Acute Water Shortage in One Indian City Portends Future

Challenges
By
Vibhuti Agarwal and
Krishna Pokharel
July 6, 2019 8:00 am ET

The southern city of Chennai—India's fifth largest with a population of around 10

million—has been meeting only two-thirds of its water needs for weeks, the product of
years of drought and decades of failure to manage the region's water resources.

Residents have been scrambling around the clock to get water—spending hours chasing
government tankers or paying private companies to deliver water.

Recent light rains broke a 200-day streak without rain. But the first month of India's annual
monsoon brought one-third less rain than the 50-year average, the driest June in five years,
according to the India Meteorological Department.

Chennai residents fetch water from a water pump that is already jerry-rigged with myriad pump
pipes. PHOTO: ATUL LOKE/GETTY IMAGES
The acute water shortage in one of India's largest cities has been building for decades
through a mix of population growth, poor planning and increasingly erratic monsoon rains.

"The current water crisis in Chennai was predicted years ago, and there has been relatively
little effort made to prepare for it," says Mervyn Piesse, manager of global food and water
crises research program at Future Directions International, a research institute based in
Nedlands, Australia.

The situation in Chennai reflects a larger water crisis spreading across India. Half the
country's population—600 million people—live in areas where water resources are highly
or extremely stressed. About 100 million people living in 21 of India's biggest cities may
see their groundwater exhausted by the end of next year, according to a 2018 study by NITI
Aayog, an Indian government policy think tank.

By 2030, demand for water will be double the country's supply, the report said. And the
impact will go far beyond the areas actually affected by water shortages: Almost one-third
of the country's agricultural output comes from areas most affected by water shortages.

"Water scarcity affects many parts of the country every year," Prime Minister Narendra
Modi said in a radio address to the country Sunday. "Now the time has come to find a
solution to this problem."

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The situation in Chennai underscores the challenges.

S. Lalitha, a 36-year-old resident who earns 12,000 rupees ($174) each month working as
a housemaid, said she spent the whole night several times recently waiting and searching
for government water trucks, the only free water available to her for her family.
"Running after water took up all my time. They come around 3 or 4 in the morning. We
have to run after them to fill our buckets before the supplies dry up. Sometimes, it can take
two to three days for the trucks to turn up," she said.

A shepherd grazes sheep in the dry Puzhal reservoir on the outskirts of Chennai. PHOTO: ATUL
LOKE/GETTY IMAGES

The scarcity has led to clashes between neighbors. "No one is ready to share even a glass
of water," she said.

After having to skip work for lack of sleep, she finally decided to pay a private company
9,000 rupees a month for deliveries during the day.

"I'm spending almost my entire salary just to get water. Is this fair?" she said.
S. Raveendhran, a 27-year-old software engineer at a technology company in Chennai, said
he has been asked by his hostel owner to vacate the room he rents at the end of next month.
The hostel is being closed because it doesn't have enough water to meet the daily needs of
the people staying there, he said.

"I try to reach office early to take a shower there and wash my clothes on alternate days,"
he said.
Water CrisisIndia's monsoon rains this year are far belowthe 50-year average.Rainfall, change from averageSource: India Meteorological
Department
%June 5June10June19June26July 3-50-40-30-20-100

But Mr. Raveendhran said his company has now asked him to work from home to conserve
the company's water. "I've already started looking for a job in a new city," he said.

Mohammad Alam, a worker at Hotel Sangeetha, said they were serving food on banana
leaves instead of steel plates. "We have to ration water. It's better than shutting down," the
21-year-old said.

The Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board, also known as Chennai
Metro Water—the local body that provides drinking water—supplies 525 million liters a
day, out of the city's total requirement of 830 million liters a day, said T.N. Hariharan, the
board's managing director.

Chennai gets most of its water from four reservoirs, two of which are completely dry while
the remaining two are almost dry.

Water experts say major Indian cities such as the capital New Delhi, the tech hubs of
Bangalore and Hyderabad, and smaller cities like Shimla and Mangalore are also facing
unprecedented water-scarcity challenges. They join major urban centers such as São Paulo,
Brazil, and Cape Town, South Africa, that have experienced acute water shortages in recent
years.

"If the cities do not take action urgently, it's just a matter of time for such water-scarce
cities to be in a Chennai or Cape Town-like 'Day Zero' situation," said Samrat Basak,
director for urban water issues at the India office of the World Resources Institute, an
environmental-research organization in Washington.

Indian residents line up for water from a distribution tanker in the outskirts of Chennai. PHOTO: ARUN
SANKAR/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Day Zero refers to when a city's water utilities stop their regular supply to household taps
and use water tankers to distribute daily rations.

India's federal government recently created a new Ministry of Water, merging two water-
related ministries. "This will allow faster decision-making on all subjects related to water,"
Prime Minister Modi said in his radio address.

Mr. Modi said he has also written a letter to elected village heads across the country urging
them to take steps to conserve water. "Just like the cleanliness drive has been given the
shape of a mass movement by the countrymen, let's also start a mass movement for water
conservation," Mr. Modi said.
"India is suffering from the worst water crisis in its history, and millions of lives and
livelihoods are under threat," the NITI Aayog-commissioned report said. "The crisis is only
going to get worse."