The Aam Aadmi Party’s proposal of 666 litres of free water a day
raises the alarming prospect of further disadvantaging the already
deprived sections of Delhi who get no piped water at all
The Twelfth Five Year Plan has proposed a paradigm shift
in water management in India. One of our key proposals relates to urban
water. In many ways, it could be said that the crisis of water and
sanitation in urban India is even graver than in our rural areas.
The
Twelfth Plan focusses on a strategy that is both affordable and
sustainable. We believe that Indian cities and industries need to find
ways to grow with minimal water and minimal waste. As important as the
quantum of water is the problem of its management and equitable supply.
In most cities, water supply is sourced from long distances and the
length of the pipeline determines the costs, including costs of pumping.
In the current water supply system, there are enormous losses in the
distribution system because of leakages and bad management. And equally
important are the huge challenges posed by the fact that water is
divided very unequally within cities.
As per the
National Sample Survey (NSS) 65th round, only 47 per cent of urban
households have individual water connections. Currently, it is estimated
that as much as 40 to 50 per cent of the water is “lost” in the
distribution system. Electricity to pump water is anywhere between 30 to
50 per cent of what most cities spend on their water supply. As the
distance increases, the cost of building and then maintaining the water
pipeline and its distribution network also rises. And if the network is
not maintained, then water losses increase. The end result is that the
government finds it impossible to subsidise the supply of water to all
and, therefore, does not deliver water as needed. The poor are typically
the worst affected as they have to spend a great deal of time and money
to obtain water since they do not have house connections.
Contamination and costs
Even
as cities worry about water, they need to focus on the waste this water
will generate. Sewage invariably goes into streams, ponds, lakes and
rivers of a town, polluting waterworks, and health is compromised.
Alternatively, it goes into the ground, contaminating the same water
used by people for drinking. It is no surprise then that surveys of
groundwater are finding higher and higher levels of microbiological
contamination — a sign of sewage contamination. This compounds the
deadly and costly spiral. As surface water or groundwater gets
contaminated, a city has no option but to hunt for newer sources of its
supply. Its search becomes more extensive and as the distance increases,
the cost of pumping and supply increases.
Sewerage systems and urban India
The
2011 Census reveals that only 32.7 per cent of urban Indians are
connected to a piped sewerage system and 12.6 per cent — roughly 50
million urban Indians — still defecate in the open. Large parts of our
cities remain unconnected to the sewerage system as they live in
unauthorised or illegal areas or slums, where the state services do not
reach. In this situation, it is important we invest in sewerage systems,
but it is even more critical that we invest in building affordable and
scalable sewerage networks, which requires a fresh look at the current
technology for sewage and its treatment. If sewerage systems are not
comprehensively spread across a city to collect, convey and intercept
waste of all its inhabitants, then pollution will not be under control.
Currently, according to estimates of the Central Pollution Control
Board, the country has an installed capacity to treat only about 30 per
cent of the excreta it generates. Just two cities, Delhi and Mumbai,
which generate around 17 per cent of the country’s sewage, have nearly
40 per cent of the country’s installed capacity. What is worse, some of
these plants do not function because of high recurring costs
(electricity and chemicals) and others because they do not have enough
sewage to treat. In most cities, only a small (unestimated) proportion
of sewage is transported for treatment. And if the treated sewage —
transported in official drains — is allowed to be mixed with the
untreated sewage — transported in unofficial and open drains — then the
net result is pollution.
The added problem is that
the location of the hardware — the sewage treatment plant — is not
designed to dispose of the treated effluent so that it actually cleans
the waterbody. Most cities don’t seem to think of this factor when they
build their infrastructure for sewage. They build a sewage treatment
plant where there is land. The treated sewage is then disposed of, as
conveniently as possible, invariably into a drain.
Reuse and recycling
Nothing
less than a paradigm shift is required in the Twelfth Plan if we are to
move towards sustainable solutions to urban water and waste management.
Investments in water supply must focus on demand management, reducing
intra-city inequity and on the quality of water supplied. This will
require cities to plan to cut distribution losses through bulk water
meters and efficiency drives. User charges should plan to cover
increasing proportions of operation and maintenance (O&M) costs,
while building in equity by providing a “lifeline” amount of water free
of charge, with higher tariffs for increasing levels of use.
Each
city must consider, as the first source of supply, its local
waterbodies. Therefore, cities must only get funds for water projects,
when they have accounted for the water supply from local waterbodies and
have protected these waterbodies and their catchments. This
precondition will force protection and build the infrastructure, which
will supply locally and then take back sewage also locally. It will cut
the length of the pipeline twice over — once to supply and the other to
take back the waste.
No water scheme will be
sanctioned without a sewage component. Planning for “full coverage and
costs” will lead cities to look for unconventional methods of treating
waste. For instance, cities would then consider treatment of sewage in
open drains and treatment using alternative biological methods of
wastewater treatment. Biological methods of wastewater treatment
introduce contact with bacteria, which feed on the organic materials in
the wastewater, thereby reducing its Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD)
content. Through their metabolism, the organic material is transformed
into cellular mass, which is no longer in solution but can be
precipitated at the bottom of a settling tank or retained as slime on
solid surfaces or vegetation in the system. The water exiting the system
is much clearer than the one that entered it. The principle has to be
to cut the cost of building the sewerage system, cut the length of the
sewerage network and then to treat the waste as a resource — turn sewage
into water for irrigation or use in industry. Indian cities have the
opportunity to leapfrog into new ways of dealing with excreta, which are
affordable and sustainable, simply because they have not yet built the
infrastructure.
Cities must plan for reuse and
recycling of waste at the very beginning of their water and waste plans
and not as an afterthought. It is also clear that cities must think
through the plan for reuse for affordability and sustainability. The
diverse options for reuse must be factored in for: use in agriculture,
recharge of waterbodies, gardening, and industrial and domestic uses. In
each case, the treatment plan will be different. But in all cases, the
treated effluent will improve the hydrological cycle. It will return
water and not waste to the environment. While a larger sewage treatment
plant affords economies of scale in operation, a plant fitted to size —
collecting the waste of a group of houses, an institution or even
colonies — may have higher costs of operations, but there are
substantial savings in the piping and pumping cost.
Free water agenda
Since
groundwater is the single most important source of water in India
today, the Twelfth Plan has launched an ambitious aquifer mapping and
management programme. The aquifers in each city need to be mapped and
participatory, while sustainable and equitable arrangements for
groundwater management need to be worked out in a very location-specific
manner.
In the light of this massive reform proposed
in the Twelfth Plan, it is somewhat disappointing to see the zeal being
shown by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to rush into the 666 litres free
water agenda. Indeed, this raises the alarming prospect of further
disadvantaging the already deprived sections of Delhi who get no piped
water at all. The AAP manifesto itself has a much more nuanced
understanding of water issues in Delhi. The manifesto clearly
acknowledges that over 30 per cent of Delhi’s residents do not get tap
water in their homes. It also recognises that 17 lakh households do not
have access to safe sanitation. The loss of revenue from freebies to
those already getting water could end up pushing the unconnected even
further down the deprivation ladder. It is to be hoped that the AAP will
reconsider its water priorities, taking both the Twelfth Plan and its
own manifesto more seriously.
(Mihir Shah is Member, Planning Commission, Government of India.)
