In an era when “Har Ghar Jal” has become a flagship slogan of national achievement, the Supreme Court’s recent refusal to entertain a public interest litigation on bottled drinking water standards should give us all pause. The court’s characterisation of the plea as “luxury litigation”, something unworthy of judicial time when people supposedly still lack basic drinking water, unintentionally exposes the stark gap between policy narratives and lived realities in India today.
The case in question involved a petition urging the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to revise permissible levels of antimony and Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) in packaged drinking water closer to international benchmarks. These substances are not esoteric pollutants found only in laboratory texts; they are chemicals used in plastics (specifically PET bottles) that leach into packaged water and have documented risks to cardiovascular, respiratory, and other health outcomes.
Yet, when presented with scientific concerns linked to everyday health, the SC responded with questions about where India’s drinking water even is, and whether bottled water standards matter when people are supposedly thirsty for any water at all. It is important to note here that the plea did not seek to elevate packaged water above public supply, but to ensure that where the state permits its sale, it protects public health from preventable harm.
However, this judicial response is striking when placed alongside the government’s own claims on water access. According to official figures, more than 81 per cent of rural households now supposedly receive clean tap water under the Jal Jeevan Mission. The apex court’s assertion that drinking water itself remains largely unavailable directly unsettles that claim. The contradiction is difficult to ignore. If access has indeed expanded so dramatically, why is the assurance of safety framed as premature? And if the reality is still so dire that safe water can be dismissed as a luxury, then the triumphal narrative surrounding “Har Ghar Jal” deserves far greater scrutiny. The point here is not to adjudicate the success or failure of the Jal Jeevan Mission, but to underline the inconsistency in institutional narratives.
The top court’s framing inadvertently imposes a problematic binary - basic water access versus water quality. In that, the logic is a bit like saying we should stop inspecting the safety of buses because some people still walk long distances to work. Or for that matter imagine telling the people of Haryana or UP worried about air pollution that their concerns are elitist because Delhi breathes even dirtier air. The existence of a larger crisis cannot be an excuse to ignore preventable harm.
Moreover, the idea that “rural or poor”citizens are somehow insulated from quality issues because they depend onground or public sources and that “nothing happens to them” is equally troubling. The ongoing water crisis in Indore that claimed around 17 lives so far narrates a different reality. Or for that matter the groundwater contamination, from agricultural runoff to industrial pollutants, as well as fluoride, arsenicand uranium toxicity in water is a well-documented crisis in many parts of the country affecting both rural and urban populations alike. Simply put, public health risks do not respect simplistic classifications of rural versus urban; they accumulate where oversight is weak and standards are lax.
The Supreme Court’s comments also reflect a broader cultural tension about who gets to define what counts as legitimate concern. Labelling a petition that focuses on water quality standards as elitist or urban-centric runs the risk of silencing valid and objective scientific and legal questions about health and safety. To suggest that the state’s obligation to protect public health is dispensable until basic access is perfected is to deprive statutory frameworks of their meaning.This framing also ignores the reality of water consumption today. India’s packaged drinking water market is worth US$ 3.6 billion and projected to reach US$ 6.5 billion by 2032 and it is not confined to urban elites. A significant share of its consumers is in rural and semi-rural areas, often turning to packaged water precisely because other sources are unreliable or unsafe.
What is especially striking is that the petitioners demand in this case was not radical or detached from Indian law. Section 18(2) of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 explicitly requires that food safety standards in India be framed with due regard to international standards and practices where they exist, unless there is a clear scientific justification for deviation or a conscious choice to adopt a different level of protection.
By treating safety as a concern that must wait its turn, the court normalises a hierarchy of rights in which protection from preventable harm becomes optional rather than foundational. This is not a question of urban versus rural or luxury versus deprivation, but whether the law recognises safe drinking water as a basic expectation wherever it is consumed. When judicial reasoning dismisses safety as indulgence, it risks shrinking the very idea of justice to bare survival, rather than dignity protected by law.
The author is a Kerala-based public policy analyst focusing on environmental governance and public health in India. Views are personal