Water management skewed: Study

AHMEDABAD: Urban Gujarat today is nearly 85% dependent on Narmada waters (eight municipal corporations and 159 nagarpalikas). The reality that stares at us is that there has been a drastic decrease in water yield of the Narmada over the past decade — from 30.84 million acre feet (MAF) in 2007-08 to only 14.8 MAF in 2017. This should be a wake-up call for the Gujarat government.
One of the largest studies on urban water management — Performance Assessment System (PAS) of water resources — spanning eight years that was conducted by Cept University and Urban Management Centre (UMC) has pointed out that water supply management in the state’s urban areas is highly skewed. The report also highlights tremendous amount of inequity and lack of accountability in both ground water and surface water exploitation in urban Gujarat.

While water supply connections in urban Gujarat marginally went up from 77% in 2008-09 to 83% 2016, the overall water supplied increased from 3,409 million litres a day (MLD) in 2008 to 4,519 MLD in 2016, which is a steep increase of 1,110 MLD. But the overall dependence on ground water sources has just reduced by 3% over the past decade. The government today claims that the per capita water consumption increased from 109 litres a day per individual in 2008 to 130 litres a day per individual in 2016, which may indicate abundance to the untrained eye, but the average time of supply has decreased by 0.6 to 1.5 hours across all cities and towns. Another striking feature is that while there is a 18.2% increase in water supply connections in slum areas, there is just a 7% water supply coverage in municipal areas!

It does not end there, certain smaller municipalities and municipal corporations — such as Thara town — consume a 251 litres of Narmada waters for every individual every day (litres per capita per day or lpcd); babudom in Gandhinagar takes in 254 lpcd! “Many slum pockets get 40 to 60 lpcd. The more affluent urban areas and the bigger municipal corporations claim maximum water and also waste much of the water resource,” says director of the UMC Manvita Baradi.