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India’s Water Crisis: In Aurangabad, Private Tanker Business Flourishes Amidst Water Shortage

In Aurangabad, a shortage of water has led to proliferation of the water tanker business, where earnings run in lakhs each day.

Water tankers seen standing in Aurangabad in Western India. (Photo: Parth MN/BloombergQuint)
Water tankers seen standing in Aurangabad in Western India. (Photo: Parth MN/BloombergQuint)

The whirring noise of the bulky, raggedy water tankers navigating the early morning traffic announces dawn in Aurangabad, a tier-2 city in Western India. The tankers criss-cross the city through the day. At a casual glance it looks like every fourth vehicle is carrying water.

The municipal corporation supplies water once a week in summer months, say citizens, who then have to rely on private suppliers to meet their daily water needs.

The water flows alongside money, making day to day life more expensive.

Dr. Sainath Devkar, who runs a clinic in Sangram Nagar – 4 kilometres from Aurangabad railway station – says he has to buy a 5,000-litre water tanker every three days. “I have a family of four, and a clinic to look after,” he says. “The municipal corporation has not even provided a pipeline here. I end up buying 10 water tankers a month in peak summers. Each costs Rs 1000. It is a sudden increase in expenses but it is unavoidable.”

For Ashok and Sushila Mairad, the struggle is more extreme.

Ashok is a daily-wage worker, earning Rs 300 a day. Sushila is a housewife. “I get work 20-25 days a month,” says Ashok, 42. The family has had to spent Rs 6,000 on water in the past three months. “My monthly income is about Rs 6,000. How can I survive if I spend one third of my income on water? Is it not the basic right of a citizen?”

The erstwhile capital for the Nizams, Aurangabad, has about 12 lakh residents. It is famous for its industrial corridor and the Ajanta-Ellora caves. But the city has been drought-prone as it falls in the agrarian region of Marathwada, which receives moderate rainfall of about 700 mm per year. With 72 percent of Maharashtra reeling under drought, Aurangabad is one of the worst affected towns.

India’s Water Crisis: In Aurangabad, Private Tanker Business Flourishes Amidst Water Shortage

The Water Tanker Trade

In every crisis, lies an opportunity and Aurangabad’s water crisis has meant boom time for those operating water tankers.

Two kinds of water tankers frequent the bumpy lanes of Aurangabad — 5,000 litres and 2,000 litres. The smaller one, called “Chhota Hathi” or small elephant, costs Rs 500 and does about 20 trips every day in the months of April, May and June, when the water requirements are most acute. There would be at least 200 such tankers, according to those involved in the business. This would make for a Rs 20-lakh-a-day business.

The larger tankers are fewer in number — about 150 going by the estimates of those in the business — and make about 10-12 trips at a charge of about Rs 1,000. Those operating these tankers stand to earn about Rs 35 lakh a day.

There are also tankers which carry 12,000 litres but these are used mostly by hotels and hospitals, not residents.

A water supplier, requesting anonymity, says this is the most profitable business in Aurangabad. It does not require any permissions or paperwork, he says, trying hard to not answer a phone call for another order during the interview. All you need is enough capital to purchase a truck, he says. The phones start ringing from January and starting April, we make a fortune, he adds.

No official estimates are available on the earnings from the private tanker trade but estimates run into lakhs.

Sanjeev Unhale, who heads an NGO called ‘Dilasa’, which works in the Aurangabad area, estimates the daily water trade would be to the tune of Rs 30-35 lakh per day. “Some of those transaction are round the year, because the city is expanding and there is no pipeline in several areas,” he said.

A <i>‘Chhota Hathi </i>water tanker seen wasting water in Aurangabad in Western India. (Photographer: Parth MN/BloombergQuint)
A ‘Chhota Hathi water tanker seen wasting water in Aurangabad in Western India. (Photographer: Parth MN/BloombergQuint)

Big Money; No Rules

The tankers in Aurangabad do not only carry water. They carry impunity.

Conversations with several tankers owners, who spoke on condition of anonymity, suggest there are no clear rules for who operates water tankers, where they source the water from and what they charge for it. In the process, violation of groundwater rules is rampant.

On paper, there are rules.

These rules do not allow anyone to drill a borewell deeper than 200 feet. But most of the borewells are drilled deeper than that to access water, said tanker owners that BloombergQuint spoke to.

This is particularly true in years when rainfall has been short and ground-water levels have fallen. In 2018, the months of October, November, and December saw a rainfall shortfall of 97 percent, 82 percent and 100 percent respectively, according to the Indian Meteorological Department .

The borewells, as a result, had been parched since January itself and digging deeper to access water is necessary.

Nandkumar Ghodele, mayor of Aurangabad, does not deny that some of these borewells are not in compliance with rules but justifies the lack of government action against them.

The borewells that are dug deeper than 200 feet are from before the rule was made 4-5 years ago. So you cannot take action against them.
Nandkumar Ghodele, Mayor of Aurangabad

Public Good; Private Gains

There are specific points in and around Aurangabad, from where the suppliers extract groundwater and fill up their tankers. BloombergQuint visited some of these areas.

Most of these borewells appear to be drilled on private land, with land-owners giving tanker-operators unfettered access to the borewells on their land, in return for a share of the earnings. That share, according to conversations that BloombergQuint had, is usually 10-20 percent of what a tanker of water costs.

Imtiyaz Jaleel, a Member of Parliament from Aurangabad, who made water a core part of his campaign for the 2019 Lok Sabha election, says the administration should take over private wells through fair negotiations in times of water scarcity. “Water cannot be a property of individuals,” he says. “But the tanker lobby is powerful. The private water suppliers are relatives of most of the local netas. That is why nobody wants to regulate it.”

When confronted with that allegation, Mayor Ghodele is defensive.

“He (Jaleel) should give us the specifics if he knows who is running the tanker business,” Ghodele says.

“What action can we take? If people are selling water, and residents are buying it, what kind of an action is expected? It is between those who own that water and those who buy from them,” Ghodele adds.

BloombergQuint tried to reach the municipal commissioner via phone calls and messages but got no response.

A large water tanker seen extracting water in Aurangabad in Western India. (Photographer: Parth MN/BloombergQuint)
A large water tanker seen extracting water in Aurangabad in Western India. (Photographer: Parth MN/BloombergQuint)

Rusting Infrastructure

Until the corporation can assure residents of regular water, it cannot intervene and stop the tanker lobby, says Aurangabad-based civic activist, Vijay Diwan, who, like Jaleel, alleges that many of the local leaders are involved in the tanker business. “Not fixing Aurangabad’s shambolic water supply allows this business to run,” Diwan says.

The city depends on water supply from the Jayakwadi dam. However, the pipeline that is supposed to connect the dam with Aurangabad has been operational since 1975 and has endured considerable wear and tear. The pipes, designed to carry a capacity of 56 million litres, are old and operating at only 50 percent of capacity.

The city’s water requirement is far higher. Mayor Ghodele estimates it at 250 million litres per day.

A parallel pipeline was mooted back in 2005 but is languishing due to a dispute between the Municipal Corporation and SPML, a Subhash Chandra-owned private company roped in to construct it.

The deal was structured in a way that the company would take over water supply of Aurangabad in exchange of constructing that pipeline. However, the project was stalled due to opposition to the Municipal Corporation’s plan to surrender the city’s water supply to a private corporation.

“We agitated, staged protests and forced them to cancel their services,” says civic activist Diwan. “Right to water is part of right to life... it cannot be supplied on profit basis,” Diwan adds. “Bombay Municipal Act of 1956 says that public water supply has to be done by the corporation,” he says.

Ghodele says two new schemes have been presented to the state government, which involve installing new pipelines and widening the network of pipes through the city. The schemes, which are estimated to cost Rs 1,600 crore and Rs 2,200 crore respectively, are intended to connect all corners of the city with pipeline infrastructure.

“We should ideally begin work before the assembly elections in October,” he says. “If the parallel water pipeline schemes had not languished, a lot of our water problems would have been sorted out,” Ghodele said.

Aurangabad’s problem is not isolated, says Diwan. “It is happening across the country, where rural areas are being converted into urban areas through acquisition of farmlands, without any proper planning of how to provide basic services to the people,” he says. “Smaller cities like Aurangabad end up suffering more than the metros because the purchasing power of tier two towns is not as robust.”

In December 2018, The Energy and Resources Institute published a report titled “India’s rampant urban water issues and challenges”, explaining that growth in urban population leads to additional water demand.

According to the report, urban water demand has risen sharply between 2001 and 2011 due to an increase in the urban population. Over 38.4 million litres per day were needed to service an urban population of 285 million in 2001. Within a decade, the urban population has risen to 377 million and the water requirement has surged to 50.9 million, the report shows.

The report further elaborates that a “water supply of 135 litres per capita per day is a service level benchmark for domestic water use in urban local bodies. However, as per Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organisation, an average water supply in urban local bodies is 69.25 LPCD,” suggesting that urban India is unable to meet its water demand. “

Business Vs People

The people of Aurangabad face this shortage on a daily basis. Their angst worsened by the belief that industry, including non-essential businesses like beer factories, continue to get water while residents struggle.

“We get tap water at home for an hour in a week,” says a resident who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Me and my wife have to go to work. If that hour happens to be in the middle of the day, we have to request our neighbours to fill water for us,” this resident said. “On the one hand, people are struggling to fetch drinking water, and on the other you have beer factories in the same city.”

The beer factories have come to represent all that’s wrong with Aurangabad’s water economy.

In 2016, the Aurangabad bench of Bombay High Court had directed Maharashtra state to cut water supply of liquor companies by half because of the water shortage.

The six beer factories and distilleries require 6-8 million litres of water per day, which they get from the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation. The MIDC, in turn, draws water from the Jayakwadi dam that supplies water to Aurangabad city.

Ramchandra Bhogale, president of the Chamber of Marathwada Industries and Agriculture, says the beer industries’ water requirement is merely 3-4 percent of the city’s requirement. “It is not the reason behind our water crisis,” he says. “Sugarcane guzzles a lot more water, and does not even generate as much revenue as beer industries, yet it is not criticised as much.”

The beer factories get water at 6.4 paise per litre because they use it as raw material. Other industries, including engineering and pharmaceuticals, get water at 2-2.5 paise per litre, while agriculture gets it free.

Residents, meanwhile, are having to pay 20-25 paise if they are forced to order water via tankers even though they are supposed to get it free.

For some, the cost ends up being prohibitive.

At a residential hostel for orphan kids in Aurangabad, founder Kavita Wagh, says they have spent Rs. 1.5 lakh behind water tankers in three months. “Even then the kids are bathing on alternate days,” she says. “We have 150 children aged between 6 and 18 years, and we padlock our water drums,” she says.

Water for a bath, which many take for granted, an occasional luxury here.

This is the second part of a series on the water crisis facing India, its farmers, the industry and its citizens.

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