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India is facing its worst water crisis: NITI Aayog
Why it is in news?
- The NITI Aayog released the results of a study warning that India is facing its worst water crisis in history and that the demand for potable water will outstrip supply by 2030, if steps are not taken.
Report
- Nearly 600 million Indians faced high-to-extreme water stress and about 2,00,000 people died every year because of inadequate access to safe water.
- Twenty-one cities, including Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad, will run out of groundwater by 2020, affecting 100 million people, the study noted.
- If matters are to continue, there will be a 6% loss in the country’s Gross Domestic Product by 2050, the report says.
- Moreover, critical groundwater resources, which accounted for 40% of the water supply, are being depleted at unsustainable rates and up to 70% of the supply is contaminated.
- The observations are part of a study that ranked 24 States on how well they managed their water.
- Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh took the top three spots, and Jharkhand, Bihar and Haryana came in last in the ‘Non-Himalayan States’ category.
- Himachal Pradesh — which is facing one of its worst water crises this year — led a separate eight-member list of States clubbed together as ‘North-Eastern and Himalayan.’
- These two categories were made to account for different hydrological conditions across the two groups. About 60% of the States were marked as low performers, and this was cause for alarm.
- Many of the States that performed badly — Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Chhattisgarh — accounted for 20-30% of India’s agricultural output.
- Given the combination of rapidly declining groundwater levels and limited policy action, this is likely to be a significant food security risk for the country.
Source
The Hindu