Visiting India?

If one is visiting India, the best way to play safe is to use bottled water initially. If you are out shopping and the merchant offer you opened water in glasses, just decline politely. Instead you can purchase canned/bottled sodas or juices, bottled water. If you are living with your family, or some one... check with them the water quality. Most of the times they will recommend to used boiled water for first few days.

Well, when I go there (New Delhi), If I am at home, I drink the regular water coming out of the faucets coz I know that there is no problem with it. But if I'm outside, I buy bottled water too. If I'm visiting relatives, I will drink the water available in their house except for those area where I know that there is no proper sewage drainage and they have a pump installed to get the underground water. All in all, it is just a chance that when one is at the wrong place at a wrong time and you happen to get a glass of water not so fit to drink. Of course if you like eating at those road side joints (I dont blame you as those chats and tikkis are so tempting and mouth watering) who have one bucket of water in which the clean all thier plates, you are cooked anyways, no matter if you drink bottled water or what ever.

Happy new year to all....

Ground Water Contamination - II

Pollution of groundwater resources has become a major problem today in India. The pollution of air, water, and land has an affect on the pollution and contamination of groundwater. The solid, liquid, and the gaseous waste that is generated, if not treated properly, results in pollution of the environment; this affects groundwater too due to the hydraulic connectivity in the hydrological cycle. For example, when the air is polluted, rainfall will settle many pollutants on the ground, which can then seep into and contaminate the groundwater resources. Water extraction without proper recharge and leaching of pollutants from pesticides and fertilizers into the aquifers has polluted groundwater supplies. In addition, leachates from agriculture, industrial waste, and the municipal solid waste have also polluted surface- and ground-water. Some 45 million people the world over are affected by water pollution marked by excess fluoride, arsenic, iron, or the ingress of salt water.

It is important to realize that groundwater is not a resource that could be utilized unmindfully simply because it is available in abundant quantities. Problems and issues such as water logging, salinity, agricultural toxins, and industrial effluents, all need to be properly looked into. Other than legislation and checks to conserve and improve the quality of groundwater, society itself plays a very important role. During the last decade there has been a rising awareness among the common people on the need for conservation and development of groundwater. Water use has to be integrated effectively with water regeneration, as was done in many traditional technologies.

The above information has been quoted from the site edugreen.teri.res.in

Ground water contamination

In India, the Water (Prevention and Control) Act was passed by the Parliament in 1974, and by 1990 all the states adopted the act. In 1986, the Environment Protection Act was passed by the Parliament. Under both these acts, the states and the central government developed environmental norms for air emissions and waste water discharge for different types of sources.

The problem is not only that the Govt. of india work progress at snails pace, but also a lot of construction in India is illegal, i.e. houses have been built without permit. So in Govt. of India's files they donot exsist and therefore, clean drinking water, and sewage disposal is not on its list for such areas. These houses donot get pipes running from a water treatment plant, but the house owners get the water by getting a pump installed at their premises there by extracting ground water. Now that the sewage in those areas is not properly disposed, it seaps into the ground water there by contaminating it. When the house owner pumps out the water, the contaminated water gets used in the house for cooking, drinking, washing and all the other activities. This is how it works magic when it reaches your stomach. Same is true for a lots of road side dhabas, eatery joints. They also use water pumped out of ground where the possibility of ground water contamination is high due to sewage not being properly disposed off there by making people sick who eat at such joints.

More on it later....

Water quality in India

The National Water Policy has assigned the highest priority for drinking water supply needs followed by irrigation, hydro-power, navigation and industrial and other uses. In the successive five year plans and the intervening annual plans, efforts have been made to rapidly develop water supply and sanitation systems. In the context of the "International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade", the Government of India launched the decade programmes in April, 1981 with a view to achieving population coverage of 100 percent water supply facilities in urban and rural areas, 80 per cent sanitation facilities in urban areas and 25 per cent sanitation facilities in rural areas respectively by the end of the decade i.e. March, 1991. However, due to financial and other constraints the targets originally set for the decade were scaled down to 90 per cent in the case of urban water supply and 85 per cent in the case of rural water supply, 50 per cent in the case of urban sanitation and 5 per cent in the case of rural sanitation respectively. As per policy adopted provision for drinking water is to be made in all water resources projects. The drinking water requirements of most of the mega cities/cities in India are met from reservoirs of irrigation/multi-purpose schemes existing in near by areas and eve by long distance transfer. Delhi getting drinking water from Tehri Dam and Chennai city from Krishna Water through Telugu Ganga Project are typical example.

(Above info. is quoted from a Govt. of India website.)

Water quality in India

I am trying to get information from different source and put it up here as I see lots of people have misconception about water quality in India.... more on this ASAP