The government plans to more than triple waste water recycling by the end of the decade to 70 per cent, according to a federal government policy document dated Oct. 21, 2023 that listed priorities for the next five years.
Authorities also plan to cut the extraction of fresh water - ground water and surface water from rivers and lakes - to less than 50 per cent by the end of the decade from 66 per cent, the highest rate in the world, said the document, which has not been made public and was reviewed by Reuters.
Modi launched a near $50-billion programme in 2019 to provide all rural households with tap water. The government says it has now covered 77 per cent of more than 193 million such families, up from 17 per cent five years ago, but residents and experts say not all pipes have water.
It's raining all over India for the past two days and I'm hopeful that it calms down the problem of water shortage in cities for this year. Most of India's villages do not deal with the problem of water shortage because they are mostly settled in areas where there are rivers, lakes or mountains. It's the cities that are facing this problem critically as of now.
The city problem needs to be sorted out soon and only recycling water won't do much help. There is a great need to control the density of population which has reached to extreme levels in recent years.
My take on providing tap water to villages isn't very positive. An extensive plan of building water tanks in villages all over India has been ongoing since 2019. Not much effective everywhere. Why build a water tank in villages where underground water is hardly 10 to 20 feet below the surface! In my village people only use hand pumps extracted water for daily use. The water coming from tanks is wasted or used in some small scale farming. People thinking that water coming from overhead tanks is not as pure as water directly extracted through hand pumps. They may be right as we live in the plains the holy river Ganges whose water is so pious that it doesn't foul smell or get contaminated even you keep it for years!
Yes, government should try to rework about their strategy for how it's going to provide for water in farming needs. As farming is quite traditional in India, so much water goes waste while irrigating crops. There is definitely a need of much extensive plan for innovative farming. I think government isn't trying in the right direction.