Sadly, in the 21st century, about 600 million Indians face high to extreme water stress and about 100,000 people die every year due to inadequate access to safe water when technology has advanced with the help of ever-expanding knowledge. More than three million people in the world die of water-related diseases due to contaminated water each year, including 1.2 million children according to a report by the United Nations.

These water borne diseases are mainly attributed to limited access to safe drinking water, quality sanitation facilities, unhealthy hygiene practices and improper water management practices. India is mainly facing a severe water crisis due to increasing human population, food production and industrialisation. The government has failed to provide safe drinking water to all households despite launching a program “Har Ghar Jal” in 2017 by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation.

In India, at present safe (as assumed) piped drinking water reaches only 70 per cent of urban and 19 per cent of rural households. According to a NITI Aayog report, 40 per cent of India’s population will not have access to clean drinking water by 2030 though the Prime Minister has strongly advocated to provide piped water to every rural home by 2024. What’s worse is that the ‘Global Burden of Disease’ study estimated that 1.8 million global deaths were caused by water pollution in 2015.

These adverse health impacts continue to occur despite improvements in household access to safe water. Improvement in providing safe drinking water that has been focused on is exaggerated due to poor indicators for monitoring. According to a report, India stands at the 120th position out of 122 countries in water quality index. The probable reason is that the government either does not bother to understand the actual adverse impact of contaminated water on human well being because the voiceless poor people are practically suffering or does not have proper information about its impact on human health.

The major drawback understanding the severity of water- borne diseases is the failure in epidemiological surveillance to record actual cases of water borne diseases and the status of drinking water quality supplied to people. The groundwater in one-third of India’s 600 districts is not fit for drinking as the concentration of fluoride, iron, salinity and arsenic exceeds tolerance levels. About 65 million people have been suffering from fluorosis, a crippling disease due to a high amount of fluoride, and five million are suffering from arsenicosis in West Bengal due to high amount of arsenic in ground water.

Fluoride contamination of fresh water also affects large parts of rural India. More than 25 million people across 17 states have to drink water with fluoride concentrations higher than the maximum permissible limit of 1.5 parts per million, During the visit to villages in Birbhum district of West Bengal, many villagers were found with deformities, both physical and dental, caused by fluoride. Arsenic in West Bengal was described as one of the largest known cases of “mass poisoning in human history”.

In West Bengal at present, fewer people are drinking arseniccontaminated water than before due to growing awareness and access to safe water. But in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Assam, villagers are still drinking contaminated water as this problem is largely unrecognized. We observed contaminants such as chloride in Daltonganj, nitrate in Sindri, fluoride in Talcher, chromium in Sukinda and so on in the ground water above the tolerance level. All these instances occurred due to direct recharge of these contaminants to the aquifer.

Simultaneously release of metals from the soil/rock in contact with contaminated recharge water was noticed. A World Resources Report says about 70 per cent of India’s water supply is seriously polluted with sewage effluents. Water-borne diseases like cholera, gastroenteritis and diarrhoea erupt every year during summer and rainy seasons in India due to poor quality drinking water and sanitation. The Ganges provides water to over 500 million Indians – contamination of just one source of water could affect millions of lives at one go.

Water contamination often occurs due to inadequate and incompetent management of resources as well as inflow of sewage into the source. Just 30 per cent of waste water from India’s cities is treated before disposal. The rest flows into rivers, lakes, and groundwater. If this problem is not controlled, a lack of safe drinking water will take a greater human toll than war and terrorism. During my visit to many rural areas where piped water supply is available, drinking water is often contaminated with suspended solids during the summer and monsoon.

As water supply is not continuous, they are bound to collect turbid water after filtering through cloth. On analyzing this water, it was observed that water was contaminated with total coliform at the level of about 35 MPN/100 ml with total suspended solids of 30 mg/L. The actual quality of water varies widely over the time and space depending upon the contamination of water sources, design of distribution system and their maintenance and storage condition.

The quality of water supplied to the people cannot be ensured because quality assurance checks are lacking in cities and rural areas Where piped water is available, all users practically dependent on this source despite availability of other protected sources such as public tube well and deep well which are also fit for drinking purpose. Upper and middle income families with individual connection use drinking water for all domestic uses including washing, cleaning, gardening and flushing of the toilet. Eighty per cent of this safe water is ultimately drained out as waste.

The people from poor families are deprived of safe water due to intermittent supply. Many people have discontinued use of pond and river water, a traditional practice, at least for bathing. Ponds are becoming redundant and practice of conserving rivulet water has been discontinued. Thereby such water deteriorates and gets infested with blue green algae particularly during dry season as it has no use to many people. Importance of these ponds is practically ignored by the administrators, villagers and politicians.

Also, land use and land cover change due to construction of houses and shops in rural areas in an unplanned way has not only stoped inflow of rainwater to these ponds but also prevented recharging of groundwater. The problem of recharging is further aggravated by concretizing all village roads without making any provision for recharging of ground water in a scientific manner. Governments launch attractive programmes for storage of rain water but with little success.

The major problem is that governments always get water project works done by contractors who only look at profit and loss. If all these water projects are operated and maintained by communities that are already aware of the importance of the water, they will be sustainable, economical and beneficial.

(The writer is former Senior Scientist, Central Pollution Control Board)