FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Water is life. The human body needs it and the food we consume needs water to grow too. It is, of course, required for many other purposes of modern life, like sanitation. In ancient times, human habitation was built around a secure supply of water. These days, its supply is often taken for granted as though it were endless. This is a silent crisis brewing in many parts of the world. As we approach the 75th anniversary of our Independence, the failure to supply clean potable water to most of its citizens is one of the biggest showed just how bad the situation is—39.1 per cent of Indian women, the study discovered, have to step out of their homes to fetch water. Sixteen per cent of the women surveyed in 19 Indian states said they walked between one and five kilometres twice a day to get water. Imagine the number of hours millions of these women must be spending each day for what we in the cities get at the twist of a knob. Think of the opportunity costs—the time they could have gainfully spent on education, employment or looking after their families. How a country that has sent satellites to Mars has been unable thus far to provide all its billion-plus people access to clean drinking water continues to be a monumental human tragedy. Close to 70 per cent of Indians do not have piped drinking water. And distribution is only part of the problem. India is fast running out of water. The future looks bleak for a country that accounts for 18 per cent of the Earth’s population but has only 4 per cent of the available freshwater. With an increasing population and insufficient surface water, the crisis is only likely to worsen. India’s per capita water availability has shrunk from 5,000 cubic metres 50 years ago to 1,500 cubic metres today. The problem, as the Union minister for Jal Shakti, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, tells us in an interview, is “really, really very big”.