The Water Shortage in India

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India is the seventh largest country in the world by geographical area which is located on the South Asia. Moreover, India is the second populous country and second country which gets the most frequent rainfalls. Then why is India experiencing water shortage? Unfortunately, there is an ecological unbalance on the global scale. India is one of the eight countries which are seriously facing a sharp increase in water crisis that threatens humans, while a huge percentage of the world has no access to sanitation and clean water. The average person only needs 20 or 30 liters of water, while every Indian uses a big amount of water per day for different purposes than they are supposed to. Additionally, overpopulation and pollution have also been a cause of water poverty in India. Therefore, young children under the age of five make up the 75% of 37.7 million people who are affected by water-borne disease (Khurana 2008). The aim of this project was to create three possible solutions, and finally the most effective solution is recommended. Thus, several ways to deal with the problem of water shortage in India include harvesting rain water, watershed management, and river interlinking.

Harvesting rain water is one of the possible solutions to avoid water crisis. Water harvesting is one of the old methods of storing the priceless rain drop rather than letting it to flow away in India. Experts of this area say that collected rain water can be used right away or directly can be reloaded into the ground. As an example of this, about 366000 liters of water are harvested annually by CSE office building in Tughlaqabad institutional area (Bansil 2004 p.372). According to Bansil (2004): “And even the short spell of rain on May 12, 2002 which was only 8.5 mm. was enough to provide six days of drinking water for the 110 CSE staffers” (p.372). Additionally, roof-top water harvesting is one of the effective ways of harvesting rain water. Roof-top water harvesting enables people to economize water for drinking purposes up to 4-5 months (Bansil 2004 p 381). The Government of Rajasthan, one of the state governments in India, has made an obligatory provision for roof-top harvesting (Bansil 2004 p.386). However, the water used for harvesting is full of substances, which cause health problems.

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