Apathy Towards Water

When we moved to NOIDA a few years ago, among the various bills we paid came one from the Jal Nigam or Water Authority. Annual charges for water supply was Rs. 1800 or just Rs. 150/month. This was a flat charge since no meters had been installed. 

This seemed rather odd especially when the other essential utility service - electricity - was carefully metered, with digital bills coming in every month based on a minimum base charge.

Thanks to this apathy towards water nobody cares about the volume of water that overflows and goes down the drain everyday. Water overflowing from the storage tanks in fact had a nuisance value only because it caused seepage from the terrace. This problem was solved, not by getting residents to install 'ball-cocks' to prevent overflows, but by fitting pipes that funneled overflowing water down into the drains. Cheap solutions for cheap resources.

The quality of the water is, of course, questionable. Despite government claims of supplying a mix of river water (Ganga 80%) and groundwater (20%), it comes so loaded with salts and impurities that every household has to either install Reverse Osmosis (RO) machines, or buy water cannisters of RO water for Rs.25 each.

Summer months in North India are characterised by squalls - dust-storms driven by sharp winds that, at times, tear through at over 120 km/hour. It uproots trees and homes, and this season, has caused over a 100 deaths in Uttar Pradesh alone. One such squall knocked out my solar-panels, and one of the water-overflow pipes on the terrace.

Curious to know how much of the overflowing water was disappearing unseen down the drains, I set a bucket under the broken pipe and did a quick calculation. Water overflowing from a set of four tanks was filling up a 15L bucket in just 3 minutes. Extrapolate this to eight sets of tanks receiving municipal supply for at least four hours everyday to 12 residential towers with eight sets of tanks each, and you have a staggering 115,200 liters of water being wasted every day. So, in just one residential colony with a mere 192 houses in Noida, is wasting no less than 42 million liters of water every year!

The optimistic or pragmatic way of looking at this rather grim situation is that barely-treated water is going down the drain to ultimately recharge groundwater aquifers. 

Yet, one cannot help worrying about amount of energy, manpower and other resources that are being deployed to supply water for bathing, washing clothes - and filling the drains of Uttar Pradesh!

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The Apathy Chronicles

Science may have found a cure for mos evils; but it has no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings." -- Helen Keller


Today's Indian Express has a telling cover story on the state of governance in India. It is a classic case of adopting the proverbial ostrich-like attitude: pretending that a problem does not exist, and hoping that, somehow, it will disappear on its own.

I just thought it would be interesting to list some of them to see if there is a pattern that could lead us to possible solutions.

First, the IE story today:

* AIR POLLUTION IN DELHI

The Central Pollution Control Board identifies a potential problem area and commissions an independent agency to examine the air quality in Delhi, through an exhaustive study involving 11,000 schoolchildren from 36 schools, across three years. Yet, despite detecting an alarming rise in pollution levels, everybody is still busy "studying the report".

Links:
- Landmark study lies buried - http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/landmark-study-lies-buried-how-delhis-poisonous-air-is-damaging-its-children-for-life/
- Chatterjee, Pritha (31Mar'15), IE: Seven years ago, everyone saw Delhi’s air take a deadly U-turn but no one did a thing


* THE NEW (RE)EMERGING DISEASES

Over past two decades, hospitals across India have been witnessing a sharp rise in new and re-emerging diseases: Chikungunya, bird flu, swine flu, monkey flu, Ebola, MDR TB and Malaria, etc., This year along we have lost over 2000 lives to H1N1 swine flu.
What have we done about it? The health ministry had figured well in advance that our total dependence on imported diagnostics and medicines would hamper containment efforts. So it decided to develop indigenous technology and succeeded in getting entrepreneurs to produce test-kits for a tenth the cost (Rs. 400 vs. minimum of Rs.4500/test). And then, amazingly, after handing out the necessary regulatory clearances, it does nothing to encourage states to adopt cheaper, more affordable diagnostics and medicines.
Predictably MNCs like Applied Biosciences are quite pleased with the state of affairs. While low-income patients balk at the cost of getting reliable tests and drugs, the MNCs are laughing all the way to bank, happy to serve just those who can afford it.

Links:
- Nagarajan, Rema (18Mar'15), ToI: Two Indian firms develop cheap H1N1 test kits, but find few takers
- Singh, Jyotsna (31Mar'15), DTE: When flu turns fatal - http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/when-flu-turns-fatal


* DELHI BUS RAPID TRANSPORT (BRT) SYSTEM

Inspired by Curitiba (Brazil) and Bogota (Colombia), and goaded by IITD academics, the Delhi government decided to ease the urban transport problem by building a BRT corridor in South Delhi. The first phase of construction (2008) was so haphazard and unplanned that vehicles kept crashing into unmarked barriers that had come up overnight, constriction of road space forced bikers on pedestrian pathways and VIPs appropriated the bus-lanes for themselves.
Now there is talk of just scrapping the whole project. So what if the project cost a few millions?

* PIPED WATER SUPPLY IN NCR DELHI

Why is it so rare to find 24x7 piped water supply in Indian cities? Because the amount of water that would be wasted from taps that are left open would leave us very little to supply the next day!
In suburbs like Noida, the municipality has fixed a "flat-rate" for monthly consumption of water. This amounts to a measly Rs. 25 to Rs.150 per month. Since there is no incentive or costs to careful use of this resource, enormous quantities of water overflow into the drains every day. Picture this: Everyday, Noida Jal processes and distributes about 100 cusecs (244 million litres/day) of water. Water is pumped from the holding stations to overhead waterttanks in each sector, and from here, it is supplied to users twice a day for about three hours.
Water quickly fills up the overhead tanks in all the buildings, and since the supply is not metered, most users have an overflow pipe that spills excess water into the drains. For at least an hour water just goes down the drains. Has there been any effort to calculate and control this huge, daily wastage of clean water? Who cares!

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LINKS:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi_Bus_Rapid_Transit_System
- BRT May be Scrapped - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Delhis-BRT-may-finally-be-scrapped-as-MLAs-put-pressure-on-govt/articleshow/46569844.cms