Water Crisis: 21 Indian cities won’t have groundwater by 2020

July 2: The latest report by Niti Aayog, the policy think tank of the government, states that 21 cities including Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad will soon run out of groundwater by 2020. This will affect around 100 million people. The report also says that 40 per cent of India’s population will have no access to drinking water by 2030.The situation is alarming, given the fact that year 2020 is not very far.

he report presents a glooming picture stating that India is suffering from the worst water crisis in its history and millions of lives are under threat. The report also stated the disastrous situation in Chennai, where hotels, hostels, and offices have to be shut down due to lack of water. Despite having better water resources and more rain, 3 rivers, 4 water bodies, 5 wetlands and 6 forests have completely dried up in Chennai.

Former director of National Water Academy professor Manohar Khushalani said, We may have a lot of money but we cannot ask our children to drink money instead of water. Using ocean water and desalination is not the solution but water harvesting is. It is not very difficult and expensive to harvest rainwater. One can easily do it commonly in group housing societies or individually. It is a collective responsibility of the government and people of the country to save water and contribute to increasing the groundwater levels.”