Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
These immortal lines from Coleridge's seminal work ring true even today as the world heads towards water stress. Having a smaller share of the world's accessible freshwater vs. share in its population, it sounds even louder for India. Examples are not far off: Cape Town faced an acute water crisis - with loss of thousands of jobs and creating the category of "hydrological poverty". Given global warming entails an increase in precipitation, prolonged periods of aridity would be interspersed with pluvial excesses, a double whammy! This could spill water on our plans for a rating upgrade, a goalpost in the path to a developed India by 2047.
Accordingly, water management occupies pride of place in India's SDG goals. Being a far-reaching, topic stretching across E, S, and G, multiple SDG goals deal with the same. A progress report on these goals in 2024 reveals many hits and a few misses. Encouragingly, the access of piped and safe water has become more universal than before, and India is on the march to achieve its 2030 target on these. Fair progress has also been made on treatment of water and reduction of pollution. The biggest gap is in managing water stress, with water availability coming down, and reservoir capacity lacking.
Tackling the challenge, drop by drop
Innovation and community will lie at the heart of solutions. For instance, in some rural areas of Chile and Peru, fine mesh systems are used to collect water suspended in the air. Desalination also exists but is a costly and wasteful answer, used mainly in island nations and the Middle East. Wastewater could also be a potential source - it can supply 10 times as much water as desalination plants do. Interestingly, significant gains could be made by sorting the basics - like improving faulty plumbing in public water networks. A multi-pronged integrated solution involving cooperation between States and the Union, and amongst countries alone can save us from a dry future. |
