Competitive cricket will return to Jaipur after three long years as Mumbai Indians have chosen it as the preferred venue for their three IPL matches. But water scarcity, for which the Mumbai Indians had to migrate from their home ground on the Bombay high court’s order, is far more acute here than in Mumbai. More than 600 villages in Jaipur district have been facing drinking water shortage.
Within Jaipur city water tankers have been deployed to provide drinking water to more than 200 colonies without a regular source of water. Even that is not on a daily basis. In 2015, a colony used to get at least one water tanker per day, but in 2016 it is one round in two days.
With record heat in April, the cry for water is growing each day. Without any perennial river or other source of surface water, the city is completely dependent on Bisalpur dam and groundwater.
The dam, 100 km from Jaipur, has to cater to dozens of towns and thousands of villages in three other districts — Tonk, Ajmer and Bhilwara — and supply falls way short of demand. Besides, the government has to reduce water supply from the dam for emergency needs in case the monsoon fails once again.
On the other hand, due to excessive exploitation the groundwater level has dropped to 700-800 feet in the city. Jhotwara area in Jaipur city was declared a “dark zone” long ago and is where Coca-Cola recently shut its plant. Yet, despite a ban on tubewells in the city, there are about 100 illegal borings from where private suppliers fill water tankers and making a killing.
The Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) claims that it has increased water supply but its own figures belie the claim. Contrary to PHED’s claim of supply of 500 MLD per day, the actual supply is 492 MLD, a shortage of eight MLD. Its free water tankers are unable to meet demand, forcing people to shell out huge sums of money, disturbing the budgets of ordinary people. One tanker of 4,000 litres of water lasts four to five days and cost '300, which means a poor family has to make room for an additional '2,000 in their monthly budget for water.
If the heat wave doesn’t relent, and if the water supply is not improved, the situation is likely to return to that of about a decade ago when water tankers plied under police protection. But the cricket will go on, it seems.
