• Uttarakhand has vast water resources and is a lifeline for millions of people living in downstream areas. However, many areas in the state are facing a water shortage.
• The hill state is going to polls in the first phase of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections on April 11. In some constituencies, voters, dissatisfied with authorities for failing to provide water facilities, aim to register their protests, by boycotting the elections.
• A 2018 NITI Aayog report had held that approximately 50 percent of the mountain springs in the Indian Himalayan region, which includes Uttarakhand, are drying up. It is significant because most of the drinking water supply in the mountainous parts of Uttarakhand is spring-based.

Land of snow clad peaks and glaciers, which are origin to many rivers, Uttarakhand, the reservoir for the northern India’s plains, quenches the thirst of hundreds of millions of Indians. But its residents remain parched as several parts of the hill state routinely face water shortage. The issue has assumed significant ground in the run up to the 2019 Indian elections as well.

Elections to the 543 seats of Lok Sabha (lower house of Indian parliament) will take place over April and May 2019. Of the 543 seats, Uttarakhand accounts for five seats, Almora, Garhwal, Hardwar, Nainital-Udhamsingh Nagar and Tehri Garhwal, which are going to polls on April 11.

Carved out as a separate state from Uttar Pradesh in the year 2000, Uttarakhand has seen a significant push for hydropower projects on the River Ganga and its tributaries which flow through the state. And while these projects progress on the state’s rivers, the authorities have failed to provide safe drinking facilities for the local residents.

As per a 2018 report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), Uttarakhand is among the states where less than 50 percent of the population had access to adequate quantity of safe drinking water. Besides the lack of water facilities, the state is also a witness to overexploitation of groundwater, land use change, deforestation and drying up of water resources like springs and ponds.

Kishore Upadhyaya, a senior leader of the Indian National Congress party from Uttarakhand and former head of the Uttarakhand Congress, lamented that the state provides water to hundreds of millions of people downstream but its issues are not heard by anyone.

“Uttarakhand is like a water factory. We have big projects like Tehri dam through which water is being provided to states like Rajasthan and Delhi. But people living in the area near Tehri are being forced to pay hefty water bills. The issue of water and clean air are not the top issues being discussed in the elections. We are trying to change that,” Upadhyaya told Mongabay-India. “There needs to be a sustainable policy for Himalayas,” he added.

Echoing similar views, Vimal Bhai of Matu Jan Sangathan, an Uttarakhand based non-governmental organisation, said it is ironic that people of Uttarakhand are facing a drinking water problem even as rivers flowing near their villages are quenching the thirst of millions in the downstream areas.

“The worst part is that mainstream political parties have largely ignored these issues. It is only smaller parties that are talking about these issues,” he said.

Is water a priority for the voters? 

The problem of water shortage is not new to Uttarakhand. In early 2018, a report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) had found that the state is facing acute water crisis.

In December 2018, people from around 40 villages in Pauri Garhwal region had threatened to boycott the 2019 elections if the water crisis was not resolved. Some residents of Mussorie, a popular tourist town, too had voiced similar sentiments of boycotting polls of their repeated complaints regarding inadequate water supply are not solved.

The drying up of mountain springs, considered lifelines for people in the hills, has only worsened the problem of water shortage. A 2018 report by Indian government’s think tank, NITI Aayog, acknowledged that most of the drinking water supply in the mountainous parts of Uttarakhand is spring-based. It had revealed that approximately 50 percent of the mountain springs in the Indian Himalayan region, which includes Uttarakhand, are drying up.

Environmentalist Ravi Chopra stressed that “in the political scene of Uttarakhand, environmental issues hold no central space.”

“They are part of electoral discussion only in some small pockets. For instance, solid waste management is an important issue in urban areas of Uttarakhand while in some rural areas people are protesting against the lack of drinking water facilities. Sand mining too is an issue but it is limited to a small area. Drinking water is an issue because Himalayan springs, which are the main source of water, are drying up. However, successive governments have failed to take cognizance and act on it,” Chopra told Mongabay-India.

Ajay Bhatt, who is the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its candidate from the Nainital-Udhamsingh Nagar seat, admitted that water shortage is an important issue for the people in the state.

“Drinking water is a main issue and is on my agenda. It is a big problem in this area due to groundwater levels going down. It is a problem that the whole world is facing. Moreover, it has also been noticed that snowfall is also decreasing, which is an issue of grave concern,” said Bhatt.
However, as per a recent survey released by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) , which listed top three voters’ priorities in every constituency, environmental issues did not figure as a top voter priority in any of the five seats in Uttarakhand.

The one priority issue that was common for all the five seats was ‘better employment opportunities’ while other issues high on people’s minds were traffic congestion, agriculture-governance related issues and better health facilities.

Since Uttarakhand’s formation, there has been a significant thrust on developing hydropower projects in the state but they have always been controversial due to intense pressure from environmentalists who demand free flowing rivers including Ganga. According to the official data, there are at least 124 hydropower projects, either in operation or under development, of total installed capacity of over 13,000 megawatt in Uttarakhand.

The 2013 Uttarakhand floods that resulted in deaths of thousands of people also led to protests against dams as reports held that they aggravated the impact of the floods and increased the damage. However, the issue seems to have lost steam for now and is not even part of the election agenda.

Uttarakhand based environmentalist Ravi Chopra said what speaks volumes about the apathy of governments is that no authority or politician has cared to take note of Swami Atmabodhanand of Matri Sadan in Haridwar, who is sitting on fast for over 160 days demanding steps for a clean and free flowing River Ganga.

BJP’s president in Uttarakhand, Ajay Bhatt said dams are important as they help in improving the water levels. “If we had no dams, we would not have been to ensure water at Allahabad (now known as Prayagraj, in Uttar Pradesh) during the recently held Ardh Kumbh celebrations,” he added.

Courtesy: Counter View

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Karnataka’s capital, Bengaluru is the third most populous city and the fifth largest metropolitan area in India. It is the only Indian city on the list, even though many large Indian cities are already water-stressed, and India is projected to fall 50% short of its fresh water needs by 2030, as per this 2010 study by the Asian Development Bank.
 
The BBC blames a spike in population growth and new property developments, Bengaluru’s struggle to manage its water and sewage systems, and a colossal waste of drinking water due to poor plumbing. Let’s take a quick look at the data.
 
Rising population and water demand
 
Pushed by its technology industry, Bengaluru is one of the fastest growing metropolitan cities in India. The city’s population has more than doubled from 5 million in 2001 to 12 million in 2017.   
 
At an annual growth rate of 4.23%, Bengaluru’s population is expected to reach 21.15 million by 2030–as much as the current population of Sri Lanka–according to projections in a 2016 city-profile study by World Bank-backed 230 Water Resource Group (230WRG), an advocacy.
 
Bengaluru’s water availability will be a third less than its requirement of about 51.38 thousand million cubic feet (TMC) per year–enough to fill 570,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools–in 2030, as per 230WRG.
 
Polluted water bodies
 
Nearly 85% of Bengaluru’s surveyed water bodies, including 398 lakes, medium-sized water-pools for cattle and micro ponds, had water that could only be used for irrigation and industrial cooling, according to the first ever in-depth inventory of the city’s water bodies prepared in 2016 by the city-based Environmental Management & Policy Research Institute (EMPRI). The two-year project was supported by the state government.
 
Not a single lake in Bengaluru had water suitable for drinking or bathing.
 
Domestic waste (44.5%) and construction debris (33%) were cited as the leading causes among the identifiable sources of water bodies’ pollution.

In addition, only 30% of the sewage is processed at treatment plants and the rest flows into existing lakes.
 
Distributional losses
 
Bengaluru wastes nearly half (48%) the water it receives for domestic use (about 30 TMC), mostly drawn from the Cauvery river.
 
This distributional loss is of two kinds: First, damages and leakages in the water supply system; and, second, unauthorised water connections, as IndiaSpend reported on September 16, 2016.
 

A contrary view
 
Another view is that Bengaluru has adequate supply from the Cauvery and plentiful rains. If appropriate interventions can be made to expand water harvesting, treat wastewater and better manage available groundwater, Bengaluru would not face water scarcity, Citizen Matters, a Bengaluru-based community-funded media platform reported on February 14, 2018.
 
Bengaluru receives an average rainfall of at least 800 mm. This translates to 2,740 million litres per day of water (if the 800 mm for 60 rainy days is spread across 365 days). Which means 109 litres per head per day water (considering population=2.5 crores), the report said.
 
(Tripathi is a principal correspondent with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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