects of changing climate, why has no one brought up the piss-poor management of the water they DO have? The river is used for drinking, as an open toilet AND as a 'burial' ground and people seem confused as to why it doesn't support the life it once did - and people mention it as an AFTERTHOUGHT. ah - we don't want to insult their culture, now do we? Come on. If you're going to address the problem, at least be honest about the WHOLE thing instead of hiding behind climate change - as if it were the ONLY issue. If they were serous about it, then they'd be implementing/encouraging water catchment systems at the local level, homes, etc...

rrrazdan 11y ago
No one is confused about the death of the river. The problem is clearly with Indian people itself, including me. There is a lot going on at the ground level and there is a lot more that should be done. I used to be as exasperated as you, but I have come to peace that this is all attributable to poverty. You cannot expect "rational" behaviour from people fighting for their next meal? As average incomes grow, people are going to care about other things and you can already see the shoots of this in India.
- kamaal 11y ago
  >>You cannot expect "rational" behaviour from people fighting for their next meal? I completely refuse to believe this. Poor are no way to blame here. Its pretty much the upper middle class, rich and industrial waste that is polluting the rivers. In a city like Bangalore, most of the lakes have been destroyed to the point of no recovery. What were once places of recreation are now cesspool for all sorts of waste from high rising Apartment complexes.
  - srean 11y ago
    Could not upvote this enough !
- pigpaws 11y ago
  It is not ALL attributable to poverty - There is no SINGLE factor (aside from Education). The poor are not the only ones using the river as a burial ground. do you understand what a single rotting body does to the water supply, let alone tens of thousands?

dharmach 11y ago

Give up your Abrahamic bigotry. Rivers are not used as burial ground but in Hindu traditions body is cremated and then remains are put in river water.

pigpaws 11y ago
Ah - the name calling... did you even READ the article? have you done ANY research outside of a reddit thread? or are you just a troll? Here's an article for you. It even has pictures so you can follow along. http://www.vocativ.com/culture/photos/photos-of-the-dead-in-varanasi-where-the-wealthy-are-cremated-and-the-poor-are-left-to-the-vultures/ http://www.vocativ.com/culture/photos/photos-of-the-dead-in-...
- dharmach 11y ago
  Did you READ "the article"? Where it talks about "using the river as a burial ground"?
  - pigpaws 11y ago
    second paragraph down - "For the vast majority of the poor, however, their bodies are floated into the Ganges, exposed to the elements." now, if you want to be pedantic, no - they did not use the term "burial ground". That was me being nice and not saying "cesspool".
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - xlm1717 11y ago
    >"All of them said there had been a reduction in water levels over the years. Also when we were sailing on the Ganges, we did not find a single turtle. The river was so dirty that it stank. There were effluents, sewage and dead bodies floating," says Mr Theophilus.
- sandGorgon 11y ago

tw04 11y ago

And here in the US we're allowing fracking to pollute our deep water wells because "it's not financially viable to use that water for drinking anyway". Let's pretend that it will NEVER be financially viable because it isn't right now!

workusername 11y ago

I'm not going to read the article because the question as a title suggests to me that the journalist could have done more research. That aside, this reminds me of the UK which regularly has floods in winter, and droughts in summer. Now if we have too much water in one season, and too little water in another, surely it's not too hard to figure out a common solution to both. I call it a "dam". Are there reasons the UK doesn't do this? Too much focus on trains?

noir_lord 11y ago
> surely it's not too hard to figure out a common solution to both If only we had expert engineers on civil projects, civil engineers if you will to look at this stuff eh. 1) We don't have that many rivers that would suit having a dam put in. 2) We are very densely populated, daming a river would require moving large numbers of people (time consuming, costly and likely to end up in court). 3) The areas most effected by drought are the south-east, they also get way less rainfall in summer and winter than the north-west which floods a lot more. http://www.coolgeography.co.uk/GCSE/Year11/Weather,Climate/Rainfall%20types/Uk%20precipitation.jpeg http://www.coolgeography.co.uk/GCSE/Year11/Weather,Climate/R... 4) Population pressure on water is vastly higher in the south east than in the North and south west. 5) Assuming you could dam the rivers and have a water reserve the most sensible place to do it would be the north-west, you then have to get the water hundreds and hundreds of miles down into the south east (which has been proposed but moving water is expensive relative to it's commodity cost, a 1m cube of water ways exactly 1 tonne). 6) The UK idea of a drought is very different to what most regions would call a drought, only in the absolutely worst years do we go beyond a host pipe ban and even then only for a few weeks. 7) Given the population density and the difficulty of moving vast quantities of water you'd need to put the dams in near to the densest population since the human impact of a damn is proportional to the population density that's not great 8) Dams cause widespread ecological change (sometimes a net benefit sometimes not).

known 11y ago

And Indian regime is giving just 18% credit to farmers; http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/may/18/psu-banks-fail-to-meet-farm-lending-target.htm http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/may/18/psu-banks-fail...