Lest you think this is about some higher philosophical thirst, let me clarify that the topic is hot, May, Chennai summer thirst - for drinking water. The recent issue of what the government can do when it comes to water in a can leaves even tolerant Chennai folks, who have quietly borne all extremes of water issues, really miffed.

Summer brings water shortage most years in Chennai. Water rations, indefinite wait for water tankers, exorbitant prices, no supply and water austerity are taken as much part of the season as palm-fruit (nungu) and mango in summer. The quality of water supplied by the corporation is bad on a good day and includes unidentified alien objects on special chosen days. It was not drinkable and this watered the growth of private providers. Yet, people never protested to close down the municipal water treatment plant. Hence one is hard-pressed to see why government got interested in quality of drinking water out of the blue.

Come winter, the city is inundated with rain and when there are cyclones, water-logging and property damage due to water are accepted as inevitable price to pay for the chance that there may not be a water shortage in the summer. When wading through potholes filled with two parts rain water mixed with one part sewage water and a hint of rotting garbage, people did not protest to close down the corporation office for lack of civil service. And one wonders why the civic authorities have suddenly acted on “pollution” by water treatment plants.

The city with 50 lakh people and 11 lakh households and a lot of offices have taken to getting so-called-purified water for drinking purposes from private water suppliers, due to the city’s failure to provide this essential service. I do not want to comment on the merits of packaged water except to say that in the US, a government test of bottled water showed it to be much worse than regular tap water in atleast a few cities.

However, one should note that water is big business and the flourishing water trade in the summer may have caught the attention of politicians, rather than the government (to which, I shall give the benefit of doubt and continue my belief that it cares for the people). Assuming 12 lakh water-cans are sold a day (households and offices), at Rs 25 (on the low end) this is Rs 3 crore per day. Annually this is over Rs 1,000 crore in just Chennai; as a reference, state-wide liquor sales at TASMAC was Rs 18,000 crore in 2012.

The quality issue or the pollution issue or whatever is the un-stated issue with the drinking water suppliers, the government should have done some alternative arrangement before putting its citizens through all the trouble. Not that the water suppliers are “too big to question” because they have a strong hold over an essential service, but that a little more thought to back-up would have saved a lot of people a lot of hassle and money.

Before we say education is a fundamental right, why not declare water as our basic right? Cauvery water issue, falling water tables in the state, no electricity to pump water from bore wells, drop in the number of lakes, increasing population density, no steps for water harvesting or finding a water source to meet demand, no quality metrics for government water (which caused people to go to private suppliers in the first place) and the list goes on. One notes that when a finger is pointed at some erring folks, the other four are pointing at the government!

It is predicated that there will be wars for water in the not-so-distant future, as climate pattern changes and there will be acute water shortage. Chennai folks got a glimpse of the future – and it was not pretty.

Published on May 20, 2013