Sometimes the most basic problems are the toughest to solve. So it is with India and water. We take clean water for granted, but contaminated water helps kill more than two million Indian children a year. The government there has been pouring resources into water projects, but has little to show for it. That's because the solution to the water crisis hinges on solutions to many other dysfunctional Indian institutions.
First, the water bureaucracy itself would have to be reformed. There is little accountability and lots of corruption and incompetence, as is found in many Indian government institutions. To solve the water problem, India must first succeed in doing what it hasn't been able to do anywhere else: reform the government.
Second, the water crisis cannot be addressed until major cities like Delhi redevelop their massive slums. Right now, 40% of the population of Delhi -- 6 million people! -- live in slums. These are illegal settlements with no sewer or water service. All the trash, human and animal waste, and garbage from these settlements ends up in the Yamuna River. Before the Yamuna can be cleaned up, these settlements must be hooked up to sewers. The people living there must have garbage service. But laying sewer lines in slums would amount to government recognition that the slum dwellers have a legal right to the land. You can see the dilemma.
Third, the government basically delivers water for free, well below the true cost of maintaining and expanding the nation's water infrastructure. Addressing this problem would require a political will that has been sorely lacking.
The one encouraging sign is that awareness seems to be growing that water is a problem. The question is whether the solutions will come before it is too late to act.
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Comments
Darren,
As you say, "toughest to solve" is so very true. An Indian government administrator explained to me that, yes, 80% of disease in the developing world is waterborne and that it may account for as much as 90% of hospital occupancy in India and 90% of India's public health care budget, running into the billions.
Unfortunately, the apparent answer to divert post-illness treatment expenditures into prevention through provision of safe drinking water is not so simple. Much of the public health budget is fixed with facilities and staff to be supported. Relatively little in comparison is spent as variable costs, such as on medicines.
It is much like a person carrying too much debt at very high interest who obviously needs to pay down the debt. But if debt service is consuming all disposable income, how can the cycle of funneling an excessive portion of earnings into interest expense be brought to an end? The answer unfortunately is, "A little bit at a time" and this will take a long time to resolve.
For India's poor, it is much the same. They cannot afford to do much on their own when earning perhaps less than $1 to $2 per day in rural villages across the country. Few if any choices are available at an affordable level for their income. Plus, even if safe water were available for only a few rupees a day, there is a lack of awareness and education of how this would help them and that they should be willing to pay to sustain such accessibility.
The only entities capable of providing such access to safe drinking water are NGOs and the government. The former struggle with implementation and sustainability. The latter is still trying to figure out how to carve out some of their health care budget to address water issues and break the cycle of disease and poverty.
There are no easy answers. Little by little, innovative technology lowers the cost per liter of purifying drinking water and clever, more efficient distribution reaches more rural villages. Jobs programs, micro-finance, education, and donor or subsidy programs all chip away slowly at this enormous issue. But sadly, it does look like this is going to be a problem in India and many other parts of the world for many years to come.