We have been very lax about the way that we have treated our planet all these years. Chasing comfort and luxury, we refused to think about the consequences of our actions. And even though we have been warned of our collision course many times, we still choose to conveniently ignore these signs. And to make matters worse, some world leaders don’t even seem to believe in environmental issues.
Now it looks like India is up for a drastic wake-up call in the next couple of years.
According to a report released by the Niti Aayog, Delhi and 20 other cities in India will run out of groundwater by 2020.
The report paints a grim picture as you realise that in less than 2 years, we may be facing a dystopian future without freely available water in our homes.
The report states:
“Most states have achieved less than 50% of the total score in the augmentation of groundwater resources, highlighting the growing national crisis – 54% of India’s groundwater wells are declining, and 21 major cities are expected to run out of groundwater as soon as 2020, affecting approximately 100 million people.”
They believe the gaps in water supply have forced city dwellers to rely on privately extracted groundwater and subsequently brought down local water tables.
Niti Aayog has developed a Composite Water Management Index, which is a useful tool in the assessment and improvement of the performance in better water management. They have used the index to rank the states as such:
The ranking of non-Himalayan states shows, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh lead with respective scores of 76, 69 and 68. Jharkhand, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh with respective scores of 35, 38 and 38 are at the bottom. And among the north-eastern and Himalayan states, Tripura scored a 59 and is in leading, followed by Himachal Pradesh at 53. Meghalaya and Uttrakhand are at the bottom of the ranking with the lowest score of 26.
What’s worrisome is that the low performers on the water index house nearly 50% of the country’s population, according to the report.
