How clean is this water?

You see it as a bit discolored, but it's good to drink. Really? Yeah, it's good to drink. Yeah, the STP has been designed for that. It's not being, um, uh, Microfiltered and chlorinated now Because it's being led into the lake But you can actually treat it for you to drink it should be put into the taps of Bangalore. It's only the yuck factor which is preventing that, putting it into the taps of Bangalore.

Intro VO

Dinesh: That's Vish Director of Biome Trust. Vishwanath has been collaborating with local government bodies, local communities, academics, to address the problem around water at a systemic level, be it in research on ground efforts or in the policy making space. 

 I speak to, Vishwanath to understand structurally what are the forces at play. that that account for the challenges in domestic water usage in a growing city like Bangalore.

We also speak about the role of government institutions like BWSSB, BBMP and their resource limitations contrasted against, against a rapidly growing city. And as urban dwellers, what is our responsible approach towards consuming water without the feeling of guilt?

 We discover this by, by tracing the fascinating journey of water from the oceans to our taps.

Vishwanath's Background and Biome Trust

Dinesh: my name is Vishwanath. By qualification, I'm a civil engineer and urban planner. I have been working in the sector of urban infrastructure and water for the last 38 years now. I started my career with the Government of India public sector enterprise called the Housing and Urban Development Corporation.

Vishwanath: I worked there for 14 years. After that, I took a break. I joined, funding agency, a philanthropy called Argyam. I was their advisor for about 12 years. In the meantime, I'd started something called the Rainwater Club, which went on to become, the Biome Trust. And biome Trust works on community based initiatives.

for water management, sustainable water management, which includes rainwater harvesting, ground water recharge, lake management, and waste water recycling. Biome Trust also works with the government in trying to find solutions to water problems at town level, at gram panchayat level, and even at a metropolitan city level.

Community-Based Water Management Initiatives

Dinesh: So when you say community based initiatives, what kind of initiatives is it, Vishwanath?

Vishwanath: So I'll just give you two examples of that. One of them is The gram panchayat of Omittur in Mulbagal taluk of Kolar district, where we work with a small NGO called Aarohana there. And we work with the farmers to revive 21 lakes or tanks, as they are called, to make sure that this tank water is available for, uh, farming for fodder for animals and everything else.

And in the city of Bangalore, we work with the community of well diggers who have lost their traditional livelihood of digging wells. We try to see whether they can now dig recharge wells and make sure the rainwater harvesting is done properly. And also that they earn a decent livelihood. And in that process, Bangalore gets water security.

Two examples of community based work that we do in BiomeTrust.

Dinesh: Right, right.

Government Collaboration and Policy Work

Dinesh: And the other part you mentioned is that you also engage with Government of Karnataka. So how is your engagement with them?

Vishwanath: So with another example, we work with the Town Municipal Council of Devanahalli, which is a small town where the International Airport of Bangalore is located. It's got a population of about 45, 000. We try to see whether Devanahalli can retrieve its lake. Recharge its aquifers. And we've set up a small water treatment plant with funding from various CSR initiatives, corporate social responsibility initiatives.

We're plugging in roughly about 640, 000 liters a day to the Devanalli town network to augment the water supply of Devanalli town. This included cleaning a lake, cleaning a well, and ensuring that the lake gets diluted, treated wastewater, but also setting up a water treatment plant, which is the state of the art water treatment plant.

And Plugging it into the town municipal council system. We're now expanding it to get to about 4 million liters per day, which will mean that the entire town's requirement of water will be met through this system of local water rejuvenation. That's one example of working with the government. The other example is in writing policies.

For example, I was part of the committee which wrote the rainwater harvesting policy for Bangalore city, also the wastewater policy for the state of Karnataka itself. So, Policy writing, but also project implementation is how we work with the state.

Dinesh: Great, great.

Journery of a water droplet in Bangalore

Dinesh: uh, I don't have so much of a background knowledge around how the,the, the water system works for a city like Bengaluru. and I think many of us, don't have that because, uh, we kind of take it for granted it's there. and only when the issue is, uh, uh, especially, during the summer and things like that when it, when we have water scarcity is when we actually start thinking about, okay, where is the water coming from?

And you know, all those questions around water starts coming up.So, I kind of want to understand if you have to imagine like a, like a droplet of water, Where does it start and how does it land in a glass and then where it goes? you know, that journey, it will be helpful to kind of visualize what's the, system behind us being able to drink and, use water in a city like Bangalore.

Vishwanath: So let's begin the journey of this water droplet in the Arabian Sea. the monsoons have picked up. It's the month of June and it's June 5th. World Environment Day. Now this droplet has traveled with the clouds, driven by the winds, and it's landed in the forest of kgu. Let's pick Kgu as an example.

So it's landed and, uh, where the Kaveri originates just in Bhramagiri hills. This droplet now emerges as a spring in Talakaveri and becomes the mighty Kaveri when it gathers around all other droplets. this droplet has now begun, its journey in Talakaveri and has crossed. the river and come to KRS dam, the Krishna Raj Sagara Dam built in the 1930s by the great Sir M Vishweshwaraya.

Now it makes a halt there. It stops for some time. Then one day the sluice gate is opened a bit and the droplet now travels to a place called Torekadanahalli, which is close to Kanakpura, right? here it's. taken through what's called the Shiva Anicut and this droplet comes to a place where the water treatment plant of Bangalore is.

from here, it now gets pumped up in three stages. 95 kilometers up and it comes to Bangalore near the Rose Garden in Jainagar. Makes a halt in one of the reservoirs there and from that reservoir is pumped to a set of other reservoirs. But this one makes its journey to the GKVK, the Gandhi Krishi Vigyan Kendra, the University of Agriculture Science, which is another large reservoir, which holds this water.

So the droplet enters this reservoir and in the morning at around seven o'clock when the valve man opens the valve, it travels from this reservoir to my house and it comes to my sump tank. From my sump tank, I pump the water up to my overhead tank and then I open the tap in my kitchen and there she is, to enter the water filter, get purified, and then I drink it.

Then I visit the loo. This water now has begun its journey to the sewage treatment plant in Jakkur. It travels through underground sewage. Pipes, goes to the Jakkur sewage treatment plant and gets treated. It gets treated in the sense that bacteria, virus, and carbon is removed from it. And then she begins another very interesting journey.

 So now it's pumped to, Chikbalapur district. This treated wastewater is pumped to Chikbalapur district. On the way, this droplet makes a stop at Devanahalli, at a lake called Sihinirkere. There, she goes to the lake. goes into the ground and emerges in a well where she's met by fellow turtles and fish.

This droplet is now picked up and treated in a water treatment plant and then it goes into one of the homes in Devanahalli. And again, it begins her journey to reach the farms of Devanahalli after that house and she becomes Ragi and comes back to the house as Ragi. So this droplet we started in Arabia Sea is now Ragi Mudde in a house in to begin the journey all over again.

Dinesh: Wow. that's, that's, uh, a long journey.

and it kind of also feels like it's, energy intensive. and there is, a lot of accountability in different parts of it, which we are not as citizens so much purview to.

Vishwanath: Yeah, so there is accountability, but it's also interesting that the citizens of Bangalore have to worry about the monsoons. And so they have to make sure that climate change does not alter the hydrological cycle so much that rainfall patterns are affected and disturbed. Like we did in the month of September when there was no rain at all, when it was supposed to be the rainiest month, right?

So we have to take care of the atmosphere and the climate itself. But more importantly, more locally, we have to take care of the forests of Wayanad, forests of Kodagu, so that when the droplet lands, it lands in a forest where the forest absorbs it like a sponge and releases it slowly to the Kaveri. We have to make sure that the Kaveri itself is not polluted by industries and domestic sewage.

We have to then make sure that when the water has to be pumped up and As you said, It really is energy intensive.

 It uses about 1. 88 units of energy to get a thousand liters to the city of Bangalore. It really is energy intensive. So when it lands in our house, that we use it wisely. We use it sparingly so that we don't use too much of it.

And therefore we conserve water, but we also conserve energy in the whole process. 

What can we, the citizen do?

Dinesh: in terms of being responsible from a behavioral, uh,point of view, how can we be responsible if, if we are not so aware of the. complexities and the challenges that come about getting this water to our houses.

Vishwanath: So there are three sets of responsibilities that we have, and there's a difference between a developing country like India and a developed country. 

Let's take the case of a developed country. You become responsible for water by paying the true cost of water. And the true cost of water is when you return it back to nature in the same quantity and quality at which you took from nature.

A clean drop of water from nature or clean one liter of water, I bring it to my house, I use it, and Then it is collected by the state in terms of a sewage network and a sewage treatment plant, and it's treated to such a high standard that it can be released to the environment without any loss in quantity or quality.

So that's a true ecological cost of water, and many a developed city like, say, for example, Helsinki or Stockholm or Amsterdam would pay the true cost per water, and therefore the citizens there need not really worry about individual behavior or community behavior. Now, come to India, in a developing country this is not possible because we haven't invested enough in the whole infrastructure to be able to do that, capture the true ecological cost of water.

So therefore, we have three sets of behavior we have to follow. One, as a citizen, where we use water sparingly and responsibly because we have the privilege of getting it. Now, once we have the privilege of getting it, because it's a scarce resource and because it is a polluting resource, the less we use of it, The less harm we do to nature in terms of its extraction from forests, but also in terms of the pollution that it causes in the hinterland.

So, we must use less chemicals, we must use less water, we must use biodegradable material, we must take care of our solid waste so that it doesn't end up in the environment and pollute water, right? So it's a whole set of responsibilities we must take as individuals.

Then there's the responsibility as a community. Water is a common pool resource, is a community resource. It's not a private resource, right? We have just the right to use it. So therefore, as a community, we must make sure that a watershed or a lake, stream, well, or a river is kept clean. That our actions do not pollute these common pool resource or these community resource

and then there's the third responsibility as an individual, which is that of holding our state accountable. We as citizens of this nation get our governments that we create, as well as the institutions we create to manage water for us. We must make sure that these institutions live up to their responsibilities, that the pollution control board makes sure that there's no polluting industry or polluting wastewater entering the environment, that the water supply board gives water to everybody in the city, that it also takes all the sewage and Cleans it up, and so on and so forth.

So three sets of responsibilities that we need to, to bear, uh, for ourselves in a developing world till we become a developed world,

Dinesh: I just want to like dive into each of them a little more.let's say for the first responsibility of, The water usage itself uh, using it sparingly, using it judiciously. as a, a person living in an, an apartment, there is, there is a certain quantity of water that I use.

And my behavior, is reflective of, the scarcity of the demand and, and things like that. if we, if we look at the infrastructure development or the expansion of city and urbanization, there is a stress that's coming onto the Uh, on to the requirement by the sheer expansion of the city itself.

So will that also feature into this, uh, space or how do you see that?

Vishwanath: For sure it does. Now, as India urban organizes and as, cities, especially metropolitan cities, uh, urbanize, it's an inevitable consequence of the capitalist economy we have inherited globally, we've seen that developed worlds which adopt this form of economy end up at an 80% to 85% urbanization.

 now in an urban setting.

How do we behave responsibly as an, individual? And we'll just focus on the individual responsibility.

Dinesh: Hmm.

Vishwanath: So, there are simple tricks. We don't need to be too guilty about it, but there are certain simple things that we can do. For example, we can fix an aerator on a tap. We can use low flow flushes and showers.

We can use washing machines which consume less water and less energy, like front loading ones, which are more water efficient. More importantly, we have to look at the flows of materials in our homes. So the detergents and soaps that we use, we should try and make sure that it's biodegradable, because then it lessens the burden on the sewage treatment plants to be able to treat it.

If you use too much chemicals, then it is difficult for the system to pick it up and clean it, right? So that's a responsibility. Increasingly, there's something called antibiotic resistance, which is developing in bacteria. This comes from misuse of medicines. The antibiotics we swallow or we Irresponsibly in the environment.

This ends up in the sewage system and it breeds a strain of bacteria or strains of bacteria which are now resistant to almost all forms of antibiotics, right? So, therefore, our responsibility is with the medicines we consume and we need to consume it as less as possible and as responsibly as possible, right?

Then in apartments, if we can do rainwater harvesting, if we can persuade the association to do Rainwater harvesting, it lessens the burden on freshwater or outside water to that extent of the harvesting that we do, right? Now, apartments are mandated to have their own sewage treatment plants.

If you have a set of apartments more than 50, you must have your own sewage treatment plant. If we make sure that that sewage treatment plant runs well, And that the non potable component of water is replaced by the treated wastewater. Therefore, there's less of a burden on fresh water, right?

So there's a set of things that we can do as individuals, which will help lessen the burden on the environment for water resources.

Barriers of using STP Water

Dinesh: Yeah. in my apartment, we have this, uh, sewage treatment plant and, I see the water being, uh,Treated and then used for, flushes and, uh, the water for, uh, gardening and things like that. Uh, maybe this is a little bit on the, uh, side note. There was a recent survey that we were, uh, asked to be part of, asking whether we would be okay if that treated water is, um, also used, for other purposes, uh, not for drinking.

like, uh, for taking bath or washing, um, utensils or in the washing machine and things like that. So what's your view on that, Vishwanath?

Vishwanath: So we have the technologies to do that. We have the technologies to clean water enough for it to be drunk, right? And there are STPs in Bangalore itself, which do that. whatever wastewater comes out from the sewage treatment plant is good enough without any bacteria, virus, or any chemicals for it to be good to be drunk, right? 

The only barrier is a psychological barrier. It's a barrier of trust in science and a trust in 

how the system runs. 

I think that can only be overcome by us taking responsibility to understand the functioning of the STP, to figure out the quality is, and to get good communication going to say, hey, this water is safe. There's one set of apartments called TZ near Vartur, which has been one of the first apartments in India actually to blend the treated wastewater with groundwater and drink it. And that community has a set of doctors, so therefore they're confident about the quality of water that they are getting from their sewage treatment plant.

And they certified for themselves and they're able to get it to their kids also to be drunk So it's a difficult psychological barrier to overcome, but it's not really a tough technical barrier.

Process of STP

Dinesh: could you just explain to me they treated the water and then uh, what happens?

Vishwanath: So they treat it in the sewage treatment plant. Then they take it through a process of further refining it and filtering it. So they have an activated carbon filter, they have a UV sterilization, and they have. an RO system, right? So the RO then, reverse osmosis, pushes this treated wastewater through itself and then the water that you get is very clean.

They blend it with groundwater. They take groundwater and roughly blend it 50 50. Then they put it back into the water treatment plant and then it goes back to the homes.

Dinesh: But, why is it blended with the groundwater again?

Vishwanath: Because it's not sufficient enough, right? Because treated waste water is only a component of the total water demand 

Dinesh: right. All right. Okay. 

Vishwanath: It's about 50%, so you, the rest 50%, you blend with fresh water, which in this case is ground water, and then you supply it to homes.

Dinesh: for an infrastructure, to be able to do this, will like a normal apartment be able to afford an infrastructure that can treat water to this level?

Vishwanath: Yeah, absolutely. If you amortize the cost over the lifespan of the machinery that you invest, and you take the cost of treatment, that operations and maintenance, it will be way cheaper than the water that you buy from tankers. So if you're buying water from tankers, this would be one half of the cost roughly.

Dinesh: and uh, like it, the recovery period would be what? 

Vishwanath: you've already invested in a sewage treatment plant. So the upfront investment would roughly take the cost per kiloliter to about 40 rupees for a thousand liters, right? That is the treatment. Now it depends on what your alternate source of water, what is the price you're paying. And on that basis, you do the calculation.

More importantly, you have the, Confidence and the reliability that this water is with you all the time. If you're buying it from a tanker in summer times, it may sometimes get difficult to order it. You don't know the quality of the water which comes in the tanker. Here you're confident, you know what the quality of the water that you're getting.

So there are several advantages apart from cost itself.

Dinesh: Right. Is this being replicated in other places or how do you see this trend happening? Is it catching up? And because it seems like, a very, uh, a feasible way forward, right, Vishwanath?

Vishwanath: Yeah, so this is the brave new world. It's not that everybody can do it, but what one can do in the intermediate is to take the treated wastewater and leave it to the nearest lake.

Right? So that it then goes through a process of ecological cleaning and then the lake recharges the aquifer. That's the ground water and then you pick it up again from the ground water with the earth having remediated it further And you don't have the psychological feeling that you are using Wastewater that you've released from your toilet, right?

That's what we are doing in Devanahalli But that's what can be done at different community levels if the regulators and the owners of the lakes are able to talk to each other and get this kind of a system going,

Challenges and Trust in Water Management

Dinesh: when you say, regulators and owners of the lake, who do you mean and who are the stakeholders? 

Vishwanath: So the regulator is this pollution control board which has to give you permission to release your treated wastewater to the lake and the owners of the lake is the BBMP, the Mahanagar Palike, which has to say, okay, we will be ready to receive this, uh, treated wastewater also into our lake. in addition to wastewater. And so once it comes there, then it goes into the groundwater. And then from there, you can either pick it up as an apartment itself, or the state can pick it up, treat it and supply it to you. Like the BWSSB can do that. Pick it up from the groundwater, treat it and supply it back to you.

Dinesh: why would the pollution control board object to it? It seems like, uh, like if I look at it, the lakes seem to be getting polluted either ways. 

Vishwanath: So it's a question of trust. Now we have to build the technical competence of putting sensors and making sure that your apartment, for example, treats the wastewater. It doesn't send untreated wastewater. Sometimes when the sewage treatment plant is not working, 

untreated sewage should not come into the lake. So that's the precautionary principle that the Pollution Control Board

Dinesh: uses, but it does so in an absolute sense, right? It doesn't look into the fact that already there is untreated wastewater coming to the lake, that, There is a violation of the law by many, and those who are wanting to abide by the law are not given a chance to partner with them to make sure that the processes are robust and that it's only their treated wastewater which comes into a lake.

Vishwanath: So it's a trust building exercise, and it takes time for regulators to do it, but they've done it in, one case in, uh, in the Putenhali Lake in the south of Bangalore. They've allowed,uh, 4 lakh liters of treated wastewater from Brigade Millennium to come into the lake on an experimental basis many years back.

We should now try and start to work on replicating it faster and further.

Why should we not discharge untreated water?

Dinesh:  with respect to, discharging water that are not treated, what exactly is the problem with untreated water in the lakes?

Vishwanath: So untreated water in the lakes causes the lakes to have a lot of hydrophytes or plants growing in it and it becomes a wetland, right? The lake itself has a lot of remediation powers. It will remediate it. So the lake itself becomes a sewage treatment plant of a certain kind, yeah. But it can become malodorous at some points of time.

Fish can die. There'll be different species of birds which will occupy it, but some species of birds will not come to that lake. Yeah. There's a trade off between the lake acting as a wetland and a cleaner of water, as opposed to a lake which has got clean water, which is recharging the groundwater and aquifer.

And if that untreated sewage has industrial pollutants, then you have a chance of heavy metal contamination and, uh, and a lot more destruction of the groundwater in the lake itself. But if it's domestic sewage, it's not that much a problem.

Dinesh: And this phosphorus content in the water, how does that come in?

Vishwanath: So the phosphorus comes in essentially from the detergents we use and the hand cleaners we use, essentially from the detergents which we put into our washing machine, right? So that has high phosphate content and that ends up in our lakes. And phosphorus is a limiting nutrient for a lot of algae and plants.

So once phosphorus is in the environment, they just explode. The plants explode and algae explodes. So in the, in Canada and USA, for example, phosphate is banned in detergents near the Great Lake area. But can we afford it as an Indian society? I have my doubts. I don't think we can. Our detergents will become Terribly expensive or not affordable at all.

So there's a trade off between that, those two, right? The other thing to do with this phosphate water or this treated sewage water is to make sure that this wastewater is sent directly to agricultural fields, is put in our sewage treatment plants and sent to the agricultural fields. Because this phosphate itself is a fantastic nutrient for many crops. Especially rice paddy, which will love the detergent water, right? phosphate is a misplaced nutrient. If it ends up in water bodies, it's a destroyer of the water body. But if it ends up in fields, it's a great growth stimulator and productive, uh, material.

Dinesh: is that being used somewhere like that?

Vishwanath: Yes, a lot of informal use of untreated sewage water was done by farmers on the Dakshinpanakini River, where the Bangalore's wastewater goes, or on the Brishpavati. Farmers were actually pumping this untreated sewage seven to eight kilometers and sometimes 22 kilometers on their own and using this untreated sewage to grow mulberry, which grows very well with this phosphate water and untreated sewage water. 

And so it was happening in the informal domain. 

Dinesh: Mm-Hmm. 

Vishwanath: Now it is happening in the formal domain because Bangalore has become the second largest user of treated wastewater from a city for agricultural purpose, next only to 

Mexico City.So we pump 880 million liters per day of treated sewage water and fill the lakes of Kolar and Chitbalapur.

 Vishwanath: Then its is picked up by farmers and used for food productivity, right? So this phosphate water actually disturbs a bit of the lakes in the, in Kolar and Chikbalapur, but the lakes are meant for agricultural use and so the agricultural benefit, right? 

Dinesh: Right. Right. 

Vishwanath: So therefore the dream for me is that Bangalore, it imagines itself as a great water and fertilizer factory, not as a pollutant, right? As a generator of phosphate and other nutrients, including nitrogen, including potash. If it reaches farmers. Then it's greatly productive if the farmers have water security, and in turn the city gets food security. Because whatever the farmer grows can come back to the city in a safe manner, right, without any risk. Yeah, these are the great imaginations we need for our cities 

Dinesh: Mm-Hmm.

How does untreated sewage reach a lake?

Dinesh: and, so this part of where treated sewage water is being discharged to the lake. Now, um, How does that happen? Like who is responsible for it or where is the problem coming from there?

Vishwanath: So the problem comes in, two major, uh, ways. One is the areas in the periphery of the city where the BWSSB sewage pipelines simply don't exist.

Right? 

And so these are the new 110 villages which have been absorbed with the city many years back. And actually the periphery of the city where the sewage network does not exist.

What happens then to the untreated sewage? larger apartments are mandated to have their own STPs. But what about the smaller houses, right? 

And what about the smaller apartments? They don't have robust sewage systems. They generally have a hole in the ground or a septic tank which quickly fills up And overflows.

And that sewage comes in into the environment. All right. So there's a challenge there. That challenge can be addressed in my opinion by the BWSSB investing first in sewerage networks and then investing in water networks.

Dinesh: Okay. 

Vishwanath: That's not the way institutions are geared, so they've never done it in their, um, of existence.

So therefore it's unlikely they will do it quickly enough. Right. 

Issues with Old Sewage Networks

Vishwanath: The second part is within the city itself at the sewage network of the BWSSB, which is very old, it's more than a hundred years old in many places. That is unable to pick up the treated wastewater from a fast, Densifying environment, where you would have one house, now you have a ground plus three storied building coming up.

So that then overwhelms the system, and the system is unable to pick up the switch effectively. Of course, added to this are, in both cases, illegal constructions, which do not follow planning laws, and therefore, they don't connect to the official network at all.

Dinesh: So, when you say the, the smaller houses that do not have the sewage network, uh, so the wastewater kind of fills the septic tank and it is taken to the lake by, uh, storm water drains. 

Vishwanath: Exactly, exactly. So you make a big pit in the ground or you make a holding tank like a septic tank, usually you make a large pit, that quickly fills up and the liquid component of it comes into the storm drain and that storm drain network eventually leads to a lake. Many a time it may not lead to the lake, it may simply be flooding local zones and evaporating, but eventually all of it during the rains will reach the lake and contaminate it.

Economic and Social Aspects of Water Pricing

Dinesh: I used to live in Bellend before, and the famous Bellandur Lake, uh, problem was there. It's still there. I guess. I think many of us. uh, just at a very surfacial level, like why, why can't we just, uh, get this done? You know, we had that kind of a thinking was what, what was their prevalent among the residents.

Vishwanath:  so here's the thing. Why can't it get it done is, are we paying the true price for water? Yeah. 

hmmhappening now is that the institution, which is the BWSSB, is broke. It's not able to recover its full O& M cost, operations and maintenance cost, let alone capital cost, let alone a sinking fund. So therefore, it has simply no money on its own to be able to expand the network at the pace at which the city is expanding, right?

It simply doesn't have the money. And that's a twisted philosophy with water, which exists almost across all cities in India, where we Try looking at waters only as a human right, or as a pro poor approach. And in the process, what we do is the rich get the subsidy, the poor pay the highest price for water.

Give you a very simple example. In my house, I have a BWSSB connection. I pay seven rupees for a thousand liters in the first slab - zero to eight thousand liters, right? Next to me, just about half a kilometer away, it's a poor community where the network of the BWSSB is not there. So the person there has to go to an RO plant and pay 5 rupees for 20 liters.

He or she is paying 250 rupees a thousand liters. I pay 7 rupees a thousand liters. The rich get subsidy, the poor pay the high price for water. Not only do they pay a high price for water, they have to travel and they have to waste time at the RO plant to get the water. I get it in my tap. When I open it, right. 

Now, if I were to pay 95 rupees a kiloliter, 95 rupees for a thousand liters, right, I would be very responsible with the water use that I have, but the BWSSB would have the monies to invest in the sewerage network, and I could hold it accountable. I could tell them, look, dudes, I'm paying you the full money that you asked for.

Now you have no excuse. You have to get the network going, and there should be pressure on them to do that network. What we're doing now is just putting the pressure on the BWSSB to clean up its act without the monies. without the fiscal capabilities as well as the institutional capabilities. They don't simply have the human resource power right now to be able to plan, design, and implement good quality storage network. The root cause is us.

Groundwater and the Karmelaram success story

Dinesh: And how does the scenario fit in to this situation?

Vishwanath: So again, the groundwater is abundant if we do good rainwater harvesting and If we keep the lakes going, right? If we keep the lakes full of clean rainwater and if the groundwater is recharged with rainwater. Currently, we are taking about roughly 600 million liters per day to 800 million liters per day from groundwater. We don't have an exact number. We may have about 500, 000 to 600, 000 bore wells in the city of Bangalore, some of which have gone to a depth of 1, 800 feet. 

The best way to get groundwater sustainable is to get the local lake. Full of water, a protected and full of water. Now, if Bellandur and Varthur were to be full of rainwater or treated wastewater, the approximate recharge from just lakes into the groundwater would be 110 million liters per day, hundred and 10 million liters per day.

If these two lakes were were full of water, there would be no groundwater scarcity in that entire region for up to 10 square kilometers is what I believe. 

It's critical that we look at rainwater, recharge, and lakes. Plus, the lakes being filled with treated wastewater as the way to make, to keep groundwater sustainable.

recent rains, uh, there's this lake called Karmelaram, um, which is behind Karmelaram. Now, all the borewells there were struggling and the recent lakes, and because of the activists in that place who have worked very hard in making sure that uh, that lake has been revitalized and filled with rainwater, almost all borewells have come back to life.

What a farmer was recently mentioning that what used to take two and a half hours to fill a tanker. can now be done in 10 to 15 minutes. So all dry bore wells have come back to life. So therefore there'll be no crisis for the coming months there, right? Now, when the rainwater in Karmelaram starts to decline due to summer and no rains, what you can do is to take high quality treated wastewater and fill it up again. Um, so that the groundwater would always be full and the tanker and the apartments would have their borewells functioning. And therefore the stress on water would be that much less.

Enough scary stories, focus on solutions

Vishwanath: Right. RightUh, there was a a study by IISC saying that, Bangalore's, groundwater, uh, is going to be exhausted, you know, in, in some years time. it was kind of a very scary, report that got published. What's your take on that question? again, there's enough and more scary stories in the We have microplastics, we have emerging contaminants, we have heavy metals, we have groundwater running out, we have climate change. So there's enough and more scary stories. The thing is I would rather focus on what the solutions are and get our attention to that and work on it.

And like I told you with Karmelaram, there are. 185 lakes like Karmelaram, 

 Vishwanath: which could all be revived, which could all be brought into play and the groundwater would never run out, right? 

And not only the 185 lakes within the BBMP area, the lakes outside the BBMP area, like Gunjur, for example, or here this side, Bettacote near the airport, there's a series of about 500 lakes, which now need protection and if they're protected, there would be no groundwater shortage. But if we don't, if we simply keep extracting but not recharging, then of course the IISC report would be true. 

 Water - A Socio-Hydrological Resource

Dinesh: if if you have to take a look at the next 10 years, uh, horizon from a water security standpoint for, for the city and for the region around. Uh, where is the hope? and how do you see it?

Vishwanath: Yeah, so the Kaveri fifth phase has come, we're getting another 775 million liters per day. We will have a total of 2250 to 2275 million liters per day. If this water were to be distributed equitably, and that's the challenge, it's not water that's the challenge, but access to water, that's the biggest challenge.

If we make sure that every family, including those of slum dwellers, migrants, have access to this pipe network, then there's enough and more water. for the populace, right? So some water for all, not all for water for some. Where we need to focus is the distribution, making sure that social justice, access and equity are the fulcrum of the work we do with water, right?

And that includes wastewater too. In addition, if you want to look at it from a resource perspective, where we want to say that local resource will also supplement water from the Kaveri. We need to protect our lakes, we need to get our stormwater drains right, we need to make sure that our sewage is collected, treated and used as a resource.

Now, in all of these areas, we are working. It's not that it's tabula rasa, everywhere we are working, right? What we lack is a Common goal for all the institutions involved in water management. So if there's a great plan around water for the Bangalore hinterland, as you're pointing out, and each one of the institutions, the BBMP, KSPCB, BWSSB, fisheries department, etc, etc, all of them play their defined role within this grand plan, then we don't have a water problem.

We've actually The potential to be one of the most water effective and efficient cities in the world. What we talk about Israel or Singapore, we can do that at scale. Singapore is five and a half million people. Israel is seven million people or six and a half million people. We are already 14 and a half million people.

So we are bigger than nation states in terms of how water is to be managed. But we've been pioneers in many ways. A whole bunch of activists, NGOs, civil society, academics,who have all the skill in the world to do it. What I believe we lack is that grand plan and a commitment to make sure that that plan is acted upon.

Dinesh: And where will that, plan come from or how do we get to that? Um, 

Vishwanath: See, for for the city, we have a master plan, which then looks at the land use plan, right? For transportation, we have what's called the UMTA or the Urban Metropolitan Transport Authority, which seeks to align the metro, the buses and the railways and everything like the UMTA.

Though it's not working very well, but at least we have an institutional framework and a conceptualization of how transport should work in the city in an integrated fashion. We lack that for water. We need to create an integrated urban water management institution or an integrated urban water management plan.

Which perhaps in my opinion, should come from the BWSSB because ultimately it's responsible for water of the city, but the BWSSB has to go beyond its own role that it assumes for itself. It looks on itself as the provider of Kaveri Water, and at best, as the collector of wastewater in treating it. It should look upon itself as an institution responsible for all forms of water for Bangalore, and therefore drop this bigger plan.

In consultation with citizens, but also perhaps professional consultants, and then get ownership from all the other institutions to play their role. They don't have to go beyond their role, they just have to play their role within the grant. And so I believe that we can pursue the BWSSB to be the carrier of this.

But if we are able to get some political traction, if one minister, uh, let's say the Bangalore Minister, uh, takes ownership and takes owners for it, the work gets done easier easier And then we have,things much more, uh, hunky dory.

 So the thing that I was wanting to point out to you is that we have to punch within our category. If we are lightweight, middleweight or heavyweight, we need to punch within our category. Now, if a lightweight boxer thinks that he can get into a heavyweight category, then he finds out pretty soon that that's the wrong canvas to be in, the wrong arena to be in, right?

So, At this point of time, if we punch according to our weight or slightly above our weight, then we are good. We should not exceed our dreams beyond what our capabilities are. 

Dinesh: So that's, that's a contract that we have to draw between citizens and ourselves. Otherwise, we would invest tons of monies in a lake without getting the results because we're just incapable of fixing all the things around which need to be fixed before the lake emerges as a beautiful spot, right? so it's a it's a constant endeavor for us, for me personally, to understand what we should be doing as a society.

Vishwanath: And for me, it's clear, it's social justice that is the bedrock of it all. 

if we want to get to where we need to get as a society.

Dinesh: 

I want to, close this episode with some thoughts from, from an article published on 15th December, 2025 in, in Times of India titled Striking Liquid Gold. Some insights from reading the article is that for Bangalore there is a way out.

The water security problem could be dissolved, dissolved to a large degree by seriously thinking about about the treated water the city generates. The city generates a large amount of wastewater on a daily basis, about 1,800 million liters a day from.

BWSSB's 34 sewage treatment plants and another 3,500 decentralized private STPs in apartments and commercial complexes. 

However, much of it continues to simply flow in valleys and lakes because large scale reuse infrastructure is not built into the city for taking up the treated water, which leaves us to this interesting space, tertiary treated wastewater.

 It's the water that is treated to a very high standard that it could be used for drinking or even for industrial purposes, which demand, which demand a higher degree of purity than drinking water.

What really comes in the way of us using tertiary treated wastewater is it's not the lack of reuse infrastructure or potability of water itself. It's, it's our perception about treated water, our inability to imagine that treated water could be cleaner than municipal or borewell water, 

and, and it's natural for us to feel that way. We cannot, we cannot discount human intuitions about clean water. That leaves us with the question, what, what would take us to feel comfortable about the idea that, that the water we drink could have very well been sewage in the recent past? Maybe. Maybe we need to truly appreciate and admire the technology behind wastewater treatment.

It's almost magical that, that we refuse to accept or.How should be the experience? How? How should we design an experience learning program or design a public ritual for us, the citizens of Bangalore, so that we collectively change our mindsets about treated water and, free ourselves from the misery of water scarcity. 

Coda

Vishwanath: The 185 lakes of our city, how are we going to visualize it, how are we going to protect it, and what do we imagine it to be, right?

I get to it because the more our imagination of a lake, the more demands we put on the energy to be spent on making it clean or whatever, right? So if you really want this lake to be crystal clear water, like a temperate climate water, then you will spend tons of money.

But is it okay if you just have a large expanse, which is full of birds, fish, gives you a pleasant, uh, Coolness around, you walk around it, you enjoy the ambience. Is that good enough? 

So, I'm just raising a question and leaving it to you, but if we find acceptance to this model, it's way cheaper than any other model that we can, afford it. Yeah. We can't swim in it. We can't drink it. directly. Yeah. We can't go boating in it because it will disturb the birds. So we need to keep away. But we can enjoy it the way it is to be done. 

And just this path, for example, that it's not paved, it's left as earth, has been a hard battle with a lot of citizens to fight. Including the government, but also citizens, who imagine when it rains it will become Keechad, right? So even in the list of things around lakes this path is huge. Argument and discussion.

So, just as a matter of provocation. What's a bad lake? Huh? What's a bad lake? You tell me, actually. What's a bad lake? A no lake is a baddest lake.