The new budget for Karnataka was presented and was a tad disappointing from the perspective of water for Bengaluru city. Apart from an allocation for a feasibility study of the Mekedatu project on the Cauvery, nothing else found a mention. For a city compared to Cape Town and a D-day being reached for water, this seems a matter of neglect.
The weakness of the water supply situation for Bengaluru starts with the institution responsible for supplying water and taking care of sewage, the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB). For the first specialised water utility set up for a city in India as early as 1964, the BWSSB has simply not been capacitated enough to cope with the water challenge the city faces.
For a start, its financial condition is abysmal. With a huge chunk of non-revenue water, close to one-third of water supply if not more, and a hugely subsidised domestic water sector consuming a vast chunk of the revenue water, the BWSSB has hardly sufficient monies to keep the system running. Unless financial sustainability is attained there is no chance of investments in large-scale capital projects needed to extend the infrastructure for both water supply and sewerage which this rapidly growing city needs.
Within the BWSSB is a glaring gap vis-à-vis groundwater management. There is not a single hydro-geologist in an institution where the city itself relies heavily on groundwater for its needs.
River basins
The Cauvery management board has come and the operations of reservoirs in the basin will gradually slip out of the hands of the State to some degree. Unless the focus shifts to the catchment of the river and the health of the Cauvery and her tributaries, the resource itself will run out and very year will become a distress year . Urgent steps are needed to create river basin institutions which will focus on maintaining the health of the catchment and the river bed. There is no move towards such river basin understandings and management from the state.
Urban lakes
The shift from a specialised lake conservation and development authority to moving the lakes to the Minor Irrigation department is a recipe for disaster. The role of these lakes or tanks is multiple, including flood protection, bio-diversity protection and enhancement, percolation, micro-environment management, waste-water polishing, recreation et. al. which has nothing to do with irrigation at all. Without community participation there is no possibility of lakes being revived and maintained. Alas, the budget has nothing to say on this front.
