For the past 2,500 years, India has managed its water needs by increasing supply.
Prior to industrialisation and the accompanying global "green revolution" in the 1960s, which saw the development of high-yield variety crops using new technologies, India's water availability was plentiful. Households, industries and farmers freely extracted groundwater and dumped untreated waste into waterways without a second thought.
But such practices are now increasingly untenable in this rapidly growing country. Per capita availability of water has been steadily falling for over a decade, dropping from 1,816 cubic metres per person in 2001 to 1,545 cubic metres in 2011.The decline is projected to deepen in coming years as the population grows. India, which currently has 1.3 billion people, is set to overtake China by 2022 and reach 1.7 billion in 2050.For nearly 50 years, a misguided groundwater policy has sucked India dry; water tables have declined by an average of one metre every three years in some parts of the Indus basin, turning it into the second most over-stressed aquifer in the world, according to NASA.
Across nearly the whole country, basic sewage management is also lacking. According to the Third World Centre for Water Management, only about 10% of waste water in the country is collected and properly treated. As a result, all water bodies in and around urban centres are seriously polluted.
Even so, residents of New Delhi or Kolkata today use more than twice as much water, on average, than people in Singapore, Leipzig, Barcelona or Zaragoza, according to data compiled by the Third World Research Centre.
The water use in Delhi is 220 litres per capita per day (lpcd), while some European cities boast figures of 95 to 120 lpcd.
Excess consumption is attributable in part to citizen indifference about conserving water after so many years of plentiful supply. Since large swaths of many Indian megacities lack piped supply of clean water, leaks and theft are common. Cities in India lose 40% to 50% due to leakages and non-authorised connections.
And after millennia of exclusive focus on expanding the water supply, the idea of curbing water consumption and increase reuse remains a mostly alien concept in India.
... Water scarcity in Karnataka is aggravated by non-existent water quality management. Its rivers are choked with toxic pollutants, and oil-suffused lakes in Bengaluru, the capital, are reportedly catching fire. Meanwhile, in the northern part of the country, the Ravi-Beas River is causing conflict between Punjab and Haryana states.
In India's water wars, rivers are a resource to be harnessed and extracted for each riparian party's maximum benefit. Very little emphasis has been placed on conserving and protecting existing water sources. And not one inter-state negotiation has prioritised pollution abatement or demand management.
Between rapidly disappearing fresh water, unchecked pollution and so many thirsty citizens, India is facing an impending water crisis unlike anything prior generations have seen. If the nation does not begin aggressively conserving water, the faucets will run soon dry. There is simply no more supply to misuse.