Your big city and mine are facing big problems. Maybe the problem of Bengaluru is a whole lot bigger than that of Indore and Rajkot today, but the problems do potentially exist for every big city if you look beneath the earth we live upon. Of all the problems we face, the one that is about potable water is the most difficult one.
Bengaluru is suddenly in the limelight for the wrong reasons. There is an acute shortage of potable water during the summer months, starting yesterday. All of a sudden, our bore-wells are drying up without enough rains to feed them. Ground water is showing a nasty and elusive trend of being more difficult to reach. While in the early days of bore-well craze, water was struck at 80-100 feet depth, today’s water table is getting more and more elusive even at 1,600 feet.
The primary source of riverine water, feeding the city through a network of canals and reservoirs, is under stress. The newer areas of the city do not have access to Cauvery or Arkavathy water, and a whole new city has been built upon the seasonally hollow foundation of a bore-well network that is acting difficult to tame and fill. And this is a tall city—a city full of flats and apartments that define the new image of Bengaluru as a city of tall stature. The city is, however, running dry. For a few months, at least.
This niggling water problem of Bengaluru belongs to the city for now. It can belong to any other big city with a big population as well. If I am to start tracing how cities typically manage their water needs, the best of them have a source of drinking water that comes from the rivers and streams. Where the stream ends begins the planned up-stream water supply system of the city that establishes a channel of supply into storage tanks that re-channel the water as per need to the end home. The Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) manages this system for the city. Do not ask me why “water supply” and “sewerage” go together.
Where direct supply of Cauvery water is not possible for the city, builders of the new city have tapped groundwater reserves that get perennially replenished by a good monsoon. Apartment complexes built in newer areas have tapped into the bore-well as a way of getting to ‘easy water’ beneath the areas where these apartments exist. And then comes the next category of dwellings in a typically unplanned city. This category is the most impoverished one on water. It has no direct Cauvery water, and neither is it blessed to be sitting on a bore-well possibility zone. This category depends wholly on water tankers that bring in water on a daily or alternate-day basis, as the demand may be.
So what’s your problem, Bengaluru?
The city today is host to 142,00,000 people and their daily need for water. Water to drink, water to cook, water to bathe with, water to wash our cars, and to water our potted plants in balconies and the private gardens of the privileged few. I am not even stepping on to the terrain of the corporate need for water, and the need for water that pertains to the hospitality and entertainment sector, the sprawling golf courses of Bengaluru included.
We need water. We need water right through the year. The current water shortage that is affecting the city is a temporary one. One that has bitten us this summer. One that promises to keep biting us every summer for 2-3 months, I am told. Did we not see this coming? Apparently not. Even if we did see it coming, there is a lag in the planning cycle that has led to this pass. The Cauvery Phase 5 project’s progress has been slower than it should have been. This project promises to take care of the city’s needs for a while to come, beginning May 2024. We are told it might take care of our water woes for the next several years. After that, what?
In a completely haywire weather environment that is affecting our summers, winters and monsoon patterns, our big cities are going to be overtly dependant on rain. Rain that will fill up our bore-wells to do all that we happily do without a care for water. We are going to be a progressively rain-dependant people in the big city.
As Bengaluru grapples with its shortage, do I want to be a part of the problem or the solution? Let me attempt to be a part of the latter. If there is one solution that I can think of, it is as simple or complex as the words aggregation and disaggregation are.
Big cities need to redefine their spaces and their needs. One big city cannot bear the weight of all its population endlessly. Bengaluru, for instance, is a magnet city today. People from all over the country and from all across the world want to come to the city. Some come as tourists, some to work here, some to settle and some to invest. The city is growing by night. This magnet city is actually increasing its weight and woes by night. As the population burden increases, both hard and soft infrastructure are not able to keep pace. The city is growing vertically now, which indeed has endless possibilities. As the height of our buildings grows, under the ground, the depth at which water can be found grows in the opposite direction.
The city’s need of water, as calculated to date, is going awry. Are we over-drawing already? Bengaluru cannot aggregate into a bigger-and-bigger city anymore. It needs to disaggregate. Let us remember, water will not come where the people are. People will instead need to go where the water is. Big cities need to de-cluster. Big cities need to re-assemble where the water is. The old dictum says it all: if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
A question: is it time to de-magnetise Bengaluru? Consciously, with a yen to stay competitive, alive and kicking?
Harish Bijoor
Brand Guru & Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults
(Views are personal)
(harishbijoor@hotmail.com)