Hindustan Times via Getty Images A boy carries a water container after filling it from a Delhi Jal Board tanker at Sanjay Colony in Okhla Phase II, on June 12, 2019 in New Delhi, India.

The newly elected Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre has announced the launch of Nal Se Jal (Water From Tap), a poll-promise from its 2019 manifesto, to ensure piped water to every household by 2024. How big is the task? In India, only 32 percent of households have tap water supply from treated sources, as per Census 2011. About 18 percent or 6,25,000 households in the capital city, Delhi, do not have piped water supply. Yet, this city has one of the highest percentages of households with piped water among all of India’s states and union territories. Only seven of India’s states and union territories have tap water supply in over 80 percent households. “Jab source mein paani nahin hain, toh nal mein jal apna aap thode banega (When the source has no water, how will the tap produce water by itself),” says Rajendra Singh, award-winning water-conservationist whose 35-year stint with four colleagues in arid Rajasthan has made 1,000 villages water sufficient . In six months from now, by the year 2020, 21 Indian cities, including Delhi, are feared to run out of groundwater. “They’ve built Akshardham temple and Commonwealth Games Village on Delhi’s water bank, so there’s no recharge of groundwater,” says the conservationist, referring to the Yamuna floodplain, the area surrounding the river that absorbs the most water to recharge groundwater.

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Extent of loss That’s not the only loss of opportunity in recharging groundwater. A 2014-report by Delhi Parks and Gardens Society states that at least 200 among more than a thousand water bodies in Delhi — lakes, ponds, moats that existed far back in the 20th century — have been encroached upon and lost due to inaction and possible connivance of multiple agencies that owned the land that these water bodies existed on. These include Delhi Development Authority, Block District Officers or BDOs (in Delhi’s urban villages), Archaeological Survey of India, Forest department, and municipal corporations (five in Delhi: East, South, North, and New Delhi Municipal Corporations and Delhi Cantonment Board), notes the report. The lost water bodies have illegally been turned into cremation grounds, temples, a government school, stadium, and even a bus terminal of the Delhi Transport Corporation. “We had these water bodies giving recharge to ground water, but they have become extinct now,” said Veena Khanduri, executive secretary of the non-profit India Water Partnership . “Restoration of these bodies is needed.” Even though the Delhi government recently announced starting work on rejuvenation of 200 lakes, with Delhi Jal Board (DJB) and Flood and Irrigation Department, the path to recovery is a long one. The remaining water bodies exist in poor condition, filled with sewage and garbage dumped by residents and also deliberately by land sharks, or developers who want to encroach the land. The DJB owns the land on which these waters exist and the five municipal bodies (North, South, East, and New DMCs and Delhi Cantonment Board) are responsible for sewage and garbage management.

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Unchecked groundwater use This is not the only part of Delhi’s water bankruptcy. There are more than 5,000 bore-wells and tube-wells drawing groundwater in Delhi, as per DJB records from 2014. India’s laws are ambiguous in regulating groundwater, largely giving the owner of the land the right to the water beneath it, according to The Indian Easements Act, 1882. It is no surprise that India is the world’s largest user of groundwater, drawing one-fourth of the global reserves every year. “We have withdrawn 25 percent more groundwater than the natural recharge rate in Delhi, meaning there’s been overdrafting,” said Khanduri. However, the state also has a duty to protect groundwater against excessive exploitation, as per the Supreme Court’s interpretations of Article 21 (right to life) and Article 48A (directing the state to “endeavour to protect and improve the environment”). “It was the job of the Central Ground Water Board to stop extraction and exploitation of groundwater,” said Rajendra Singh. But clearly, action from all agencies — of the Centre as well as the state — has been deficient, which is why Delhi is facing this unprecedented water crisis. Campaigning for the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections passed by with hardly any mention of this water emergency by Delhi’s MP candidates, the debate only limited to personal attacks. It remains to be seen whether the seven winning MPs from the BJP will catalyse any transformative, corrective action for Delhi’s situation, or do more than myopic acts like protesting before the DJB, without acknowledging the enormity of the problem. “When Delhi was battling severe air pollution, the government stepped in to sensitise city residents; that’s what the approach also has to be for tackling ground-water depletion” said Arvind Nema, professor of water and waste-water management at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

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Damage, in need of control Like every summer, this time too Delhi faces severe water shortage . “Sixty percent of the water supplied by Delhi Jal Board comes from the Yamuna, around 34 percent from Ganga, and the rest is from groundwater,” said Dinesh Mohaniya, Delhi Jal Board vice chairperson and Sangam Vihar MLA. Yamuna river, the major provider of the city’s drinking water, runs heavy with pollutants and is thick with toxic waste after a nearly clear-water Yamuna enters Delhi . Moreover, 40 percent of DJB’s water supply is non-revenue water (NRW), meaning it’s a black hole with no revenue in return, said Dinesh Mohaniya. This NRW goes to illegal connections, a kinder term for water theft, and to the community taps that DJB installs in Delhi’s unauthorised colonies. It is also the unauthorised colonies and slum settlements that bear the brunt worst, left at the mercy of a ‘ water mafia ’ that’s an accepted illegality. Poorly connected to sewage networks, they also discharge waste water and sewage directly into nearby river bodies and the Yamuna, thus being one of the major causes of pollution.