Shimla’s Water Crisis and the Lazy Dependency on the Government
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The Mall Shimla: pic: The Hindu
(The story first appeared in Scroll.in, June 2018)
It is ironic that only a few weeks ago the viral post shared by Shimla residents was not “Stop visiting Shimla”, but a video of a deluge of water sweeping down The Mall Road.
Shimla region has good precipitation and is blessed with good rainfall even in summers. In May alone, it rained at least on four different occasions. On May 8th, the rain, accompanied by hail, was so heavy that the roofs of hundreds of houses leaked and water poured in sheets through the ceiling.
Yet Shimla always had a water problem. But more than that it has a laziness problem. Back in the day, in a boarding school here, on a bad water day, they would suspend the morning PT and march us with toothbrush and towel to brush and wash in the khuds below the school.
There was no water for the swimming pool so the solution was to not use it. It remained for the nine years I was there, as a dank, dark cesspool, collecting a medley of flotsam over the years.
Today many years later, the solution to Shimla’s water woes remain much the same. If there is no water, Shimlaities simply learn to live without it. They have gotten used to taking their bath in rotation, whenever the water comes, which is usually once in three days. They don’t grow plants, partly because the monkeys destroy them but mainly because where is the water to water them?
Shimla: pic: The Hindu
Last week, however, the water crisis became so worse that the seven- days- in a -row unwashed residents stormed the newly elected CM’s residence at midnight and raised a stink.
Shimla’s big folly, however is to assume that the government somehow has a magic solution to its water woes. Yes, of course, the Shimla Municipal Corporation could do better – least of all plug the leaks and save thousands of liters of water which is wasted each day. The Corporation could also ensure that the water it supplies is not contaminated- like it was in December 2015, when it supplied a toxic broth of sewage and potable water, killing over 10 people and infecting hundreds of others with jaundice.
Shimla and many other places around the globe are a growing evidence of climate change coupled with an exploding population. A town designed to house only 25 thousand people today houses about 2 lakh people. This population needs at least 44 million liters of water a day. It is unrealistic to assume that the Shimla Municipal Corporation can provide this huge amount of water even in a year of good snowfall and rain.
Shimla’s residents need to give up their hopeless dependency on the government and begin water conservation practices like harvesting and recycling water.
Shimla roofs are already sloping and have a drain. All that needs to be done, is to connect the down pipe to a storage tank. The rainwater can be filtered and pumped back to an overhead tank and can be used for all bathing and washing needs.
Shimla is blessed with good rains even in Summers
But Shimla residents somehow choose to live without water than harvest it.
A neighbor in Shimla scoffed at the idea of using rainwater when I offered to give her the surplus from my roof. The expectations from the government to provide clean drinking water are very strong. Even though time and again the corporation has let the residents down, often laying them up in hospitals or killing them with their supply, as it happened in 2015.
Just a month after the rebuff from the neighbor , a two year old skeleton of a four year old child (who had been kidnapped two years earlier) was found from a Corporation Tank.
Rainwater harvesting will immensely lessen the burden off this overstrained town. It will keep the Corporation from dredging the already drying streams and rivers. On paper, its compulsory for all Shimla hotels to harvest rainwater but to avoid the costs of a filtration plant most hotels fill their rainwater tanks with Municipal Corporation water. Very few have any recycling plants.
Forests and meadows are fast being encroached by apple orchardists
Compounding this are the rich apple orchardists in Shimla district who have illegally occupied large swathes of forest land to plant apple trees. (Thankfully they are now being evicted off it after an High Court order). The apple growers channel huge amounts of potable water from streams and rivulets for their pesticide sprays. An average orchardist sprays at least twice a month. In one year he draws over one lakh liters of water directly from a water source which is usually a natural spring or a forest rivulet.
If you apply that average to my village Ratnari, which has about 300 households, over 30 million liters of water is utilized here for the chemical sprays alone. Multiply that with the thousands of villages dotting Shimla district.
To add to this, new varieties of imported apple plants that become fruit bearing in a couple of years and are not labour intensive are coming into vogue. These plants have very shallow roots and require constant irrigation. Wealthy orchardist can easily dig water-harvesting tanks in sprawling land to fulfill any irrigation or spraying needs. But they prefer to petition the government to introduce water-lifting schemes, which further suck the already dying streams dry.
In a drive to make Shimla pretty, it’s a rule for every house to paint their roofs either red or green. Non-compliance is met with a fine and everyone complies. It takes about 30 thousand rupees to paint a roof. It takes less than half of that to harvest rainwater. Shimla needs to get its priorities right.
Heavy rains in May when the roofs of hundreds of houses leaked.