Bengaluru’s Water Crisis May Reflect an Even Larger One

Published in Mint

Mar 14, 2024

Image by Rajesh Balouria from Pixabay.

One of the most alarming articles ever written about the epic mismanagement of our major cities appeared this week. It was about Bengaluru’s water crisis. Written by two researchers at Well Labs, Rashmi Kulranjan and Shashank Palur, its matter-of-fact tone was inversely proportional to the article’s devastating conclusions. Sometimes, numbers speak louder than words. Consider that the city’s once well-managed lake systems, which have partly been paved over to make room for housing complexes, malls and the like, could still hold 41,600 million litres of water, but the researchers estimate that “1,000 million litres of sewage is released into lakes every day making it unsuitable for use as water.” This misuse also raises the risk of flooding. “When piped water supply was introduced, lakes began to lose their importance,” the authors observed in The Hindu.

 

Acknowledgements

Rahul Jacob for Mint.

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