Photos: Delhi’s summer of discontent sees anger, killings over water

Through the long summer months in India's capital New Delhi, tens of thousands of people have cut back on daily showers and laundry because of a shortage of water that has led to fighting in some areas in which three people have been killed. Monsoon rains forecast for this week in Delhi will signal an end to the summer, but India faces the worst long-term water crisis in its history and millions of lives and livelihoods could be at risk, the Niti Aayog chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said in a report. ...read more

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Residents fill their containers with drinking water from a municipal tanker in New Delhi. Monsoon rains forecast for this week in Delhi will signal an end to the summer, but India faces the worst long-term water crisis in its history and Delhi, the sprawling capital city of 20 million people, is symptomatic of the nationwide water shortage. (Adnan Abidi / REUTERS)

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“We’re in dire straits and we need to change our approach to tackle the crisis, otherwise the situation will become so grim that the shortages will knock down our GDP by 6 percentage points in over a decade,” Avinash Mishra, a joint adviser at the Niti Aayog think tank, told Reuters. (Adnan Abidi / REUTERS)

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India’s water consumption is projected to touch 843 billion cubic meters (bcm) by 2025 against the current availability of 695 bcm. By 2050, the country will need 1,180 bcm of water, and at the same time groundwater is being depleted at unsustainable rates, a Niti Aayog report said. Almost every sector is dependent on water, especially agriculture, which sustains two-thirds of India’s population. (Adnan Abidi / REUTERS)

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Summer temperatures in Delhi can soar as high as 45 degrees Celsius and areas outside the main government districts suffer badly, when taps run dry and groundwater levels fall. Both Delhi and Bengaluru, India’s software capital, will run out of groundwater by 2020, the report said. (Adnan Abidi / REUTERS)

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Fights frequently break out when government-run water tankers arrive and people, mostly women and children, converge with their cans and buckets. In one such incident in Wazirpur in northwest Delhi, Lal Bahadur, 60, died after a brawl with neighbours over water in March. His 18-year-old son, Rahul, who also suffered serious injuries, died in hospital a month later. (Adnan Abidi / REUTERS)

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“I lost my husband and my son for something as basic as water,” said a teary-eyed Sushila Devi, Bahadur’s wife. Such fighting is frequent because one water tanker a day is like a drop in the ocean in this bustling suburb of daily-wage workers, said a police official involved in investigating Bahadur’s death. (Adnan Abidi / REUTERS)

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A boy uses his mouth to pump water out from a municipal tanker to fill his containers. In Sangam Vihar, another Delhi district, home to about 1.5 million residents, private water tankers which come to the area once in a while charge a hefty price, the suppliers citing the cragged and unmetalled road that connects Sangam Vihar to the city. (Adnan Abidi / REUTERS)

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Suman Bhadana mourns the death of her husband Krishan Bhadana, in Sangam Vihar on June 15, 2018. Bhadana, brother of a BJP councillor, was shot dead after a tiff over laying water pipelines in the area. (Anushree Fadnavis / HT Photo)

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Police officials at the area where Bhadana was shot. Government officials concede that water supply is skewed. A densely populated area like Sangam Vihar receives hardly 30-40 litres of water per person per day against the standard requirement of 150 litres. Central New Delhi, the seat of power, and the city’s main army cantonment areas both get around 375 litres per day. (Anushree Fadnavis / HT Photo)

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Elsewhere, taps often run dry because of leaky pipes while thefts lead to a nearly 50 percent loss in the supply of water to individual households. Once stolen, the water is sold at a premium by Delhi’s so-called tanker mafia. (Adnan Abidi / REUTERS)

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Out of 27 administrative units in Delhi, ground water resources in more than half are “over exploited”, with only five considered “safe” by the Central Ground Water Board. “Extensive studies have suggested that in Delhi we end up using 120% of the ground water recharge every year. That shows the severity of the situation in the capital,” said Mishra of Niti Aayog. (Adnan Abidi / REUTERS)