How Mumbai neglected its groundwater – only to become dependent on it

In April, Mumbai’s municipal corporation invoked the Disaster Management Act, 2005, to manage a crisis sparked by a strike by the city’s water tanker association.

Many Mumbai residents, living both in buildings and informal slums, institutions and businesses, routinely depend on tankers for water – a fact that became even more apparent when the association’s members went off the road to protest against a slew of new regulations.

To meet the challenge, the municipality issued a notification requisitioning private tankers, their drivers, cleaners and wells and borewells across the city.

The association withdrew the strike after five days, but the respite it offers does not address the core problem: that Mumbai’s water supply is unequal, inefficient and inadequately planned, ignoring locally available groundwater resources.

In fact, Mumbai has access to sufficient water reserves. It is building wastewater treatment plants to boost its supply of non-potable water – even though that is what tankers primarily provide.

The commercial capital’s reliance on tankers is a man-made crisis that reflects the misplaced priorities of its administrators.

Policy neglect of groundwater

The immediate trigger for the tanker strike in April was a set of regulatory conditions introduced by the Central Ground Water Authority in 2020.

As part of the new regulations, all borewell owners, if they wanted to...

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