Water Management

India has the highest population of any country in the world without access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. According to WaterAid and the World Health Organisation (WHO), 163 million people still lack access to safe water and millions still defecate in the open.

Water, for India, has profound impacts on the health and wellbeing of our citizens; perhaps more so, considering how intertwined it is with various facets of our life, be they social, economic, gender-based, political, or even religious. The evolution of the National Water Policy and the ensuing national debates/ critiques have reiterated how challenging it is to build a common policy with national consensus.

As the Covid-19 pandemic was leaving deep scars around the globe, it forced governments to take measures to protect citizens and ensure food security for its people. In India, initially, it looked as if the remote rural areas would skirt the pandemic. But soon, cases emerged in tribal areas as well as in semi-rural pockets following the return of the migrant workers, leading to social panic.

Covid-19, reverse migration and rural lives

UP emerges as the top state in the country to give employment under MGNREGS

The Department of Water Resources, under the Ministry of Jal Shakti, has constituted a drafting committee on 5 November 2019 to revise the existing National Water Policy (NWP). Dr. Mihir Shah, a renowned water expert and a former member of the Planning Commission is chairing the committee. The committee has 10 principal members and it is expected that the committee produces a report within six months of its formation.

Fire breaks at an oil well in Assam damaging ecozones around the site

While Covid-19 has left many countries including India in the line of fire, the situation in India is now getting particularly alarming with the number of people infected by Covid-19 rising at a rapid pace. While cases continue to rise in some of the major Indian cities, the situation in Northeast appears to be relatively better as compared to other states although cases appear to be rising. 

Making a landfall in Raigad district, cyclone Nisarga wanes but causes heavy rains in western Maharashtra

The water crisis in India has been in the making for sometime now, and the current COVID-19 pandemic has further brought to fore the challenges of safe water and hygiene, necessary for survival. Given that approximately 600 million people are affected by some kind of water problems, we need to find solutions now, and we need these solutions to work at scale.