Urban Water

Article and Image Courtesy: Everything About Water

The December edition of Droplets e-newsletter published by the Everything About Water had the following highlights:

This study report by the Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP), a global partnership administered by the World Bank suggests that inadequate sanitation causes India considerable economic losses, equivalent to 6.4 per cent of India's GDP in 2006 at Rs. 2.4 Trillion. It analyzed the evidence on the adverse economic impacts of inadequate sanitation, which include costs associated with death and disease, accessing and treating water, and losses in education, productivity, time, and tourism. The findings are based on 2006 figures, although a similar magnitude of losses is likely in later years.

The study focused on the safe management of human excreta and associated hygiene behavior. The methodology adopted by the study included disaggregating the economic impacts of inadequate sanitation into health-related impacts including premature deaths, costs of treating diseases, and productive time lost due to illnesses; domestic water-related impacts including household treatment of water, and money and time costs to obtain safe water; welfare losses including additional time spent by people for accessing toilets or open defecation sites, and girls having to miss school, and women not going to work; and the loss of potential tourism owing to inadequate sanitation.

Data on incidence (e.g. diarrheal diseases, deaths, etc.) were compiled from national sources (National Family Health Survey, WHO Demographic and Health Surveys, and other Govt. of India sources). Based on scientific literature, attribution factors were used to estimate the populations impacted by inadequate sanitation. Economic valuation was carried out using costs/prices based on secondary studies.

This paper by the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth deals with access of the poor to water supply and sanitation in India. It argues that economic, technical, institutional as well as social factors constrain access to safe drinking water and proper sanitation in India for both the urban and rural poor, and that coverage figures do not reflect this restricted access. It finds that, increasingly, communities are being required to manage their own water and sanitation schemes, not just in rural areas but in urban ones as well.

The paper deals with domestic water supply and sanitation and presents a historical overview of the phenomenon in rural and urban India. This is followed by a critique of available figures for coverage which, it is contended, seem exaggerated because they do not account for the several constraints to access. It addresses the specific institutional problems faced in the public sector delivery of these two utilities in India apart from dealing with the parallel yet thus far limited presence of the private sector in these twin arenas.

Content Courtesy: Solution Exchange and Nitya Jacob
Author: Nitya Jacob

India’s arteries are choking. Her rivers, the lifeline of hundreds of millions, are over-taxed, polluted and encroached. They are being mined, dammed and emptied of water. Save for the four monsoon months, most rivers are streams of drains, depending on how many cities they pass through. This year people gaped in awe at the River Yamuna (I am sure they were over-awed by other rivers elsewhere too) as for the first time since 1978 looked like a river and not a drain.

This paper is an outcome of  The Energy Research Institute's (TERI’s) study for the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) under the Ministry’s Centre of Excellence (COE) to “Review the existing guidelines of determination of user charges for water and sanitation services and to incorporate economic principles of pricing in urban water supply sector in India”.

This working paper by the University of Bonn attempts to give a spatial and temporal overview of water management in India. It traces how people and the successive regimes made choices across space and time from a wide range of water control and distribution technologies. The paper divides the water management in India into four periods –

• the traditional system of water management before colonial times;
• response from the colonial rulers to manage the complex socio-ecological system;
• large scale surface water development after independence; and
• finally, the small-scale community and market-led revolution.

This report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) deals with the economics of wastewater use in agriculture. It presents an economic framework for the assessment of the use of reclaimed water in agriculture, as part of a comprehensive planning process in water resource allocation strategies to provide for a more economically efficient and sustainable water utilization. 

Reports over the last week indicate heavy rains and loss of lives and property in the state of Tamil Nadu, which has faced the maximum brunt of the rains followed by Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and some parts of Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh. Reports also indicate that there have been massive losses to agricultural produce due to heavy rains in parts of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and because of droughts in the state of Orissa. At the same time, reports also indicate good news that there has been a rise in the water levels in the country and of attempts being made in different parts of the country to cope with floods and excessive rains in the future.

Rainfall
Tamil Nadu

• Tamil Nadu: The north-east monsoon, 50 per cent in excess in the State, claims over 200 lives and destroys crops and infrastructure
• After the deluge: Chennai has received 71 cm of rain during this year's northeast monsoon, leaving the roads in the Chennai Metropolitan Area in shambles
• The rain-hit north and south Chennai, Tamil Nadu get some respite even as several areas, including Velachery and Taramani, remained under a sheet of water, affecting hundreds of people
• Rain stops, but no end to woes for people from Chennai, Tamil Nadu
• Rain pours non-stop misery in Tamil Nadu
• 2,000 people rescued from low-lying areas along river Tamirabarani, in Kanyakumari district
• Torrential rain kills over 200 in Tamil Nadu
• 70 % excess rainfall in Cuddalore district, Tamil Nadu

Government of Nepal has asked the Government of India to compensate its citizens badly affected by embankments and other flood control measures taken on river Gandak. Will this not lead to a flood of demands for compensation by the victims of similar problems in other river basins like the Bagmati, the Kamala and the Kosi?