Water train set to relieve drought-hit Indian city – Doctors forced to buy water for surgery – “We won’t be able to supply water even to the people who can pay a huge sum for a tanker of water”
By P. Ravikumar
11 July 2019
JOLARPETTAI, India (Reuters) – Indian authorities on Thursday filled tanks with water and loaded them onto a train in the southern state of Tamil Nadu to supply its manufacturing capital Chennai where reservoirs have run dry.
Technicians in the railway station at Jolarpettai, located over 135 miles (217 km) from Chennai, worked from early on Thursday to fill fifty wagons with 50,000 liters of water each, sourced from a south Indian river.
The unusual water train, expected to reach Chennai on Friday, will provide much needed relief to the carmaking center dubbed “India’s Detroit.”
The shortage has forced some schools to shut, companies to ask employees to work from home, and hotels to ration water for guests.
Bad water management and lack of rainfall mean all four reservoirs that supply Chennai have run virtually dry this summer. Other Indian cities, including the capital New Delhi and technology hub Bengaluru, are also grappling with water shortages.
The train was supposed to reach Chennai on Thursday, but leakages in valves connecting the tank to the railway station forced authorities to push back plans by a day, officials at the railway station said.
People living on the outskirts are blocking roads and laying siege to tanker lorries because they fear their water reserves are being sacrificed so city dwellers, businesses and luxury hotels do not run out. [more]
Water train set to relieve drought-hit Indian city
India’s worsening drought is forcing doctors to buy water for surgery
By Archana Chaudhary and Shivani Kumaresan
9 July 2019
(Bloomberg) – Along with other doctors in Indian cities facing unprecedented water shortages, T.N. Ravisankar in Chennai is praying for rain—and soon.
Treating patients will “depend on God’s mercy” if water supplies in India’s fourth-largest metropolis aren’t replenished shortly, said Ravisankar, the chairman of Sudar hospitals, a chain of four clinics with 150 beds. Piped water at his hospitals has already dried up, and even the more expensive water trucks he now relies on may be unavailable soon in the state of Tamil Nadu.
“The cost escalation will have to be passed on to patients, who will have to spend more,” Ravisankar said. “If the situation continues, after a month we won’t be able to serve patients.”
Failed rains last year and delays in this year’s annual monsoon have left nearly half of India facing drought-like conditions, according to the South Asia Drought Monitor. Tamil Nadu is trapped in a “severe dry” cycle along with other states like Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.
Up north, India’s capital New Delhi has recorded the worst monsoon delay in 45 years. With piped water supply available to less than a fifth of Delhi homes, political parties have traded barbs with the state government over the lack of planning for water-truck supplies to large swathes of the city.
As the impact of climate change worsens, water is shaping up to be a serious economic risk in Asia’s third-largest economy. Desertification, land degradation and drought cost India about 2.54% of gross domestic product in 2014-15, according to a study last year by India’s environment ministry. […]
Almost all of Chennai’s hospitals are now completely dependent on the more than 5,000 privately-owned tankers that ferry water around the city every day, according to N. Nijalingam, president of the Tamil Nadu Private Water Tanker Lorry Owners’ Association. But it’s becoming tougher to source water even from 100 kilometers (62 miles) away, he said.
“If the situation continues, after a month we won’t be able to supply water even to the people who can pay a huge sum for a tanker of water,” he said. [more]
India’s Worsening Drought Is Forcing Doctors to Buy Water for Surgery
