Is India facing its worst-ever water crisis? | Hacker News Reader

Is India facing its worst-ever water crisis?

bbc.co.uk

81 pointsakbarnama76 comments

While no one can deny the effects of changing climate, why has no one brought up the piss-poor management of the water they DO have? The river is used for drinking, as an open toilet AND as a 'burial' ground and people seem confused as to why it doesn't support the life it once did - and people mention it as an AFTERTHOUGHT.

ah - we don't want to insult their culture, now do we?

Come on. If you're going to address the problem, at least be honest about the WHOLE thing instead of hiding behind climate change - as if it were the ONLY issue. If they were serous about it, then they'd be implementing/encouraging water catchment systems at the local level, homes, etc...

No one is confused about the death of the river. The problem is clearly with Indian people itself, including me.

There is a lot going on at the ground level and there is a lot more that should be done.

I used to be as exasperated as you, but I have come to peace that this is all attributable to poverty. You cannot expect "rational" behaviour from people fighting for their next meal? As average incomes grow, people are going to care about other things and you can already see the shoots of this in India.

It is not ALL attributable to poverty - There is no SINGLE factor (aside from Education). The poor are not the only ones using the river as a burial ground. do you understand what a single rotting body does to the water supply, let alone tens of thousands?

I also presume that the volume of bodies has increased in line with population, whilst the river volume has stayed constant (if not, in fact, decreased)

I'm going to make a modest proposal, but I wonder if there's enough caloric content in a body to make it worthwhile as feedstock in industrial aquaculture.

Nutrients preserved, value created, payments potentially made to the bereaved families. Everyone's a winner!

Hindus don't bury their dead. They cremate them. Now there are polluting aspects to cremation but it can be done better than burial using proper incineration equipment. I have observed that such environmentally friendly cremation services are becoming more common in India even in smaller cities.

Not all Hindus cremate their dead. In fact a small minority do. In South India, burials are what you will see in nearly all the cases.

Only a certain castes cremate. Everybody else buries and yes river burial too is not common.

Lets talk of reckless dumping of human waste, industrial waste into rivers and lakes.

Do yo have any citations that only a small minority of Hindus cremate their dead?

As a non-religious athiest hindu this is the first time I am hearing this, could you give some pointers. I would have expected it to go the other way (if at all), that is, only a small minority of hindu's do not cremate their dead.

In South India, we very rarely cremate.

Every village has a big "Rudrabhoomi". Cremation is a very upper caste thing.

India is the richest country in the world. You don't grow to 1.3 billion people because your hungry and poor or don't have resources.

How could a people even breed themselves to 1.3 billion with the lack of resources?

These stories are someones fabrication. There is plenty of water in India or their population wouldn't be growing.

"India is the richest country in the world."

Using what measure? Using total GDP it seems to be 8th or 9th (behind, for example, Italy) and per capita it is pretty low 120th or worse.

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325502/Map-shows-wo...

I'm not sure how true this. India is only place where jews were never persecuted. jews, ahmadis, zorastrians lived peacefully in india, when they were persecuted everywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism#In_South_Asia

You need to adjust for the currency. Rupee is artificially lowered to boost exports. Italy has 58M people. India has 1.25B people. This is approximately 25 times. So, India needs at-least 25x food, cloths, housing etc. If you take actual quantity and calculate using dollar terms, it would result in india being much bigger economy than Italy.

But doesn't that imply that comparing national GDPs is silly then - because presumably you could make that kind of argument about any country?

India is richer than Italy because it has 25 times more people/food? That's absolute nonsense.

If you take actual quantity and calculate using dollar terms, this is what you get: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PP...

That's interesting - so if you ignore the EU as not really being a country the #1 is China.

Yes, in aggregate the PPP GDP of China is #1, just slightly ahead of the United States, both of which are just below the European Union (which, to be fair, is like the US but with each state having more sovereignty in the federal system).

The picture is complicated by the relative populations though. Per capita, the EU is $25k, China is $13k, US is $54k, Germany is $46k, and India is only $6k. Unfortunately, the PPP calculation is very complicated and controversial so I don't really know how valid or useful these numbers are. Unless we're going for a trivial definition, it also doesn't say much about availability of luxuries, infrastructure, stability of government/economy, etc. so it's not a 1:1 mapping of wealth.

1+ billion poor people means wealth in aggregate, but each of those poor people are going to be making very short term choices.

EX: Corruption is a great exmaple of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium

>> I used to be as exasperated as you, but I have come to peace that this is all attributable to poverty.

I think it's all due to overpopulation - which it can be argued is a result of poverty too. As long as the world refuses to address exponential population growth, we will continue to run into resource shortages on this finite planet.

Yes, it is over-population. 100 years ago, india had 200 million population, it felt like it had virtually infinite resources. So, abuse of natural resources, were not felt. But the same abuses are felt by everyone, when the population is 1.2B. The habits of poeple needs to be adjusted when the population is 5x compared ~100 years ago.

The population of India has an average IQ of 81. Compare that with China, which has an average IQ of 100. I guess this is why China instituted the (very smart) one-child-per-family policy whereas India has done nothing.

http://www.rlynn.co.uk/uploads/pdfs/Intelligence%20and%20the...

Well IQ is directly related to nutrition. So lets see how that plays out.

Also Indian population density is less than the Netherlands. So its not all about over population.

India is also inching towards lower birth rates with southern states already below 2.1 .

I have got news for you. The exponential population growth is already slowing in most of the world save Africa. It is going to halt somewhere around 2150 and then reverse.

>>You cannot expect "rational" behaviour from people fighting for their next meal?

I completely refuse to believe this. Poor are no way to blame here.

Its pretty much the upper middle class, rich and industrial waste that is polluting the rivers.

In a city like Bangalore, most of the lakes have been destroyed to the point of no recovery. What were once places of recreation are now cesspool for all sorts of waste from high rising Apartment complexes.

Could not upvote this enough !

I'm not sure what the purpose of your comment is. In the article, overconsumption, pollution, and interstate water routing disputes are all mentioned as exacerbating factors, with climate is only given a passing mention. Those human factors are part of a wide, ongoing discussion in Indian communities around the world, and water catchment is common in municipalities within the country. I'm not sure this is an 'honesty' issue to the extent that you suggest...

The 'honesty' issue I mentioned was in regards to the article and how it portrayed the issue and how it implied 'climate change' was the main culprit. I understand the issue is much more widely discussed in India with all of its various facets and variables, but the way the article framed it was disingenuous at best (IMO).

I don't really see that, personally. I read it as saying that AGW is exacerbating already rampant human issues that are causing the quality and quantity of water in the Gangetic basin to decline.

India is huge and varied. If you saw corpe on a river does not mean its followed everywhere. The bodies are cremated and the ashes are floated on rivers. Outside the cities/towns people might still be fetching water from wells. But the ground water level has depleted as well.

Proper cremation can be expensive, so poor persons often take part in an ad hoc ceremony in which they may not properly burn the body before sending it down the river. This is in addition to infanticide and other unsavory reasons for disposing of bodies...

People don't dump bodies in rivers where in live. As i said India is huge. The cultural practices vary from region to region.

understood, however if someone upstream poisons their water supply, be it farm/agriculture, industrial runoff, etc.. it still effects you and your family downstream. If there is too much, everything starts to deteriorate.

Sure. People living there would be affected. But i don't know common those practices are. Might be just North India. I am from South. There are many difference between North and South states and within Southern states and districts.

Not where I'm from either (Chennai, though my dad is from Thanjavur), but in the area around the Gangetic plain, this might be a common practice, and it is deleterious to humans and the environment.

> we don't want to insult their culture, now do we?

Please do. Sometimes it takes someone outside of a system to see how flawed a system is.

Also, it sometimes gives ammunition to people trying to bring about change ( 'Even foreigners think xyz is bad' ).

As an Indian citizen I feel people outside should be allowed to criticize India.

Yes, this is not an insider vs outsider thing, just like an Insider is emotional, more often than not the outsider does not have all the context/nuance and over-simplifies the problem and/or the solution.

I always appreciate all kinds of people being critical of India. There are many shortcoming cultural and ethical among Indians and India.

The article describes the "reckless extraction of groundwater" and links to a report of farmers breaching embankments to save crops, putting village drinking water supplies at risk.

The word climate appears twice in your comment, but just once once in the article.

In my experience much of the outrage about political correctness says more about the commenter than the source, and that seems to be the case here.

Last time I checked no one was putting corpses in Krishna, Godavari, Narmada, Bhramaputra. Its one fucking river (Ganges and that too near Banaras), and this genius on cultures is telling it like it is.

Water management and Waste management are never India's strong suit, but when Culture Geniuses show up and give the Glenn Beck pep talk it just diverts the issue. You can taunt all my culture you want, I am happy to listen about the monumental stupidity and every day superstition, but to take some practices as basis for Cluster fuck of a management problem is at the best dishonest.

This was an article about climate change and you have suggested that it's bad management of resources that has caused this crisis. California has been under a drought for a few years and there seems to be evidence suggesting fracking has polluted ground water in many parts of the U.S., so there is mismanagement of critical resources everywhere.Identifying the core problem which in this case seems to be climate change is critical and not throwing insults at other cultures.

Maybe California isn't under a drought anymore: http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2016/03/drought-buster-hits-ca...

> "The river has very little water these days. It is also running out of fish. Tube wells in our village have run out of water," he says. "There's too much of uncertainty. People in our villages have moved to the cities to look for work."

Maybe this is what we need. More people move into cities rather than exploiting these critical resources at every stretch with little to no management. To go further, maybe we should be creating sanctuaries in these areas so that maybe wildlife (like fish) could make a comeback.

Pie in the sky probably. Maybe creates other issues. Maybe not feasible. China has cleared large numbers of people for projects though. There is little resources for a project which doesn't make money or is not a source of national pride (like the largest dam in the world), but I imagine the value of water is dramatically increasing.

We don't think much about this sort of thing in Western nations. I'm a U.S. citizen living in the Philippines. I'm pretty sure the only living things in the river going through the city I live in is tadpoles and bugs. What isn't killed by pollution is taken for food (though I'm not sure anyone catches anything in this river.)

All along the banks of the river is squatter areas. They use the river for laundry, bathing, drinking, etc. When there is a flood, these areas get taken out and have to rebuild.

In Manila, the river banks looked like the city dump from back home.

We are also going through a rough time with water. The lack of rain has caused the price of everything which relies on water (food) to increase. This causes further problems for people living in poverty here. Global climate change is a likely cause.

At some point, these nations may view water as a critical national resource and take action to protect it.

It reminds me end of The Big Short, about what Michael Burry does now (for those that don't know it's one of the guys that predicted 2008 financial crisis a long time before it happened)

"The small investing he still does is all focused on one commodity: water"

When I was living in Goa there are multiple housing estates built without water provision, often reported in the newspapers. Corruption is rife so nothing ever happens to illegal builders.

This is a place where the environment minister said asbestosis was a western propaganda story and people should keep using asbestos.

The city of Gurgaon didn't even have a municipal corporation or water until a few years ago, despite boasting a population touching 3M+

All the water was drawn from the ground by pumps. And now that water is expected to run out in 5 years.

Gurgaon city population is around a million. Hard to believe but it is true.

Who would buy or rent a place with no water provision? Or is there some other way the illegal builders or investors make money?

There are private water suppliers who bring water in big tankers and fill the common water tank.

They run pipes and just add it to the network without permission so everybody loses.

A friend of mine was involved in this documentary about a similar situation going on in neighbouring Nepal: https://vimeo.com/115894458. Interesting and sad to see the human side of how unreliable access to such a basic human need, affects life.

Thanks for sharing!

And here in the US we're allowing fracking to pollute our deep water wells because "it's not financially viable to use that water for drinking anyway".

Let's pretend that it will NEVER be financially viable because it isn't right now!

I think this is just flavour of the month FAD that media is making fashionable. Mind you, I am not saying there is no water shortage. There is acute water shortage in some parts of the country. India has faced two back to back deficient monsoon rain condition years (Last year was due to el nino).

However, this is not something which is a permanent situation. On 1st June, Monsoon would break ground in Kerala. It should cover all of India by July. By all forecasts so far, monsoon should be normal this year. At that time, rain and water deficiency would be wiped off.

"However, this is not something which is a permanent situation..."

The monsoon is not permanent either.

> On 1st June, Monsoon would break ground in Kerala. It should cover all of India by July.

May you please provide links to weather predictions on which you base your claims ? Given all weirdness surrounding weather-patterns due global warming etc, it seems a bit presumptuous.

Northern Australia has it's monsoon period from October to April and it only got it's first real downpour this month.

With only a few months to go it's going to be a rather dry monsoon for Northern Australia.

So there are no guarantees the monsoon will arrive with such great force.

And Indian regime is giving just 18% credit to farmers; http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/may/18/psu-banks-fail...

Not long ago, India was known as a land with lush rainforests.

By some counts Sanskrit has over a hundred words for water.

Do words for snow count as words for water?

Give it a few more decades, maybe so.

Ahh you couldn't have had rain forests in India. The Gangetic plain though was a thick forest, all chopped up for agriculture.

The article doesn't contain a lot of hard data, but if this is a long-term consequence of the climate change instead of some unrelated temporary fluctuation, it's really worrying if you think about the size of the population affected.

There is more:

- The effect is combined with most drinkable water source being poluted. - India has the same population than china, but on a much smaller surface. - China invaded Tibet and hence has access to the melting ice directly and basically can decide what to do with the water. - India is a mix of many different cultures, strong social tensions and a high level of poverty. - They got the nuclear weapon.

You can only survice 3 days without water. Losing electricity is the least of their problem right now.

It's very, very dangerous situation, whose effects may ripple through the entire world.

It's also about aquifers running out, wells have to be dug ever deeper, then they run out too, etc.

It's also about massive corruption, companies not following water regulations.

And it's also about regions that used to be very forested but now are all concrete, which leads to less rain falling there.

There are often threads on the /r/india subreddit, this one was a few days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/4c8ecf/india_is_dyin...

Yet another reason to relocate to Kerala.

Visited some relatives in Kerala. It seems municipality are pumping sea water. Pipe water is salty.

I'm not going to read the article because the question as a title suggests to me that the journalist could have done more research.

That aside, this reminds me of the UK which regularly has floods in winter, and droughts in summer. Now if we have too much water in one season, and too little water in another, surely it's not too hard to figure out a common solution to both. I call it a "dam". Are there reasons the UK doesn't do this? Too much focus on trains?

> surely it's not too hard to figure out a common solution to both

If only we had expert engineers on civil projects, civil engineers if you will to look at this stuff eh.

1) We don't have that many rivers that would suit having a dam put in.

2) We are very densely populated, daming a river would require moving large numbers of people (time consuming, costly and likely to end up in court).

3) The areas most effected by drought are the south-east, they also get way less rainfall in summer and winter than the north-west which floods a lot more.

http://www.coolgeography.co.uk/GCSE/Year11/Weather,Climate/R...

4) Population pressure on water is vastly higher in the south east than in the North and south west.

5) Assuming you could dam the rivers and have a water reserve the most sensible place to do it would be the north-west, you then have to get the water hundreds and hundreds of miles down into the south east (which has been proposed but moving water is expensive relative to it's commodity cost, a 1m cube of water ways exactly 1 tonne).

6) The UK idea of a drought is very different to what most regions would call a drought, only in the absolutely worst years do we go beyond a host pipe ban and even then only for a few weeks.

7) Given the population density and the difficulty of moving vast quantities of water you'd need to put the dams in near to the densest population since the human impact of a damn is proportional to the population density that's not great

8) Dams cause widespread ecological change (sometimes a net benefit sometimes not).

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