Water supply a problem for New Delhi's poor

Space Daily via UPI: New Delhi's poor are hardest hit by the Indian city's inadequate water supply. In most of the city's unauthorized urban settlements, such as Sangam Vihar -- a crowded unauthorized urban settlement, home to about a million people -- the city government does not provide piped water, The New York Times reports.

Instead, the government dug 118 bore-wells from which water can be drawn. Contractors, usually affiliated with political parties, have run pipes connecting the supply from the bore-wells to people's homes, for a fee. But those supplies are often dried up.

"Every family here has been given a voter identity card by the government," Anuj Porwal, a student-activist was quoted as saying in the Times report. "But no one has been given water supply."

Statistics from the city's government show Delhi's population of 17 million requires about 1.025 billion gallons of water a day. With six government-run water treatment plants producing 818 million gallons of water a day, the city faces an estimated shortage of 207 million gallons each day.

A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, the official auditor of India's public sector, points to the disparity among Delhi's neighborhoods regarding water supply....

A street scene in Delhi, shot by Dennis Jarvis, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license