Indian metro cities will run out of ground water by 2030: NITI Aayog

NEW DELHI: A recent report on ground water by NITI Aayog claims that in the next 10 years, India’s 21 metro cities including Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad will run out of ground water completely and will affect 100 million people. The report also claims that country’s 40 per cent population will not have access to drinking water by the year 2030.

The report said, that the current situation is alarming, the year 2030 is not very far. In Chennai, three rivers, five wetlands, and six forests have dried completely. 

Manohar Khushalani, former director of National Water Academy, said, “The government is depending upon the desalination in Chennai which is very expensive, however, they forget that the earth is a limited planet and oceans will dry. What will we leave for our children and grandchildren? We may have a lot of money but we cannot ask our children to drink money instead of water. Using ocean water and desalination is not the solution but water harvesting is the one. It is a collective responsibility of the government and people of the country to save water and contribute to increasing the groundwater levels.”