Sunday Times 2
The city which has one tap for 100,000 people
It is a ticking timebomb hidden on the chaotic streets of New Delhi. Despite India’s booming economy, millions of people are still battling for access to clean water. The situation is so desperate that many people in this teeming neighbourhood are falling sick. Others have set up illegal taps in a bid to cash in. CNN correspondent SARA SIDNER reports from the frontline of the war for water.
New Delhi, India’s capital and the political heart of this diverse and vibrant country, is a vast and energetic city. One of the so-called ‘BRIC’ nations, alongside China, Russia and Brazil, the country’s growing importance and remarkable growth is delivering new wealth to many of its citizens.
Around New Delhi you can see how the expanding middle classes are changing the face of India, with fresh prosperity expanding their ranks at a dramatic rate. But the city also faces a serious problem. Water, the absolute necessity for life, is becoming harder to come by. And it is not just in India’s great cities where a growing crisis is taking shape.
Shazadi, a mother of six, scrubs her thin steel dishes as hard as she can with as little water as possible. There is only one way for her to get water: she must walk to the neighbourhood spigot with heavy buckets, before filling them up and lugging them home.
But even when she gets the water back to her family, she worries whether it is actually safe to drink. ‘We get sick two to three times per month,’ Shazadi says. ‘I cannot afford bottled water.’
Her seven-year-old daughter, Moazmin, smiles and waves at us. She wants to play, but isn’t feeling very well.
‘My stomach aches and gurgles,’ she says, before talking about the many times she has been to the hospital. There she is often given an injection, which she makes clear she is not fond of at all.
There are around 100,000 people living in this neighbourhood on New Delhi’s outskirts. Not one of them has ever had water piped into their homes. Instead, the government turns on just a single tap for them, just three times a day. This is how the vast majority in this part of the city gets access to water.
At the pipe, people line up to fill their bottles and buckets. Children also take showers under the flowing water. The tap itself juts out just a few inches from a drain, which is littered with rubbish and sewage, as well as clumps of bright green algae.
To avoid the need to use this single tap a few enterprising people in the area have installed ground water pumps, but these are illegal. Some others get their drinking water from Prakash Sahoo. He has made a business of providing water to residents and businesses.
Every day, in the baking hot sun, he rides his bicycle around the neighbourhood, making five or six trips to fill a large water container, which is strapped to the back of his bike. He is pouring with sweat as he makes his deliveries.
‘There is no sanitation here, just so many complaints’, he explains. ‘So I thought: “Let me get a water filter and supply clean water to these people, in order to help them and make some money”‘.
Prakash charges 10 rupees – not much more than 10 pence – per container. It is a price business owners can afford to pay; but as most in the neighbourhood make less than £1.50 a day, it is beyond the budget of the majority. And so, for most people in the area, simply getting clean water to drink is a struggle they face every day.
India’s government is not blind to the issue, and has long fought to provide enough clean drinking water for the masses. The figures, however, make worrying reading. The country has 18 percent of the world’s population; but only 4 percent of the world’s renewable water sources. And demand is growing. What is more, there are major problems with leaks and pollution, which strip away the supply even further.
T.M. Vijay Bhaskar, an official with India’s department of drinking water and sanitation, says rural India faces a whole range of issues that are depleting its water.
‘Because rural drinking water is dependent on ground water, ground water levels are going down because of exploitation by irrigation, by farmers and by industries, we are forced to drill deeper and deeper for drinking water,’ he told CNN.
‘And as we go deeper and deeper we find more and more contaminants. It may be arsenic. It may be fluoride. Now we are finding nitrate, iron, and salinity. Uranium is also involved in some places,’ he said.
India has set a national river conservation plan in place, which it hopes will reduce the pollution in its rivers. The plan includes interception, diversion and treatment of sewage, as well as low-cost sanitation works on riverbanks, and electric or improved wood crematoria for funerals.
But authorities concede that India is facing what they call ‘water stress’ because of urbanisation, industrialisation and the ever-rising population.
© Daily Mail, London
Related Posts:
JK Foundation provides clean drinking water through rainwater harvestingTwenty households and three community centres in the village of Mangalagama situated in the Ampara District of the Eastern Province ...
Reforming Colombo sewerage system will take 8 yrs:CEA officialFrom all available accounts, the government appears to be neglecting Colombo, the premier business centre of the country, at least ...
Kids’ WorldMy ambition Almost all people, specially children have different ambitions. It is better to have an ambition so as you can ...
Esala Perahera closing ceremony in waste water, alleges former Diyawadana NilameOpposition Leader of the Kandy Municipal Council and former Sri Dalada Maligawa Diyawadana Nilame Neranjan Wijeyaratne said the water cutting ...
Sri Lanka’s first ever Young Water Professionals SymposiumSri Lanka Water Partnership (SLWP) together with the co-sponsors, International Water Management Institute (IWMI) & Unilever Pureit announced the first ...