Menace of Water Mafia

Water is life for mankind, so we say ‘Water is Life’ and ‘No water no future’. Right from the globe to the human body, water dominates in almost every element in the universe. While the dynamics have changed the world in the past few decades, the importance of water has witnessed a significant rise from personal to professional and commercial purposes. Taking advantage of this situation, we saw the birth of water mafias, who practice the illegal trade of water. During our school times, we learned about the scarcity of water. But do you really think, there is a crisis of it? Well, it is an artificial shortage created by social evil mentalities of society, who can make insane amounts of money by abolishing the basic of right of having free water to humans.
An illegal network of water traffickers is taking advantage of the shortcomings of the government supply system in the most impoverished neighbourhoods of India to establish a black market. The criminals have been selling the precious commodity at steep prices during a scorching summer that has seen temperatures climb up to 50º C (122 F) in some places. Water mafia simply means Aquifers being exploited to the point of exhaustion reflecting a larger groundwater crisis. The water mafia does not allow the (water supply) process to be competed,” In broad sense the ‘water mafia’ politics refers to the way allegations of corruption and complicity with the water mafia are made between local rivals for political advantage. At the same time, the social hydrology of informal groundwater use, as a combination of natural and social elements, extends beyond the state and social relations, and is difficult for any actor to sustainably capture and control. Tracing the links between infrastructure, informality and politics in this setting offers a fresh perspective on the socio-technical mediations between humans and water, urbanisation and resource governance as well as the concepts of informality, infrastructure and politics.
Around 600 million people – nearly half of the Indian population – face extreme water shortage across India, the country ranked third from the bottom in water quality worldwide. Around 70 percent of its water resources have been found to be polluted. Thus, thousands of neighbourhoods across the country face a shortage of water and depend on tankers that arrive in the areas to fulfil a basic need. This is where the mafias step in, charging unfair prices. The massive population boom in India, where the number of inhabitants has more than doubled in the last 50 years and reached around 1.3 billion, has also contributed to the rise of the black market in areas which do not have access to supply or pipelines connecting them to a water source.
In the Indian capital, around 20% of a population of nearly 10 million have no access to safe, drinkable water—a resource that is supposed to be freely provided by the Indian authorities. According to the BBC, there is a dangerous gap between supply and demand which has resulted in the official water supply falling short of Delhi’s water needs by 207 million gallons each day, helping to turn drinking water into a pseudo liquid gold. This is due to the fact that around 60% of water intended for Delhi residents is lost as a result of spillage, theft and failure to collect revenue. Official government-sponsored water tanks are also notorious for arriving erratically (at best) in Delhi’s poorest neighbourhoods, such as in Sangam Vihar, where they show up “only… once every 10 days or so.” In response to the gap between water supply and demand, Delhi’s poorest residents have begun to turn to the Indian “Water Mafia,” an informal network of locals who steal water, and then sell it for a profit. The Water Mafia business follows a model of simple economics. An association of truck drivers, as well as other mostly ordinary Delhi citizens, source water from illicit boreholes found below the earth’s surface, as well as by siphoning water from the city’s pipe network. Tanker bosses then buy water from the men who steal it, who then go on to sell the water directly to locals for a higher price than the $0 “officially” costs (in Sangam Vihar, for instance, a gallon costs about one cent.) Employees, assuming they sell around a full tank (or 8,400 gallons), are then looking at a profit of $90 per day, or $2700 a month—a much higher wage than the $185 a worker earns in Delhi a month in minimum wage.
While the Water Mafia business is entirely illegal—sourced with water from illegal sources and sold without testing or treatment—it has nevertheless turned into a burgeoning trade that has come to fill in the gap for thousands of poor Delhi citizens who lack access to safe water. Many of Delhi’s poorest residents, in turn, have found that if they want water, they have no choice but to buy into the Water Mafia trade. The business of stealing and selling water within Indian cities such as Delhi has enormously negative consequences for India’s future, according to authorities and experts who see the human and environmental toll that the practice is taking on the country. The Water Mafia business, for instance, exploits what are already the poorest citizens in a developing country by forcing them to scramble for funds to pay for a resource that is legally required to be free. The practice of extracting liquid for the ground also has negative environmental consequences for the country, especially as it depletes a scarce resource that has already been over-depleted in recent years as a result of India’s population boom. In 2014, for instance, a government report found that three-fourths of Delhi’s underground aquifers were being depleted, forcing boreholes to dig even deeper beneath the surface where water is more likely to be contaminated. In order to crack down on the growing Water Mafia trade, authorities in recent years have offered a few solutions.
In order to protect India’s most at-risk citizens and the country’s long-term interests, it is imperative that an alternative solution—in terms of strengthening the country’s infrastructure and cracking down on members of this illegal water network—need to be adopted. Otherwise, India’s poorest citizens, and those who are most in need of safe drinking water, will continue to have their livelihoods and access to one of humanity’s most basic rights—safe water—be at the mercy of the seemingly unstoppable Water Mafia. Few measures to curb water mafias are: Proper pricing; Incentives for effective management; adequate infrastructure; Haring arrangements etc. A comprehensive policy framework is needed to ensure an integrated approach to water resource development, with rational and equitable allocation of resources, and giving priority to the poor and unserved. A national water sector strategy should state the government’s objectives and the methods to be employed to achieve them.
Despite well-intentioned policy documents, providing safe drinking water to citizens remains a problem for India. However, the usual call for ‘policy makers’ to listen and draft new policies, is not very effective. There is a need for a thorough re-examination of existing procedures and norms of government and NGO functioning, following a clear understanding of the linkages, roles and responsibilities of the various institutions engaged in providing water supply services, especially to rural communities. Such a re-examination is best carried out in a facilitated multi-stakeholder setting, with a clear mandate to modify procedures and institute mechanisms that improve water supply services to the level required by the Constitution. The only way to resolve the crisis and ending the mafia’s hold over people was to adopt rainwater harvesting technologies in both big and small towns apart from the government making an action-plan to check deforestation.
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