Solution#2 for cities: Decentralized Sewage Treatment What to do and when to do it: Managing water in Indian cities is hard. Our water philosophy has thus far largely rested on grabbing a higher share from reservoirs or desalination – i.e., we’ve pinned our hopes on centralized provision rather than decentralized management. However, in the land …
Continue reading What can we do about India’s water crisis – Part 5/5
Solution#1: Rejuvenating cascading systems of tanks in one set of interconnected of tanks. What to do and When to do it: Let’s start with the “When”. The best time to embark on this exercise is right after a major drought. At that time, borewells are likely to be dry, and there will be strong popular …
Continue reading What can we do about India’s water crisis – Part 4/5
Case Study 1: Madhya Pradesh Given the effort to shift all the necessary pieces of the water management equilibrium, governments shift what they can – often only one or two pieces. But, moving some, but not other pieces, can have unforeseen consequences. Such was the case in Madhya Pradesh (MP), the poster-child of sound water …
Continue reading What can we do about India’s water crisis – Part 2/5
(A version of this story appeared in Firstpost on Dec 02, 2018) Of late, I’ve been asked one question above any other: “Is it possible to fix India’s water crisis?”. My answer has been, “Yes, it’s possible.” But is it probable? That is a different story. The story so far… In the course of the …
Continue reading What can we do about India’s water crisis? – Part 1/5
A broken service to give the local politician a role, the importance of caste as a means of access, and the ensuing bribery to act as a lubricant. We have an equilibrium in place. Going deeper, lack of competition is one reason for the poor quality of services continuing. But it is not the only one. There is also the lack of data. Data needs to be unavailable, hard to access, or outdated.
(A version of this appeared first in Firstpost on Sep 19, 2018) Undoubtedly, the water situation of India, which asks about a fifth of the world’s population to survive on less than 1/30th of the world’s water, is precarious. This is now. What about the future? India’s population is growing, getting wealthier, and, oh yes, …
The Niti Aayog Composite Water Management Index states, “54% of India’s groundwater wells are declining, and 21 major cities are expected to run out of groundwater as soon as 2020, affecting ~100 million people.” While some claim the situation is not quite so dire, such a strong statement from the leading government policy thinktank cannot …
(This first appeared in Firstpost on Aug 08, 2018: https://www.firstpost.com/india/indias-water-crisis-tracing-the-countrys-history-of-water-management-and-crucial-destructive-shifts-in-policy-4895721.html) India's water crisis: Tracing the country's history of water management and crucial, destructive shifts in policy This past week, I, like many parents across the country, was revising history with my son for his test, which happened to be on the kingdom of Mesopotamia. More …
Continue reading India’s Water Crisis. Part 1. How did we get here?
Climaction 