Bengaluru: To tackle the water scarcity issue in Bengaluru and nearby districts, the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) Friday introduced fines for non-essential use of potable water, including activities like car washing and gardening. The fines begin at Rs 5,000, with subsequent violations incurring an additional Rs 500 penalty each time.
This follows the Karnataka government’s initiative to regulate prices set by private entities for water tankers in Bengaluru.
On Thursday, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), the city’s civic body, set a maximum price of Rs 600 for 6,000-litre tankers delivering within a 5 km radius, and Rs 1,000 for 12,000-litre tankers. The charge goes up beyond the 5 km delivery radius.
Despite these measures, though, the larger crisis remains, say experts.
T.V. Ramachandra from the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) said that while the issue has always been present, prolonged droughts and extensive concretisation, compounded by a lack of political resolve to take mitigating measures, have exacerbated the situation.
“Land cover has changed over the past five decades. In the 1970s, there was 68 percent green cover in the Bengaluru area and less than 8 percent of the surface was paved. In 2023 or 2024, however, this has changed with paved surfaces now occupying 86 percent, while vegetation accounts for a mere 3 to 4 percent,” Ramchandra told ThePrint.
Concretisation, he said, has restricted rainwater from entering the lower layers of the ground, adversely impacting recharge of groundwater tables. By IISc estimates, nearly half of Bengaluru depends on ground water.
As native rivers like Vrushabhavathi have been reduced to mere drains, the city now relies on drawing fresh water from the Cauvery River, located nearly 100 km away, depriving neighbouring districts of their water resources to satisfy the ever-growing thirst of India’s IT capital.
Decades of unplanned and unregulated growth, rapid erosion of green cover, overexploitation of natural resources, concretisation, corruption and encroachment of lakes are some of the reasons Bengaluru has been pushed to the brink of an unprecedented water crisis.
Speaking to media persons Saturday, Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar said, “About 50 pecent of the borewells in the city have dried up. We have decided to take over thousands of private water tankers to supply water for water sources outside the city. We have left the pricing to officials as factors like distance travelled determine costs. Unused milk tankers will be used to ferry water.”
“The media is raising an alarm. It is a crisis indeed when a large number of borewells have failed. We have taken steps to address this. The public must not use water wastefully for washing cars and others. It is important that people understand the value of water. This is the reason why we are proposing the Mekedatu project,” he added, referring to the proposal of constructing a balancing reservoir across the Cauvery River.
Asked why the government is not able to get water while private water tankers are managing large supplies, he said, “Private water tankers supply water from private borewells while government supplies from drinking water units.”
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Depleting resources
On 6 March, the residents of Wellington Park, an upscale residential complex in Jalahalli in North Bengaluru, had received a message on their WhatsApp group. “Urgent: Water Conservation Alert”, the heading said, in capital letters.
The management of the complex informed its residents that there was a water crisis since BWSSB had “abruptly” reduced water pressure in its supply.
“In light of this, we urgently appeal to each resident to use water wisely. Your cooperation is crucial in navigating this challenging period,” said the message, which also explicitly stated that the property manager will monitor water use.
This step was made necessary since water tanker operators — a cartel of sorts in Bengaluru — had started demanding more than double its usual Rs 600-800 for 6,000-8,000 litres of water, with some going as high as Rs 2,500-3,000 depending on how soon these housing complexes wanted water to be delivered. This was leading to operators rechanneling their tankers to those with deep pockets and, in the process, delaying deliveries to smaller apartments or independent houses.
Meanwhile, in Ramagondanahalli, an erstwhile village in the Whitefield locality, tankers line up to fill water from several supply taps. Nearly 150 loads are ferried out of this village, no bigger than a large residential complex, every day.
“We used to go swimming in any one of the 50 open wells in our village or the neighbouring one in 2008-09. Now all wells are dry or closed, and borewells have been dug up in its place. Earlier we used to get water at 150 feet, now even at 1,500 ft, there’s only dust,” a young villager said to ThePrint on condition of anonymity.
The person running the business is not keen on sharing information and multiple complaints to authorities about him over-exploiting ground have yielded no results.
Ramagondanahalli was one of the 110 villages absorbed into Bengaluru in 2006, contributing to the city’s expansion. It later evolved into a lucrative hub as the real estate market flourished around one of Bengaluru’s earliest technology corridors in Whitefield.
Encroachments, concretisation
Bengaluru receives an annual rainfall of around 900 mm, yet a significant portion of this is diverted into drains.
While the extensive stormwater drain (SWD) network was initially intended to direct this water into natural water bodies, it now contributes to flooding events. Encroachments along these drainage lines compel the water to overflow and flood the basements of apartment buildings and commercial complexes that stand on what were once valleys and lakes, said experts.
“Bengaluru’s water problem may seem contradictory. In the height of summers, borewells and lakes dry up and taker supply water from afar (sic). During monsoons, large parts of the city face severe flooding,” said a 2023 report titled ‘How water flows through Bengaluru’, by WELL Labs, a research and innovation centre at the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR).
The 2021 floods had inundated several parts of Bengaluru, especially localities like Mahadevapura and Bommanahalli that house technology corridors.
Shashank Palur, hydrologist at WELL Labs, said that the per capita consumption of water in urban areas is around 150 litres per day, but Bengaluru, like other urban cities, does not have equitable distribution, forcing some to survive on far less compared to others who can afford to wash their cars daily.
Bengaluru has a core area which does not see flooding or droughts largely since these are planned neighbourhoods unlike the newer orbital localities. “Unplanned areas on the exterior circle are prone to floods and droughts,” he said.
The widespread leakage of the scarce Cauvery water in core areas feeds the groundwater table, while those on the periphery are forced to rely on tankers.
Of the 1,900 millions of litres per day (MLD) of wastewater generated in the city, about 800 MLD is sent to fill up tanks and lakes in neighbouring districts, while Bengaluru residents consume more freshwater.
Lake rejuvenation, say experts, has become a money-making programme with large water bodies like Bellandur foam up due to industrial effluent and sewage water flowing directly into them.
But an expanding city — which went from covering around 300 square km to nearly 800 square km in 2006 when the BMP became the BBMP — has seen large water bodies being lost to encroachments and being replaced with housing and other development, restricting natural percolating mechanisms and creating new problems.
“There is degradation in the Cauvery catchment. There’s less than 18 percent forest cover in the state, there’s erratic rainfall coupled with climate change…. even in the Cauvery basin, there isn’t enough water. In Bengaluru, we did not allow the water that was there to percolate,” said Palur.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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