Twenty-one cities in India will run out of groundwater by 2020

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I always thought watersheds were a great way of defining state-level regions. They&#x27;re more stable than boundaries set by rivers, and are more natural than arbitrary lines of latitude&#x2F;longitude. In the (near) future, there&#x27;s going to be a lot of hand wringing over who has what rights to which water. The only way to completely solve it is to have one region be in control of the entire course of the water&#x27;s flow.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;govbeat&#x2F;wp&#x2F;2013&#x2F;11&#x2F;19&#x2F;map-the-united-states-of-watersheds&#x2F;?noredirect=on&amp;utm_term=.0f5a35bcd78c" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;govbeat&#x2F;wp&#x2F;2013&#x2F;11&#x2F;19&#x2F;m...</a><p>Granted, redrawing the map based on watershed doesn&#x27;t solve India&#x27;s problem. But, it sounds like that in the future their drinking water is going to come from careful management of groundwater, which will require a lot of state level agreements. Right now, I&#x27;m not optimistic those agreements will happen smoothly.

There have been a flurry of alarmists posts like these but somehow I cant wrap my head around how will we run out of water. I stay in Bangalore and some people do have the problem of water - but for the most part it doesnt seem to be an issue of &#x27;lack&#x27; of water perse but mostly distribution issues.<p>Bangalore has been having intermittent rains throughout the summers and even though few people use them now, but if situation gets dire almost everyone should be able to setup a rain water harvesting system and get by.<p>India is also installing solar at a rapid pace and the cost of electricity is going down. The next level solution could be just to use sea water that India is surrounded by, and use some of that solar power to filter this water.<p>Somehow I dont get all this alarmist news. Maybe im missing something.

Same issue in Pakistan, it&#x27;s a very watery place in comparison to say, Europe or Southern USA, but you have hard time finding a place with reliable tap water:<p>1. Water theft from utilities<p>2. Gigantic and wasteful usage of water in agriculture<p>3. Leaky pipes and contamination from sewage<p>4. Utilities are just starting to recover from decades of extreme mismanagement<p>5. Tanker mafia of course doing its worst to keep all of above going

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I think the govt must stop factories, soda factories, mineral water companies taking ground water ASAP.

India does not have a water issue, they have a population issue, but it’s really hard to mange the population, so natural resources are being consumed beyond sustainability.<p>This problem is not confined to India, it’s a problem with humanity. Nature is working on a correction.

When you cover large swarth of land with concert the rain water goes on the roof and on the road goes to gutter and makes it way to sevege. In absence, of this it is drawn underground and refills underground water.<p>When people were building these concert jungles, they didn&#x27;t keep in mind where the water comes from and how exactly it&#x27;s refilled and what we can do to replenish the capacity lost due to our development projects.

Is there a way to limit the size of these big cities?<p>What if they start requiring a domestic visa process to let in the people from other states?<p>Everyone wants a life of high standards of living which cities provide along with employment.<p>If we do not limit the number of people who can get in, it will naturally result in whole population of India moving into these cities.<p>This will result in people making wherever they live better instead of just moving to a better city.

They’ve already run out in some, and truck in water. Those with money are able to pay for fresh water.

I&#x27;ve see a number of documentaries about indians that have used permaculture to turn desert into food producing forests. maybe they need to apply their knowledge in cities?

SA is closer getting more than 35% of drinking water via desalinating sea water

how much is Coca-Cola[1][2] to blame for this. Afaik it has been the center of criticism in India for over a decade now:<p><i>Coca-Cola operates 58 water-intensive bottling plants in India. In the southern Indian village of Plachimada in Kerala state, for example, persistent droughts have dried up groundwater and local wells, forcing many residents to rely on water supplies trucked in daily by the government.</i><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thoughtco.com&#x2F;coca-cola-groundwater-depletion-in-india-1204204" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thoughtco.com&#x2F;coca-cola-groundwater-depletion-in...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;waronwant.org&#x2F;media&#x2F;coca-cola-drinking-world-dry" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;waronwant.org&#x2F;media&#x2F;coca-cola-drinking-world-dry</a>