India
India’s growing population is putting a strain on the
country’s water resources. The country is classified as “water stressed” and a
water availability of 1,000-1,700 m3, per person, per year compared to NZ’s 560,000
million m3, per person, per year. According to UNICEF, in 2008 88% of the
population had access and was using improved drinking water sources. “Improved
drinking water source” is an ambiguous term, ranging in meaning from fully
treated and 24 hour availability to merely being piped through a city and occasionally
available. This is in part due to large inefficiencies in the water
infrastructure in which up to 40% of water leaks out.
In the same 2008 UNICEF report, it said that only 31% of the
population had access to sewers in urban areas. A little more than half of the
16 million residents of New Delhi, the capital city, have access to this
service. Every day, 950 million gallons of sewage flows from New Delhi into the
Yamuna River without any significant forms of treatment. This river bubbles
with methane and was found to have a faecal coliform count 100,000 times the
safe limit for bathing.
Because of surface water contamination due to lack of sewage
treatment and industrial discharge, groundwater is becoming increasingly relied
on and used in many regions of India. The process of recovering groundwater is being
sped up a lot by heavily subsidized energy costs for agriculture practices;
which take up roughly 80% of India’s water resource demand.
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