India's Water Crisis Our World

BBC News it is time for our world, we go to India, where the battle

for water is threatening to tear the country apart. In India, water

is sacred. Its rivers are revealed as bestowing blessings. But now

they are polluted, wells are running dry, conflicts are breaking

out. The battle for water is rocking this vast country. We get

adequate rain across most parts of the country. The challenges of

managing the water in the way that actually reaches the people who

really need it. India's water table is steadily falling year by year,

driving whole villages deeper into poverty. In overcrowded cities,

water is now so precious it has spawned a thriving black market as

clashes break out between those with water and those with first.

The fight for water is a fight which will be fought in every

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 55 seconds

street in every town, and it's She grew up here in one of India's

most holy places. She renounced the world, devoting herself to Hinduism.

But today she is speaking out, part of a fierce religious lobby calling

on the government to protect the This is now one of the most

polluted rivers in the world. Hindus still flock to these waters

2 bay leaves, wash their clothes, and cremate their dead. But rubbish

is on the banks, and every day millions of litres of sewage flow

into the Ganges and its tributaries, most of it untreated. Even the flow

of the river is being stunted. Large dams diverting water to

India's cities have reduced the She stays optimistic. But in the

past, government promises to clean up the Ganges have made little

difference to the decline of these holy waters. The River Ganges is

central to Indian life, and it has been for centuries. But now its

health is under threat in a way it never has been before. That's a

powerful symbol of a much greater water crisis which is gripping the

The north-western state of Rajasthan has long been semi-desert.

For centuries villagers here found their own solutions, digging wells

and storing water. But in the last five-ten years, Wells and hand

pumps have started to run dry. The water table is falling rapidly, in

places by more than a metre every In this village, they have used the

same well for generations. But it's almost exhausted, and the deeper

they dig for water, the worse the The wells in some villages still

have some water, but the villagers here say that the level of water

has fallen dramatically in recent years. We are having to lower this

bucket at least 20 metres to try to The lady is saying that when the

water finally comes it is very bad quality. The villagers say it is so

that they think it is making them ill. -- so bad. The elderly now

have a new sickness, a crippling bone disease. They suspect it is

fluorosis, a growing problem in India, caused by water extracted

from too deep in the ground with too much natural fluoride. In other

villages near by, there's no water left at all. They depend entirely

on tankers driving in water from outside. It's big business. They

take it in turns to pay, spending a 5th of their income just on water.

Water is so scarce now, they can't afford to irrigate the fields. So

they've gone down to one harvest a year in the rainy season. The rest

of the time the fields lie barren, and all this is pushing them

further into poverty. This water crisis is fuelling migration from

the villages to slums in the big cities. It's one of the main

reasons people leave. But what a find in their new homes is all too

A government tanker outside a slum in the capital, Delhi. Its arrival

sparks a desperate scramble for water in blistering heat. It's

every man for himself. And every It's their only source of clean

water. No one knows for sure when the next one will come, so the

whole tanker emptys in less than ten minutes. And in the chaos far

too much is simply wasted. For the average family living in a slum

like this in Delhi, what are the biggest problems they face in terms

of water? They don't have any plants... This woman runs a small

charity called Force. She knows too well how scarce the water is and

how poorly managed it is. Water is piped under the slum to more

affluent districts, where they can be poured dig down to those pipes

and tap into them illegally -- the poor. They have created a system to

take water. They create the leaks. This is the source of contamination.

This is treated waste water with no pathogens, nothing. But when you

open up the pipeline like this, all of this contaminated water gets

into the pipeline. It is bad for them but it's bad for everybody

down the line. Water is so precious it spawned a vicious black market.

It is illegal of course and controlled by armed men. This is

supposed to be a free public facility, a ball well put in by the

government to provide poor-quality water for toilets. But local

racketeers have taken control. They sell this as drinking water. This

is actually a well-managed system, commercially operated. Illegal?

Completely illegal. Each pipeline leaves either to one house or a

cluster of houses, all of which have agreed on a common time for

which they will take water. The person who manages this will switch

this on for 15 minutes so that household will get water for 15

minutes, then he switches it off and switches somebody else's on.

Depending on how much money you pay, the time for which you get water is

how it is fixed. In a way this works, but it must also give the

people in charge a lot of power. If they fall out with you they can

switch off your water. Absolutely. We work with the women in this area

and we face this problem. Often the man can threaten the woman if they

go against their decisions. What water

water supplied free, yet the people are having to pay for it? Not only

do they make enough money to pay salary of 4000 rupees to one person,

in addition they have a bank account in which they keep the

profits. This is all shared between that set of two or three people.

She left her village in Rajasthan because of the lack of water. Here

in the Delhi slums, she buys it through the same black market

system. They get water every third day, she says. Pipes to their home

And the children sometimes have stomach problems, she told me. Then

they boil the water for a while. She added, what else can you expect

in a place like this? About half of Delhi's rapidly expanding

population is poor. As they struggle to get enough water to

meet their basic daily needs, the rich by contrast have plenty. On

average, they use ten times as much water per person per day. That

situation where the haves and have- nots are living in close proximity

in the same city is causing growing social tensions. Most everyone

speaks of conflict over water. Even this woman who works in the slums

is anxious about how much she has compared to others. We have these

storage tanks on the rooftop. And there are another four on the

ground. Are they usually full? They are. Until a few years back, we did

not get enough water. So people would be fighting in the afternoon

for the extra water. I mean actual street fights for water. That was

happening all the time. This was on every street of every town. It is

already happening. It happens when a tanker comes here and there are

100 people climbing on top of the tanker. It is happening in front of

you. When water comes in the morning and there is someone

fighting with his neighbour for it. The government is aware that fights

about water are breaking out and look set to worsen. Sharp local

conflicts are already on the ground. They are a matter of real concern.

A state that wants to grow needs to look at water as well as land. Land

we are doing through aquisition. I think something very urgent needs

to be done about water. Some parts of India do have water. This is one

of India's most northern states, sharing a mountain border with

China. It is rich in natural beauty and its waters feed to the River

Ganges. But these resources are now being used, some say stolen, by

others. One of the government solutions to the water crisis is to

build a series of massive dams. This one at the foothills of the

Himalayas is one of the biggest to date. It is supplying water and

electricity for people across the whole of the north of India. From

its conception, it proved highly controversial. One reason is that

until five or six years ago, the land behind me was a town. When the

town disappeared beneath the water, some unlikely alliances were formed.

From furious environmentalists to religious groups opposed to this

diverting of water which would otherwise flow into the Ganges.

Campaigners say villagers are being forced to pay the price for other

people's development. Tens of thousands of people were displaced.

Those who were forced from their homes and villages were given

compensation. They do have new places to live. Many of them are

angry. This woman was one of the first to be moved almost 20 years

ago. She still has not adjusted. The soil is arid and sandy. She

does not have water to irrigate the Some of these villages still

struggle to work the dry land. Many have already given up. They have

sold their fields to developers and left for the cities. We are back in

the mountains overlooking the new Tehri dam reservoir. These families

lost their homes by the river. They depend on a pipe now. When I

arrived, the water was flowing but soon stopped. Sometimes, there is

none for three or four days. When This woman says she was offered re-

housing in this tin shack in New Tehri as a short-term measure. That

was 13 years ago. She is still here. In her old home, they lived near

the river and have plenty of clean The government made plans for many

more dams, but some of that work is now on hold in the face of

widespread opposition. Some officials say they are rethinking

the whole approach. We should first take up the renovation and repair

of projects on the ground. We should take up the completion of

projects and thirdly, we must radically transform the way the

water in these projects is managed. If we can do this, I think we would

Back in rural Rajestan, a very different solution is being

explored. R explored. Ringh thinks he has the answer to India's water

problems. His techniques sound simple. Firstly, stop overgrazing

and let plants grow back. Then build check dams. This is not a new

idea. This is an old idea. When the rain comes, these slow down the

flow, create pools and encourage the water to seep into the earth

and replenish ground stocks. Here, despite semi-desert conditions, he

has worked with the villagers for decades, building thousands of

small dams which take advantage of India has plenty of rain fall, he

argues. People have just forgotten how to harvest it. This is what

happens if you take those same basic principles and apply them on

a much bigger scale. 20 years ago, there was very little water here,

but they built a whole series of those stone barriers. It has

transformed the landscape and the This man is a water success story.

He left his land to work in the city because of the lack of water.

Now, he and his sons are back. see the water going down here.

built check dams and turned a piece of arid wasteland into a thriving

orchard with water to spare. Why is this issue about water coming to a

head at the moment? Because on the one hand, there is a lot of water.

And on the other hand, no water. There is mismanagement of the water.

It creates that difference. Some people are taking a lot of water

for drinking. But in rural India, there is no water. People are

walking hours and hours for water. Hours and hours. That is a real

crisis. Rajendra Singh wants the government's policy to focus on

India's grassroots. Projects like water harvesting must be localised,

he says. Carried out by the community for their benefit. That

way, they are motivated to repair and protect the structures. Back on

the banks of the Ganges, pilgrims gather. They travel here from

across the country to cleanse themselves in its waters and make

offerings. Many seem unaware that the future of their holy river is

threatened. For India, this is a defining moment. It is being torn

apart by tensions over water as never before. Between rich and poor,

cities and villages, those who have water and those who are struggling

The ancient fire ritual by the Ganges brings a moment of peace and

spiritual reflection. India's harmony is already shattered.