1

SECTION

Introduction
The art and science of catching water where it falls is
ancient wisdom, but one which is dying. Traditionally,
most Indian cities had developed an intricate system of
harvesting rainwater through tanks and lakes. Urban
water bodies served to soak up rainwater in the cities
and were the primary sources of water supply. In cities
on riverbanks they served as flood cushions and in
deltaic cities like Kolkata urban water bodies served as
a means to treat wastewater.
The technology of rainwater harvesting has been
used since ancient times but is today ignored in favour
of modern systems, only a couple of hundred years
old. There has been little effort to study and improve
the technology despite its great potential to provide
water on a sustainable basis. In urban areas, rainwater
falling within individual houses, mainly using rooftops
as catchments, can be harnessed.
If we can revive this traditional wisdom of catching
and using rainwater and reinforce it with modern
science and technological inputs, we can surely
address modern day water problems. Rainwater can be
collected from rooftops of buildings, playgrounds and
parks, roads and flyovers and urban forested areas.
These diverse forms of rainwater harvesting serve
different purposes ranging from drinking, non-potable
uses, groundwater recharge, to address flooding and
to improve quality of groundwater.

CATCH WATER
Centre for Science and Environment

Most cities in India have to deal with depleting water supply,

marked by falling groundwater levels, vanishing water
bodies, severe pollution and urban floods

With their own supplies drying up, cities are forced to source
water from further and further away. This is expensive

City planners usually ignore a powerful source of water that

they can have easy access to rain

Rainwater and run-off can be harvested on the simple

premise of catching water where it falls. It can be collected
and stored, or conveyed to the aquifer to recharge
groundwater

Rainwater harvesting (RWH) is gradually being taken up by

citizens groups and municipalities aided by legislation that
makes it mandatory. The first such legislation was laid out
for the city of Chennai after the drought of 1992-93. Detailed
specifications for structures were published by the Madhya
Pradesh government as early as 1984

A prospective rainwater harvester has help on hand. Many

municipalities have RWH cells which provide information and
technical advice. Financial assistance under the Jawaharlal
Nehru Urban Renewal Mission is available. Small personal
loans too can be availed

A fresh multi-pronged impetus is necessary to take RWH

forward: pricing incentives for RWH, disincentives to
discourage water wastage, regeneration of water bodies,
RWH in public buildings, colonies and green areas

01
Urban Indias water crisis
Water is what urban India is fighting for today. Cities across the country from Chennai in the
south to Shimla in the northern hills, from Rajkot in the west to Cherrapunji in the north-east
are facing the crippling effects of acute water scarcity.
There is hardly any city that can boast of a 24-hour water supply (see Table 1.1: Water
availability). Groundwater tables are falling rapidly, centuries-old water bodies have
disappeared or are severely polluted, and urban floods are becoming a regular phenomenon
during monsoons. In addition to this, most of our rivers have become carriers of urban filth.
This scarcity-pollution tango is giving rise to a nightmarish scenario in which urban
populations mainly the urban poor are at the receiving end. Let us take a look at the various
facets and factors that are fanning this crisis.
Table 1.1: Water availability
Sharp fall in two decades across Indian cities
City

Early 1980s (hrs/day)

Early 1990s (hrs/day)

Early 2000s (hrs/day)

Chennai

10-15

8-10

1.5

Vishakapatnam

20-24

10-12

1-4

Hyderabad

15-24

1-5

1-2

Bengaluru

20-24

5-10

2-4

Delhi

10-12

8-10

1-2

Bhopal

8-10

4-6

1-2

Rajkot

1-2

Half an hour on alternate days

Sources: Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad & Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi

A DESTRUCTIVE URBAN WATER PARADIGM

How do modern cities source and use water? Our planners dont make rain-friendly cities. Most
of the rain that falls in cities is allowed to drain away as run-off; this rain could have recharged
the groundwater, but with the increase in built-up areas within cities, the land available for
recharge is getting drastically reduced, even as the groundwater is heavily abstracted.
This situation is worsened by the extraordinary value attached to real estate, resulting in the
conversion of natural recharge areas such as lakes, ponds and wetlands into built-up areas.
While the rainwater is thus wasted, city administrations go to great efforts to bring water at
a huge cost through pipes and tankers. Much of this water is abstracted from far-off areas
giving rise to potential points of conflict with the users of this water in those places (see Box:
Water from afar).

RAPID URBANISATION
Indias urban population has grown almost five times between 1951 and 2001. By 2026, an
estimated 38 per cent of the total population will be urban.1 As a result, there is tremendous
pressure on all resources, including water. Cities are demanding and consuming more water,
and also wasting a lot of it in the process.

Water from afar

Metropolitian cities freeload on their hinterland
The Delhi government goes far into the neighbouring states in search of water. In addition to
taking out all the water from the Yamuna that flows through the city, more Yamuna water is
brought through the Western Yamuna Canal from Hathnikund/Tajewala in Yamuna Nagar district
of Haryana state. Water is also obtained from the Ravi-Beas storage at Bhakra dam in the Punjab,
from the Bhagirathi river storage at Tehri dam in Uttarakhand, as well as from the Ganga through
the Upper Ganga Canal in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. All this is still not enough. Groundwater
is also abstracted both by the Delhi Jal Board as well as by residents.
Similarly, Chennai brings water from Veeranam lake, Mumbai from Vaitarna and Bhatsa, Indore
from the Narmada river and Jodhpur from the Indira Gandhi Canal.
Figure: Distant water sources

More consumption means generation of larger volumes of wastewater. An estimated 80 per

cent of the water we use is discharged as wastewater. Governments are simply failing to keep up
both with the demand for freshwater and the need for treating wastewater. Unmet demand
results in increasing withdrawals from the ground (see section on groundwater below), while
untreated wastewater pollutes surface water sources as well as groundwater.

WATER POLLUTION IN URBAN AREAS

In 1978-79, India produced 7 billion litres a day (BLD) of sewage2. Within 20 years, this had
increased nearly five-fold to 38 BLD. But the treatment capacity is a meagre 12 BLD3. The
untreated sewage goes back into the rivers which are also the sources of water for the next city
or town downstream. As a direct result of this, the quality of groundwater is also deteriorating,
with problems ranging from excess of nitrate and total dissolved solids (TDS) to arsenic and
fluoride contamination (see Box: Potable groundwater).
Besides rivers, most other surface water bodies lakes, ponds, wells have also become
receptacles for urban sewage, and are disappearing. Researchers at the Indian Institute of
Science, Bengaluru, have determined that their city had 51 lakes in the early 1970s; by the end
of the century, this number had plummeted to a mere 17, of which only 14 could be considered
alive.4 In Hyderabad, there were 932 water bodies in 1973; by 1996, 834 were left.5
In the case of Delhi, even determining the number of water bodies took some time, effort and
coaxing by the judiciary (see Box: Whither water bodies?).

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01

Potable groundwater

URBAN INDIAS WATER CRISIS

Rainwater is first collected and stored and subsequently used to dilute groundwater
At Kokawad Ashram in Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh, a residential school for tribals, rainwater
harvesting has been used to dilute the high fluoride levels in groundwater. The rain falling on the
rooftop of the school building is stored in a 75,000 litre ferrocement tank and used for this purpose.
The groundwater as well as the stored rainwater is pumped to overhead tanks where they are
mixed and used for drinking and cooking. The diluted groundwater is potable.
This is the simplest and most cost-effective way to address fluoride contamination. There are
fluoride filters of various design, but these do not work on a sustainable basis since they require
sustained monitoring and maintenance. In this scenario rainwater from storage tanks are
increasingly being used to recharge shallow dugwells.

Whither water bodies?

Delhi found it hard to tally numbers
In 2001, the Delhi Municipal Corporation had come up with a list of 177 water bodies in the capital;
this contention was challenged, since an earlier report had identified 355. Subsequently, the Delhi
High Court ordered a survey, which came up with a figure of 508 water bodies in 2002. However,
there were several discrepancies in this list too. A new committee was formed for yet another
survey, which showed that there were 794 water bodies in Delhi.
But several prominent water bodies were missing even from this survey. A water body in Sainik
Farms that was listed in 2002, for instance, was not included in the second list as the surveyors were
unable to find it. A lake near the Indira Gandhi stadium was also missing. Over half of the natural lake
of Mayapuri was found to have been taken over for construction of a common effluent treatment
plant (CETP) even as the Public Works Department claimed that no such lake existed in its records.1

GROUNDWATER DEPLETION
In cities across the country Chennai, Bangalore to Kolkata and Ahmedabad rapid decline in
groundwater levels have brought on unanticipated problems. In Chennai, over-extraction of
groundwater in the Minjur well field has resulted in rapid ingress of seawater, which extended
from 3 km inshore in 1969 to 7 km in 1983 and 13 km in 2007.6 In Kolkata, reckless
groundwater exploitation has changed the direction of the flow of the water and resulted in land
subsidence in the central and southern parts of the city. In Ahmedabad, groundwater levels have
declined from less than 20 metres below ground level (m bgl) in the 1960s to more than 160 m
bgl in 2003 (see Graph 1.1: Decline in groundwater level, western periphery of Ahmedabad).7
Graph 1.1: Decline in groundwater level, western periphery of Ahmedabad

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

83.51

91.44

96.31

1999

2003

50
53.64
100

64.61

73.76

125

150

160
200
Groundwater level (m bgl)
Source: Parth Shah 2005, Strategy to revitalise urban water bodies: case of semi-arid Gujarat, International Institute for GeoInformation Science and Earth Observation, The Netherlands, March

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INTRODUCTION

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URBAN FLOODING
While on one hand there is severe water shortage, on the other, cities are increasingly drowning
under swirling flood waters. In the last decade alone, a number of incidences of urban floods
were reported Mumbai (9), Ahmedabad (7), Chennai (6), Hyderabad (5), Kolkata (5), Bengaluru
(4) and Surat (3).8
In many cities, water bodies and natural drainage channels have been filled up and
encroached upon, thus leading to flooding. Besides this, the crumbling drainage systems in
many towns, built many years ago, have not been expanded, modernised or maintained. This
aggravates water-logging and flooding and leads to health hazards in its aftermath.
The flood waters can be harnessed and used (see Box: No more flooding).

No more flooding
A bank shows the way
The Karnataka Bank branch in Kuvempu Nagar, Mysore, used its basement for parking vehicles. In
the rainy season, the basement would be completely flooded. To address the problem, the bank
built an underground tank to collect the flood water which was pumped out into the stormwater
drains.
To put the water to good use the bank authorities decided to recharge the aquifer with the
collected rainwater and a recharge borewell was sunk within the tank itself. During the monsoon
at least 10,000 litres percolates into the aquifer every day. As the water level in the aquifer rose,
there was no flooding in the basement. The bank staff say that the quality of water from the
borewell used by them has improved. The hardness has reduced.

Recharge well

UNDERPRICING IN WATER SUPPLY

Supplying water to cities is an expensive proposition especially when we pay a pittance for the
water that we get. For instance, Chennai spends Rs 4,003 as annual operations and
maintenance (O&M) cost per connection per year, but collects barely 25 per cent of that as
revenue from every domestic connection per year.
Similarly, Bhopal manages to collect only about 19 per cent of its O&M expenditure from its
domestic connections. Municipalities also spend substantial amounts on capital expenditure for
each connection, but charge very little. Chennai has an average capital expenditure (between
2002-2006) of Rs 10,080 per connection, but it charges only Rs 1,930 for every new connection.
Mumbai has a capital expenditure of Rs 3,790 per connection and charges a mere Rs 910 for

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01

Graph 1.2: Cost-tariff shortfall

URBAN INDIAS WATER CRISIS

12000

O&M costs per domestic connection/year

Revenue per connection per year

10000

8000

6000

4000

2000

0
Chennai

Bengaluru

Bhopal

Mumbai

Vishakhapatnam

Source: Adapted from Benchmarking and Data Book of Water Utilities in India, Asian Development Bank, 2007

every new connection (see Graph 1.2: Cost-tariff shortfall).

The distribution is as skewed as the pricing. Official supply rarely reaches the poor, and the
benefits of the low prices are usually reaped by the rich.

WAY FORWARD

AJIT NINAN

Rainwater harvesting is an idea whose time has come. Today, there is a great deal of interest in
society to take responsibility for their water. There are innovations in capturing and using
rainwater in every city. The government too, is following the trend and has brought in legislation
and measures to cajole or force citizens to harvest rainwater.
To cater to the modern day urban water demands of a growing urban population, cities have
to use a variety of methods to harvest, store and use rainwater. From micro-catchments of

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INTRODUCTION

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rooftops to macro-catchments of urban lakes, there a wide variety of urban water harvesting
methods that cities need to employ and maximise their water supply. At the household level,
water harvesting can supplement existing water supply and reduce dependence on municipal
supply. At the city level, water harvesting will serve to maximise available water for supply,
prevent flooding, and recharge the groundwater. Therefore, water harvesting in urban habitats
can be practised by households, factories, institutions and the governments.
Rooftop water harvesting affords an affordable means of accessing good quality water at the
point of consumption, where the control of the water supply lies at the user level. Rainwater can
be stored for long periods without deterioration of quality as can be seen from the wide
prevalance of storing rainwater in underground tankas in arid regions of Rajasthan and Gujarat.
In urban cities of India today, where multi-storeyed buildings are becoming the norm, rainwater
can be collected from the roof, paved and unpaved areas and recharged to the aquifer.
The acute urban water scarcity has forced the government and the people to act. The public
response to water harvesting has been positive all over the country. Concerned citizens across
the country have also come together to protect urban lakes and water bodies in many cities.
State governments and city municipalities have enacted laws and introduced incentives and
other measures, which have served to encourage citizens to harvest rainwater. The city of
Chennai, for instance, was the first to put in place systems to ensure large-scale rainwater
harvesting. Other cities have followed suit with similar legislation.

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