|
The Collection Wed, 26 Mar 25 |
Multiple stories, multiple perspectives, one theme worth your time—every week. |
Good Morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],
You are on a free plan. Your subscription has expired. Upgrade now to unlock premium newsletters, top feature stories, exclusive podcasts, and more.
At 6:04 am last Saturday, when my doorbell rang for the third time, I hesitantly got out of bed and walked to the door. No one ever wants to meet me that early in the morning, so clearly there was a problem.
Apparently, over 1,000 litres of water had disappeared overnight from the water tank in my building, which houses a handful of families, including the houseowner and me. We called a plumber, but they couldn’t find any leaks. Most likely, someone had left the tap on and let it run all night.
That was a costly miss, and I’m not just talking about the price of a tanker-load of water in Bengaluru.
According to a World Economic Forum report released in January, water shortages are the most severe risk that India faces over the next two years. With summer shoving aside spring, numerous parts of the country have already started reporting shortages—from Karnataka to Kashmir. But this isn’t even a ‘summer problem’. As my colleague Seema Singh wrote in this September 2023 piece, even the monsoon doesn’t spare us from it.
Monsoon or winter, there won’t be enough water
Studies released in the run-up to the G20 meeting also show that public spending on fossil fuels has spiked even as climate change poses greater risks for stressed economies
Sometimes, given the magnitude of the problem, I’m sure it’s hard not to feel helpless. But as we’ll see from stories and newsletters in this edition of The Collection, there are things that the government, private sector, and we—as citizens and consumers—can do to make things better.
As with many things in India, backchannel relationships govern much of how the country’s water infrastructure and resources are managed, both existing and planned. Just last week, my colleague Abhirami G wrote about how Bengaluru is staring at yet another bleak summer this year—the city needs 2,100 million litres of water per day (MLD) and is short by ~30%, i.e., 650 MLD.
And yet, the state is passing the buck to private firms, some of which are more “politically connected” than others, and hence, are lapping up the opportunities.
This ex-bureaucrat was part of Bengaluru’s water problem. Now, he is selling the solution
He ran Karnataka’s water department. Now, he’s winning its biggest contracts
This will hardly be the city’s first crisis in recent times, though.
When Bengaluru saw some of its worst last March, my colleague Praveen Gopal Krishnan contrasted this with his experience in Cape Town in 2018, when the city faced a massive water crisis, and how the South African town focused on using technology to drive behavioural change and successfully plug wastages—something that India’s Silicon Valley hasn’t been able to do so far.
At the end of the day, the overarching reasons why Bengaluru is different from Cape Town are apparent. The government believes that fines are better than rewards. The people who live in the city believe that withdrawal from the city, either by leaving it or by closing themselves off in gated communities, is better than the alternative. And finally, the cult of technology, and how it’s perceived as a solution, blind the city’s smartest people from advocating for things that actually work.
I’d recommend reading the full piece below to understand why Bengaluru is struggling, and what Cape Town got right.
Bengaluru is dying of thirst because it’s drinking its own Kool-Aid
A personal story about the water crisis in Cape Town and how it contrasts with what’s happening in Bengaluru
Of course, it’s hardly just a Bengaluru problem—hundreds of cities in India (and the world) are in dire need of people and teams that are solely dedicated to managing increasingly scarce water resources.
Miami in the United States was the world’s first city in the world to appoint a CHO—a Chief Heat Officer. And as Seema wrote a while ago, it’s high time that cities started doing the same for water, by appointing Chief Water Officers.
What would such a role entail? Why isn’t the current model enough to avert such crises? Read the piece below to find out.
It’s time Indian cities had Chief Water Officers
Water is too important a resource to be left to (never-permanent) bureaucrats and (always-in-election-mode) politicians alone. With more than 600 Indian cities under severe water stress, every city needs to fix its water accountability at one post: CWO
But that’s the policy side of things. Is there something that we, as individuals and consumers, can do to be less wasteful?
Well, we could perhaps rethink our RO water systems, where the purifying process can end up wasting as much as 75% of the water that goes through it.
Most parts don’t [need RO] because the country doesn’t have a widespread heavy metal problem, said Sambuddha Misra, an assistant professor of earth sciences at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru.
[…]
“It [RO] is marketed simply through fear-mongering, and people are throwing money at imaginary problems,” added Misra, while agreeing that a UV filter is a must because India’s water has a lot of bacterial loads. “So, either boil it or use a UV purifier.”
If you’re considering buying a new water purifier (or replacing the one you have) and want to read about which filter might be the best for your house, this story from March 2024 addresses some of the fundamentals.
Urban Company wants to ignite the RO water-purifier market when RO itself is under fire
Entering a market ruled by Eureka Forbes and Kent, the home-services company is focussing on a popular tech that wastes water and is not essential across India
Supply-side leakages are also a massive problem, and one that occurs even before water reaches homes. Per capita water loss for households due to pipe leakages is ~45 litres every day, and since most water pipes are underground, they aren’t easy to monitor and fix.
This is the issue a tiny 8cm robot developed by Solinas Integrity is trying to solve. How does it work? And does it make economic sense for municipalities and water utilities?
The little robot trying to fix India’s bleeding water pipelines
Around 45 litres of water is wasted per capita per day in Indian households due to leakages. And fixing leaks is expensive and time-consuming. Can we do it better?
Leaks and RO overuse aside, another vector to approach the water crisis from is wastewater recycling and treatment, which is also woefully ineffective in India currently.
Some private players are trying to up their game here, though. Such as Indra Water, a Thane-based startup, which has developed a novel approach for wastewater treatment reactors.
Say a pharma company wants to treat 5,000 litres of water per day. Indra gives them a reactor and a power module—basically, a small treatment module in a box—where the water goes in and comes out treated. Say a textile company wants to deploy this, but its wastewater has 50% less pollutants than the pharma company. They can use the same module and treat 15,000 litres per day.
And a residential complex, with generally far fewer pollutants in wastewater, can treat 30,000 litres per day, claims Nayak.
That’s a big departure from conventional systems, which are custom-made for industrial uses, take days to deploy, and need a team to keep running, not to mention the large spaces needed to house them. Those systems also remain a sort of black box because few know what’s happening in those tanks.
The piece talks quite extensively about how Indra Water arrived at its solutions, and what players in the space need to be doing differently.
What we know about water and warmth from Davos this year
Ask Indra Water and the answer is: ‘Nobody in the water industry is aware of what they're exactly breaking down’
You can, as always, find this week’s entire collection below. I hope you find at least a few of these articles useful and enlightening. Please write to [email protected] if you have any thoughts or suggestions.
Get a premium subscription to The Ken
Unrivaled analysis and powerful stories about businesses from award-winning journalists. Read by 5,00,000+ subscribers globally who want to be prepared for what comes next.
Trusted by 5,00,000+ executives & leaders from the world's most successful organisations & students at top post-graduate campuses
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rahul leads the promotion and distribution efforts for the journalism produced by The Ken. He works at the intersection of the publication's editorial and business operations.
|
|
Share this edition
You can use the easy share buttons below
|
|
|
|
|
© 2025 The Ken
Do you know anyone else who would like to read this newsletter?
Share this edition with them.