“Indore Is a Warning”: India Faces Serious Drinking Water Challenges

New Delhi: Even India’s cleanest city, Indore, is facing a severe drinking water crisis, exposing vulnerabilities in urban water management and public health infrastructure. Contaminated tap water in parts of the city has caused hundreds of illnesses and several deaths, raising serious questions about the efficiency of local authorities and the robustness of citizen safety mechanisms.

Water Quality Challenges Across India

The water crisis is not limited to Indore. Several states, including Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Haryana, and Punjab, are grappling with the challenge of providing safe drinking water. In Delhi, for instance, summer water shortages are compounded by poor water quality due to pollution in the Yamuna River and old, deteriorating pipelines, which risk contamination from sewage. Furthermore, regular water quality monitoring is often lacking, increasing public health risks.

Delhi’s aging water infrastructure includes pipelines that are 40–80 years old, affecting the quality of water even after treatment. Studies have also revealed high ammonia levels in Yamuna water, highlighting the difficulty of supplying consistently safe drinking water. To tackle this, the government has allocated ₹9,000 crore for drinking water, sanitation, and water infrastructure upgrades, including new borewells, pipeline modernization, rainwater harvesting, and Yamuna cleanup projects.

Government Initiatives: Jal Jeevan Mission and AMRUT

The Jal Jeevan Mission received ₹67,000 crore in the 2025–26 budget, with its target extended to 2028, aiming to provide tap water connections to all rural households. Before the mission’s implementation, around 3.24 crore rural homes had tap water connections; now over 15.5 crore households receive water directly through taps.

Urban water supply initiatives under the AMRUT scheme, launched in 2015, focus on developing piped water networks across 4,700+ cities and municipalities. AMRUT 2.0 has an estimated budget of ₹2.77–2.99 lakh crore, emphasizing sustainable urban water supply.

State-Level Efforts

In Uttar Pradesh, the “Har Ghar Jal” program is rapidly expanding, while Madhya Pradesh is intensifying its efforts under the “Har Ghar Nal Se Jal” initiative. Significant urban investments are also underway: in Bhopal, a ₹582 crore drinking water project has been inaugurated, aiming for 100% piped water coverage within three years.

Conclusion

The Indore crisis serves as an urgent warning that even India’s cleanest cities are not immune to water quality and infrastructure failures. While national missions like Jal Jeevan and AMRUT 2.0 are making strides, effective implementation, continuous monitoring, and state-level collaboration remain critical to ensuring safe and reliable drinking water across the country.