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Urban India’s water story is beset with contradictions. Municipalities in India supply much more water than those in Europe and North America, shows data of the Union Ministry of Urban Development. In several cases, it is twice or thrice the European standard of 130-140 litres per capita daily.
Yet water is supplied in most Indian cities for a few hours on an average day, at best, not to mention cities that give residents water once every few days. Urban India needs about 50 billion litres of water each day. The amount supplied cannot be estimated—most water treatment plants either do not have water meters or have defunct ones.
Municipal water supply reaches about 82 per cent of India’s urban folk. But the piplelines leak, and a lot of water is lost between the supplier and the consumer. Reasons? One, most municipal bodies are cash strapped; they just do not have the money to replace broken pipes.
Two, pipeline networks are poorly planned. And three, corrupt contractors cut corners and often disregard technical specifications. Only two-thirds of the water put into the pipelines reaches the consumer.
A series of defensive tactics are employed to address the leaks. Water utilities reduce the pressure in pipelines to curtail losses; they limit the hours of supply.
• Intermittent Supply Damages Hardware
• 24/7 does not create a price barrier for The Poor
At the other end, consumers resort to a range of strategies to best use intermittent supply at low pressure. Households install taps below the level of the feeder line. When that fails, electric water pumps illegally draw out each drop that’s there for the taking.
The standard Indian house design has accommodated the underground tank, a sump.
Those who can afford an electric motor pump water to an overhead tank; those without the means lift it out in buckets. All this is to ensure water is available as and when needed, regardless of when the pipes supply. These measures are recent. Not too long ago, urban India had water round the clock (see table: Underpressure).
The significant drop in supply over the past three decades —both in terms of pressure and hours supplied— got administrative functionaries thinking. In 2002, a group of bureaucrats and technocrats created a network called the Change Management Forum at the Administrative Staff College of India (asci) in Hyderabad. The urban development ministry supported them. Several members got behind the idea of round the clock—24/7—water supply. This was a critical shift in thinking: from reducing pressure to minimize leakage, to maintaining pressure so that municipalities can identify leakages and fix them speedily.
The ministry officially inducted 24/7 water supply into the policy guiding the 2005 Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (see table: JNNURM’s ideal). Agencies like The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, which offer funding and soft loans to municipalities, had similar requirements of city utilities. 24/7 water supply is now considered an important element of urban management. But what is 24/7? What goes into supplying water round the clock in Indian cities?
Urban India’s water story is beset with contradictions. Municipalities in India supply much more water than those in Europe and North America, shows data of the Union Ministry of Urban Development. In several cases, it is twice or thrice the European standard of 130-140 litres per capita daily.
Yet water is supplied in most Indian cities for a few hours on an average day, at best, not to mention cities that give residents water once every few days. Urban India needs about 50 billion litres of water each day. The amount supplied cannot be estimated—most water treatment plants either do not have water meters or have defunct ones.
Municipal water supply reaches about 82 per cent of India’s urban folk. But the piplelines leak, and a lot of water is lost between the supplier and the consumer. Reasons? One, most municipal bodies are cash strapped; they just do not have the money to replace broken pipes.
Two, pipeline networks are poorly planned. And three, corrupt contractors cut corners and often disregard technical specifications. Only two-thirds of the water put into the pipelines reaches the consumer.
A series of defensive tactics are employed to address the leaks. Water utilities reduce the pressure in pipelines to curtail losses; they limit the hours of supply.
• Intermittent Supply Damages Hardware
• 24/7 does not create a price barrier for The Poor
At the other end, consumers resort to a range of strategies to best use intermittent supply at low pressure. Households install taps below the level of the feeder line. When that fails, electric water pumps illegally draw out each drop that’s there for the taking.
The standard Indian house design has accommodated the underground tank, a sump.
Those who can afford an electric motor pump water to an overhead tank; those without the means lift it out in buckets. All this is to ensure water is available as and when needed, regardless of when the pipes supply. These measures are recent. Not too long ago, urban India had water round the clock (see table: Underpressure).
The significant drop in supply over the past three decades —both in terms of pressure and hours supplied— got administrative functionaries thinking. In 2002, a group of bureaucrats and technocrats created a network called the Change Management Forum at the Administrative Staff College of India (asci) in Hyderabad. The urban development ministry supported them. Several members got behind the idea of round the clock—24/7—water supply. This was a critical shift in thinking: from reducing pressure to minimize leakage, to maintaining pressure so that municipalities can identify leakages and fix them speedily.
The ministry officially inducted 24/7 water supply into the policy guiding the 2005 Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (see table: JNNURM’s ideal). Agencies like The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, which offer funding and soft loans to municipalities, had similar requirements of city utilities. 24/7 water supply is now considered an important element of urban management. But what is 24/7? What goes into supplying water round the clock in Indian cities?
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