Santosh Singh, a resident of Sangam Vihar and a worker at confectioner’s shop, was threatened with a gun the last time he talked about water availability in his locality. All he had done to get such a treatment was to seek his neighbour’s support to ask Delhi Jal Board (DJB) to provide a new tubewell for area.
The rogues from Delhi’s tanker mafia, which is paid a handsome amount by the residents for installing a borewell, sarcastically asked his wife whether Santosh had life insurance. He was unable to do anything to get water from DJB and his wife, till today, has to go and fetch water from private tankers amidst catcalls. At times, even glass shards are thrown at his doorstep by the mafia men. Of the Rs 6,000 that Santosh earns, he is forced to pay Rs 400 to the mafia for getting access to water extracted from ‘government’ borewells.
Kejriwal on Monday announced the supply of 20 kilolitres a month (almost 700 litres a day) of free water for Delhi households from January 1, 2014. The decision came after a meeting with the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) officials. Vijay Kumar, the new CEO of DJB, told reporters that 20 kilolitres of free water per month and 670 litres per day will be provided to households with working meters. People who use more this will have to pay for the total amount of water they consume. The supply of water under this plan would continue till March 2014.
But the Aam Aadmi Party leader's decision means that water would be free for Santosh’s employer who stays in Kalkaji, but Santosh will still keep paying Rs 400 or even double the amount just because he does not have a pipeline water connection provided by the government.
The party manifesto also says that water is the biggest concern for the “aam aadmi” in Delhi as more than five million people do not get piped water in their homes. Kejriwal has assured that all households in Delhi will get water in their homes, irrespective of their location in slums, authorised or unauthorised colonies, and has clarified that a solution will be found for those who do not have piped water supply. This, however, may mean that till the way is not found, the water sop will be given to people who are better off while the "aam aadmi" would continue to face water scarcity and end up paying a lot for the water he gets.
Decoding the AAP promise
Considering that the average number of people in a family is five, AAP promise means 140 litres per capita per day (LPCD) and 21kilolitre (kl) consumption per household per month. A household with this amount of consumption per month falls in the third slab of water tariff, which will now be subsidised.
According to government estimates, 30 per cent of Delhi’s 22 million population lives in urban villages and unauthorized colonies (called jhuggi jhopri or JJ clusters) and these areas do not have an official water-pipe connection. Delhi has 14,000 km of extensive water pipeline network. But, only 68 per cent of city’s 2.5 million households s i.e. 1.7 million households have piped water connections while the rest of 38 per cent remains unreached. About 25 per cent of the city area remains uncovered by piped water supply.
According to the recent National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) survey, 15.6 per cent of Delhi's urban households and 29.7 per cent of its rural ones don't get sufficient drinking water throughout the year.
The areas which do not have pipelines meet their water requirement through handpumps and tankers. Also, there are a few newly developed localities which do not have an official pipeline yet. Here, the demand is met invariably through tankers or groundwater. This inequity in distribution leads to inequity in supply. The per capita availability of water in the city varies from shocking 29 LPCD in parts of outer Delhi such as Mehrauli to as high as 509 LPCD in the posh residential areas falling under the administration of New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC).
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report, released in April 2013, had exposed the poor provision of public services to residents of Delhi and also pointed out at the inequity in water supply. It stated that 24.8 per cent of Delhi’s population is being supplied 3.82 litres per capita daily, which is far less than the minimum stipulated average of 40 litres, established by the World Health Organisation. When the CAG carried out a study of the command area of the Nangloi plant, one of the six treatment plants for Delhi, it found the prevalence of iniquitous supply, ranging from three litres to more than 220 litres per person per day. DJB had defended this by stating that “large number of unauthorized growth in unplanned colonies in west and southwest Delhi has led to an unrationalised supply of water.”
| Skewed water supply | |
| Per capita supply per day | Population served |
| Below 20 litres | 573,000 |
| 20 to 50 litres | 879,000 |
| 50 to 75 litres | 332,000 |
| 75 to 100 litres | 134,000 |
| 100 to 150 litres | 40,000 |
| Above 150 litres | 390,000 |
| Source: CAG Audit Report No. 2 of the year 2013 | |