Water Woes in Bengaluru Shattering the Peaceful Life of Bengalureans

The city of pink blossom which is the home for most of the tech hubs of India, Bengaluru is becoming Rajasthan gradually as the summer is approaching. The prowess of silicon-valley of India is being overshadowed by the ongoing water crisis which is prevalent in most of the renowned and populated areas of Bengaluru. According to the report, Bengaluru is declared as the 2^nd largest arid region of India after Rajasthan. The delayed or scanty rainfall is one of the major reasons of Bengaluru’s situation, but uncontrolled construction and unplanned infrastructure is the most dominating factor among the rest of them.

Prior, Bengaluru was a marshy land, and now it has transformed into a valued tech market of over $245 billion through the last decade. Trailblazing tech giants like Google, Microsoft, JP, Oracle, JP Morgan, ANZ, Cisco, Intel, IBM, Accenture, Goldman Sachs, Samsung, Dell EMC have already constructed multiple offices in multiple locations employed millions and billions of seasoned youth. Thus, many youngsters are moving in to the city to test their fate and build their future bright and prosperous. 

Unattended Steps Making Gigantic Impacts

The silicon-valley is bustling with 1.5 crore population surrounding the IT corridors. To accommodate such a howling population, builders and developers are constructing sky touching apartments and modular homes with all the luxury amenities by clearing up the forests and destructing the lakes. These severe steps are making us the scorn enemies of nature.

Last year, Karnataka witnessed the lowest ever monsoon rainfall, which was 18 percent lower than previous years. In the post monsoon period also, Karnataka could not receive impressive amount of rainfall. The report says, not only Karnataka, Kerala, and Maharashtra also witnessed a sharp decline in rainfall level. States like Bihar, Jharkhand, Eastern UP also recorded 25 percent decline in rainfall.

Vimal Mishra, a professor of Civil Engineering & Earth Sciences at IIT Gandhinagar, commented about the worsened situation of Karnataka and explained that, “South India has a very different kind of aquifer system. It is very rocky. The aquifers don’t hold a lot of water. They empty out quickly, and they also get recharged pretty quickly. What this means is that groundwater resources are not able to sustain for very long in the event of a prolonged dry spell. This is very different from the aquifers in north India, which have a much better capacity to hold water. This is why Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which got even less rainfall last year than Karnataka, have not seen similar water scarcity”.

Expressing a deep disappointment, a member of resident welfare association (RWA) of south Bengaluru informed that, since the independence, several governments came on power, spread awareness saying that, there can be water crisis in near future. But, unfortunately, none of them has lent their ears to that, nor they have taken any step to prepare the city to prevent from such ruination.

Factors Catalyzing the Water Scarcity

After analyzing the data related to the climate of Bengaluru over the span of 42 years, it was revealed that, the city is getting warmer, which is speeding up higher water bodies and soil evaporation rates.

Bengaluru is situated on hard rock aquifer which has a lower rate of water recharge which is only 10 percent of the total rainfall.

Around half of the water comes from underground aquifer, but with such a humongous population the aquifers are over extracted and the ground water level has been sinking rapidly. Remaining half of the water comes from Cauvery river a reservoir 90 km away, which costs Rs. 3 crore daily for pumping.

Comparing the census since 1990, it was observed that, the population rate has been tripled and stands at 13.6 million, which has given birth to such unplanned construction by demolishing ecological balance of nature which is coming back to us as boomerang.

The rate of deforestation has taken up rocket speed, thus, it worsened the situation by cleaning up the lush greeneries which are the main welcoming factors for good amount of rainfall. Also trees and plants absorb the profuse heat of Sun which knocks down the temperature level. The situation was further worsened by deadly impact of El Nino.