“But gradually the British system extended everywhere. People opened a faucet and water came out and the water issue seemed to be ‘solved’. Delhi residents no longer had to think about a water ‘system’. And gradually the age-old system broke apart. There was no longer any need to maintain the channels and reservoirs. People demolished them because now the population of the city was growing: water tanks were taking up land which could be used as real estate. It did not hurt people to demolish them because they had forgotten what their function was, so they accorded them no prestige. It is the prestige of a system that directs you to conserve it and honour it; if that prestige disappears people cease to care. Of the seventeen rivers and 800 water bodies we had when the British came, hardly any are left.”
We are walking through strangely idyllic scenery, with trees and cultivated flats on both sides. In this city of 20 million people, there is no one around. The sun is on our heads, and we drink frequently.
“We still use the British system, which by now has turned into a disaster. It is a disaster because it has been taken out of the hands of people, who have therefore lost all their sense of water as a system. Now people think that water is just a wet substance that comes out of a tap, and if you need more you just turn on more taps. Which is why we now have such enormous problems. Delhi has water, it has lots of water. That is why the city came to be here in the first place. But water needs a system. And whereas Delhi once had an intelligent, scientific system, it now has no system at all.
“It is funny that we think ‘democracy’ is about voting. We are a democracy in the sense that we vote, but everything else, everything that constitutes our actual lives, has moved in the opposite direction. Water systems used to be entirely democratic: knowledge of the system was distributed to everyone, and everyone played their part in taking care of it. Now water provision is centralised, only a few people know how it works, and for everyone else there is only a vague sense of valves and pipes. And even the people who are running it have no deep knowledge of how water functions in this place.
“As soon as the water tanks were lost, Delhi began to have severe flooding. In our own time, everything that could once absorb monsoon water has disappeared. The tanks have gone and so has all of Delhi’s agricultural land. But the monsoon is still with us. The entire city is now one hard surface so there is nowhere for this sudden rush of water to go. Delhi is submerged every year by floods. This is an entirely modern phenomenon.
“But we also began to have severe water shortages. This place that drew conquerors from all over the continent because of the richness of its water is now in a water crisis. The river rapidly ceased to be adequate for the city’s water needs: Delhi’s population is fifty times larger now than when the British built their system, while the Yamuna is the same size. So Delhi began to take water from other places. Now we have pipelines bringing water from the Ganges and Bhagirathi rivers and from the Renuka lake. We can do this because compared to our predecessors we have acquired some small quantum of technological power. But it is a completely immature solution. First of all because we are close to exhausting these supplies too, and there is no other water we can use that we can bring to Delhi with gravity. Can you imagine if we had to use electricity to raise water to the city? And secondly because it pays no attention at all to the wider economy of water. Thousands of farmers have protested against Delhi taking their water, they have tried to smash the dams that stop their rivers’ traditional flow — but so what? Delhi wants water, and Delhi is powerful. Delhi is drying out the country for hundreds of kilometres around, which creates more refugees from the land, who come to Delhi, who require more water, so Delhi takes even more — and so it goes on.
“Not only this, but we do not have the capacity to treat such large quantities of sewage. Our sewage systems were built to treat one river. Now three times this volume is coming into the system. This is why our sewage plants treat a smaller and smaller proportion every year. Most sewage now flows directly into the river. It is a poisonous brew, full of industrial effluent, and Delhi produces it on a monumental scale. And what happens when you pour all this into a single river basin? Look how high the Yamuna is now. It is summer: we are a month away from the monsoon. The Yamuna is a seasonal river, and at this time of year it used to be a trickle. But what you see flowing there is not only the Yamuna. It is also the Ganges and the Bhagirathi and the Renuka lake. We take from all those places but when we have used it we pour it all into one river basin. That is why the river is running so high, and that is why we will at some point soon have a disastrous flood. The river will break its banks.”
We interrupt our northwards march to have some lunch. Anupam has brought some daal, roti and cooked vegetables, and we sit under a tree to eat. The landscape is uplifting, and birds sing on every side. Anupam continues.
“Now do you think our middle classes wish to pay the price of our present water shortage? Of course not. They wish to live free of any environmental context. That is the reward they expect from capitalism! They want to turn on their taps at any time and have water. The municipal supply, however, is heavily rationed, and provides water only for a few hours a day. So what do the middle classes do? They remember — they are good at history when they need to be! — that there is a rich supply of water under their feet. Over the last thirty years they have all dug private wells so they can pump out as much as they need. Every middle-class house has such a well, even though it is illegal. This water is completely unmonitored so of course the city’s water authorities now have no idea how much sewage they need to build capacity for. And all this additional water also floods out into the Yamuna, raising the level still further.
“But of course by now no one remembers the basic knowledge that governed Delhi’s water management for a millennium: if you take water from the ground you have to replenish it. People are pumping water out of the ground for their baths and washing machines and swimming pools but they have not built a single water tank to recharge the ground supply. So Delhi’s groundwater is also running dry. But let them not think about it! While it still comes out of the tap, let them pump away!
“As a result of this, many areas of Delhi are now completely dry. Whole sectors of the city have run out of groundwater and are supplied only by water trucks. There is a new five-star hotel that has no water: its water needs — baths, laundry, swimming pool, sauna — are all supplied by trucks which come at night in lines of a hundred or more. But while there is a way to spend oneself out of a problem, this city is curiously indifferent to that problem. Real-estate prices continue to rise even in areas where there is no water.