The State of India's Water Resources..

I hope you continue to find newer and newer ways to save water. For myself, I have been practicing, on a neighbour's guidance, to use a glass now stationed at our bathroom sink for brushing and washing my face rather than use water directly from the tap. The water saving is substantial. 

The news of 5th June says : Water levels in India’s major reservoirs are 10 per cent lower than normal whereas these are 50 per cent deficient in Himachal Pradesh. Extreme rainfall is becoming more common in much of the country leading to floods and loss of agriculture.

River Mithi, Mumbai / Nicholas / CC-By-SA 3.0

Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Uttarakhand all saw major reservoirs running dry in early 2018 and drought and severe water shortages in many parts of these states.

A May 7 report of this year refers to the battle over the Yamuna between Delhi and Haryana. The Yamuna’s lack of water for all the demands placed over it highlights the profound — but scarcely acknowledged — crisis now confronting India: it is slowly running dry. Signs of severe water stress are everywhere. Yet there is little action from the government or public awareness of the impending crisis. Any sense of the importance of water conservation among affluent city dwellers seems minimal.

Water conservationist Rajendra Singh said that Shimla is not alone. A water crisis is likely to hit metro cities within the next few years. “At least 12 metro cities will face severe water crisis in the next five to six years, and in the next ten years there will be a crisis in almost all parts of the country,” he said .

The water storage level across 91 major hydro reservoirs in India has plummeted to 17 per cent, lower than the 21 per cent storage recorded last year at the same time. As a result, electricity generation from hydropower was down by a quarter in March 2018.

Reports are showing how not treating our waste water properly and re-using it responsibly, is leading to overall water shortages. Sludge from a treatment plant at Malyana, which had a faulty sewage treatment system, was flowing into the Ashwani Khad -- a spring from where Shimla used to get its largest share of water. When unclean water from the sewage treatment plant contaminated streams, there was an outbreak of jaundice that affected more than 500 people in Shimla between December 2015 and March 2016. The Himachal Pradesh High Court then put a blanket ban on use of water from springs around Shimla after this. But the administration did little to compensate for the loss of reservoir water since 2016.

India is one of the most water-challenged nations in the world, with at least 54% of the country being recognised as highly or extremely water stressed, according to a 2015-World Resources Institute report.

Calculations based on some estimates of the amount of water lost to the atmosphere by evapo-transpiration suggest that water that can be put to use in India in future will be about 654 billion cubic metres (BCM), very close to the current actual water use estimate of 634 BCM. These estimates suggest there is little scope to meet any additional demand. 

So please focus every day on how you can save more and more water.