Water mafia milks dry Delhi for big bucks (New Indian Express The Sunday Standard 24 June 2012)

The city would have enough water if its pipelines didn’t leak, and if there was no tanker mafia making money off the scarcity. “Delhi needs to invest its funds if the problem has to be solved,” says Manoj Mishra of Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan. Mishra says that currently Delhities use fresh water for all purposes. But fresh water is needed for drinking, not for watering plants, flushing toilets or bathing. A policy decision was taken by the Sheila Dikshit government to recycle water in 1999, but it has remained just that, a policy statement. “In the summer seasons some areas of the city do not get water. And then all kinds of excuses are provided by the state government about Haryana not supplying enough water. They are trying to shift the blame,” says Mishra.

What’s getting obfuscated in all this fingerpointing is the water mafia. Tankers rush in where DJB doesn’t bother to tread, furiously sucking up groundwater to sell at exorbitant rates, anything between Rs 1,500 and 4,000 per 10,000-litre tanker. Time and again allegations have been levelled about a ‘nexus’ between certain vested interests and politicians who ensure that water supply to an area is disrupted so that the tanker mafia can move in make hay while the water taps go dry. At these rates and consumption figures that go up to 400 litres per capita in the city’s tony neighbourhoods, this tanker business has a annual turnover that runs into thousands of crores. The water business is a cow too rich to be left unmilked, and local muscle, including the legislative variety, has cornered this lucrative business across the city. Private tankers brazenly fill up at DJB boosting stations across the city, and it’s an open secret that some of the pipelines are damaged on purpose just so this business goes on as usual. And everyone, from senior politicans to street-level activists, fears them, naming them but keeping their own names secret. Haryana can’t be the fall guy; the state supplies Delhi with water at the flow rate of  610 cusecs. Besides, there are 900 water bodies in the city and no less than 400 wetlands, according to a survey carried out by NGO Tapas. The Delhi Government surveys peg the number of water bodies in the city at 629. A 2011 report of the Delhi government’s environment department says: “Most of the water bodies are village ponds located in the revenue area of the villages. The village ponds are mostly created water bodies having very small localized catchments for gathering rainwater. Most ponds present a picture of neglect. Some of the ponds have become absorbed in the urban areas or village abadi area where they have been used to discharge local waste waters and thus become cesspools. A few lakes remain. Most prominent are Bhalaswa lake, a freshwater lake on river floodplain. Another is Sanjay lake in East Delhi. Najafgarh Jheel which used to be largest lake in the area now mainly lies on the Haryana side of the interstate border. Jehangirpuri Marshes are the largest water body in Delhi.”

Water harvesting, recycling and other such strategies can help parched Delhi, but the elephant in the room is the mismanagement of the water compounded by misuse and overuse, and exploited by the water mafia. Till these three Ms are addressed, Delhi’s water  troubles are only going to get worse.