Delhi's water woes
Compounded by bad planning

Even as we plan to spend Rs 80,000 crore on the Commonwealth Games, perhaps we should consider setting a part of it aside for the Delhi Jal Board and the capital’s water-starved and polluted water-fed population of one crore—and growing. Our sewerage system is a blot on our city planners, our water delivery system is a mess, and the Yamuna is a dump.

By Omesh Saigal

Delhi's water problems have been compounded by terrible planning and even worst execution. The biggest fault of all was the assumption that the problem was not availability of water but its treatment and distribution. After all, the argument went, whatever we were taking out of the Yamuna river, we were putting back. Not just that, we were adding to it by draining rainwater into it. Thus, our planners argued, all we needed to do was to treat the water from the river and the sewerage that was generated, augment our share of the Yamuna and the Ganga with more water from Himalayan regions like Tehri and Renuka—and that was it.

How wrong we have been. Since the upstream requirements of both agriculture and drinking water have increased, it is a problem even getting our own share, leave aside speaking of its augmentation from other sources like Tehri and Renuka. Moreover, the population growth rate of Delhi has hardly conformed to the projections of our planners: already more than a crore and a half people have inmigrated, and another crore will be added in the next two decades. Our share of water caters to just less than a crore of people; how the remaining crore and half will be catered to heaven knows. Or, perhaps, our planners do.

So carefree were we about the availability of water that we not only provided single lines for our drinking needs and for our toilets but also presumed that this would suffice for sprinkling our lawns as well. Wherever piped water for the lawns was not available, deep tubewells were dug, on the casual assumption that Delhi’s ground water reserves were inexhaustible.

When New Delhi was built in the early 1930s and 1940s, the then planners were more prescient: they had separate lines for drinking water and water for gardening (only the former was “treated”, though), and big water bodies were created in and around India Gate from where groundwater could be recharged.

Not only have foresight and planning been lacking in our recent gaggle of planners, they have also been criminally liable for the neglect that has led to the extinction of waterbodies like the Najafgarh nallah and the like, which could have led to the recharge of the underground reservoirs. They are also responsible for not being able to convert areas like the Bhatti mines into major recharge sources for rainwater harvesting. When the water problem seemed to go out of hand, all that the politicians and self-seeking planners who advised them could chant was the mantra of “privatisation”, which was hailed as a major “reform”. Had it not been for the mess that power privatisation has proved to be, I have no doubt that the reformist knife would have, by now, sliced the Delhi Jal Board (DJB), too, into juicy pieces for favoured private agglomerates to devour and enjoy.

The DJB has been given the onerous task of meeting the water needs of the capital's citizens and arranging the disposal of the city’s humongous quantities of waste water and sewerage. Prima facie, this should not be a difficult task, since Delhi is situated on the banks of the Yamuna river, but the huge population increases in Delhi and in cities and towns upstream complicate the problem. And the absence of any wise planning.

Delhi's share of the Yamuna and Ganga waters might have sufficed for at least the current population, but leakages, wastages and thefts make even this task difficult. In fact, some of us are getting piped water supply today merely by denying over 40 per cent of our fellow citizens who live in so-called slums and are short of anything more than what their shallow tubewells can supply them. Give them their fair share of water and the whole system will collapse.

What should the Jal Board do? First, it should look at the distribution system, which is archaic and tottering and needs a total revamp. Maybe, while doing this exercise, we should also split the water problem into that for drinking purposes and that for toilets and deal with them accordingly, since the toilet part can easily be recycled. It is my estimate that an investment of a couple of thousand crores could do the job. This is a big amount, no doubt, but certainly not beyond the means of an administration that has found Rs 25,000 crore for the Metro Rail.

Just like the huge sum for the metro, let the amount needed by the Jal Board also be provided as a subsidy. Surely, water cannot be a lesser priority than transportation. It is a planning norm that 80 per cent of the water that a city consumes becomes waste and needs treatment and disposal. The sewerage that needs treatment and disposal is of the order of approximately 600 million gallons a day. Treatment plants have been installed at a huge investment of more than Rs 2,000 crore, but the problem is that the scattered vastness of the unauthorised development of the city has ensured that more than 200 million gallons of sewerage bypasses these plants and flows directly into the Yamuna. This alone ensures that the Yamuna remains a stinking drain when it leaves Delhi.
Even the treated 400 million gallons of water that we put into the river cannot help. The question is: Why do we let this treated water flow into the river at all? Let us treat it a little more and push it back into the water supply system. Today, a small percentage (15 per cent or so) of this treated water is used by city agencies for gardening: let us increase this percentage to 25 or more. We must immediately assess how much of the rest can be treated to drinking water purity and fed into the city’s water network. Even if half of it can be used, we will have solved our problems for the next two decades or so. Since the advantages are so undeniable and huge, why do we look away from such innovative solutions to this so far almost intractable problem?

The drainage system in the city is also most archaic and needs the attention of the planners. Today, in most areas, sewerage is allowed to freely flow into the stormwater drains, ensuring that it is no longer safe to rely on the drainage water to recharge the groundwater reservoirs. Nor does it help when we allow this “polluted” drainwater to enter the Yamuna, which then becomes the stench-ridden cloaca that it has become.

The answer is obvious and cannot be evaded. We must stop the ingress of sewerage and sullage into the drains. This can be done by planning properly in the so called “unauthorised” colonies and by installing mini sewerage treatment plants before the dirty water is allowed to flow into the stormwater drains. Both the above solutions require an enlightened and open political system that banks less on votebank politics than on pragmatic understanding of needs—one that has the priorities right when it comes to regulate its moneyspending.

Maybe Rs 4,000-5,000 crore are needed for the schemes outlined above; perhaps a couple of thousand crores more. Much as the reformers would have us believe, it is doubtful if the private sector will ever be ready to make an investment of this order, especially since the schemes may not be commercially viable. It is the public that has to find the money, maybe from taxes, maybe by using land as a resource. We are in the process of spending Rs 80,000 crore on the Commonwealth Games, much of it for cosmetic purposes alone. Let a part of this amount be diverted to the Jal Board. Once this is done, then let us judge whether the Board, under public ownership, can deliver or we need to knock at the doors of the private sector.