Face to face with severe crisis
India is facing a severe crisis on the water front. More than half of the country’s major water reservoirs are still dry, even as the monsoon has set in. According to the Central Water Commission, 166 key reservoirs hold only 32.38% of their total capacity. Last week it was 26%.
The message is clear: India’s water crisis is no longer a summer problem. It is a structural one. And as climate change makes the monsoon erratic — too much in some weeks, too little in others — we can no longer rely on rain alone to fill our dams.
India has already crossed the international water-stressed line. Per capita availability has fallen from about 5,000 cubic metres in 1950 to roughly 1,500 today. Below 1,700 is stressed. Below 1,000 is scarcity. We are headed there.
The NITI Aayog projects that by 2050, water demand will be double the available supply. The gap is not just in villages. In cities like Delhi, we supply about 165 litres per person per day, when drinking needs are only 2-3 litres. The rest goes to bathing, flushing, washing — and then straight to the drain, with little reuse.
Compare that to Israel, which recycles 60-70% of its wastewater for agriculture. We let most of it run to the sea. India has historically chased supply-side fixes — bigger dams, more canals — while neglecting demand management.
Notably, our focus remains on storage of water for exploiting it to use in the days ahead. But storage alone cannot solve a demand problem. Storage Matters, but it’s not enough.
On the supply side, progress is underway. Major dams hold about 250 billion cubic metres, and that can rise with new projects. Even the Mission Amrit Sarovar aims for 75 ponds of 10,000 cubic metres in every district. Rainwater harvesting is being pushed for homes and industries. Schemes like Krishi Sanchay Yojana bring women and communities into local storage. These help. But only about 8% of India’s rainwater is currently stored. The rest flows away. And without storage, erratic rain means immediate shortages for drinking, industry, and groundwater recharge.
Importantly, the bigger shift has to happen in cities. Before piped supply, cities across the country were built around lakes, ponds, and rivers. Rain was harvested locally. The British introduced taps, and we forgot the pond.
Today the cost is visible. Hyderabad draws water from 150 km away. Delhi from over 100 km. Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai all pipe water across states. And 40-50% is lost to leakage before it reaches a tap.
At the same time, local water bodies are polluted and groundwater is over-extracted. When reservoirs hit dead storage during a bad monsoon, there is no Plan B. The fix is not glamorous, but it works: clean up lakes, treat and reuse wastewater, mandate rooftop harvesting, and fix leaks.
Ironically, we are short of management. The reservoirs at 32% are a warning. The next crisis will not be announced. It will arrive with a dry tap. It is time we treated water as what it is: finite, expensive, and essential.
