Access to safe, sufficient, and affordable water is a fundamental human right, yet millions in India, particularly in informal settlements like Mumbai's Bhimnagar, are denied this right, impacting children's education and future. While government initiatives aim to provide piped water, true sustainability requires addressing pollution, rainwater harvesting, and groundwater replenishment in the face of climate change.
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we start in india with a closer look at
that most precious commodity
water the united nations considers
access to safe sufficient and affordable
water a universal human right but
globally more than 2 billion people are
still denied that right and in india
that translates to less than 50 percent
of the population in mumbai one
organization is fighting to secure water
for communities that have not had this
this four-year-old child has escaped
school to walk around his home in bhimnagar
bhimnagar
an informal settlement in suburban
mumbai to collect water
many children here fill cans and buckets
with water to take home to their families
families [Music]
[Music]
sometimes these children tap into
pipelines that run below roads to fill
[Music]
parents find themselves in tough
situations where they are forced to ask
their children to skip school to get
water instead because the parents have
to tend to their jobs as sweepers
but an effect of water scarcity is that
the future of children in these
settlements is being destroyed
many shanties like these date back to
the 1950s and are usually home to people
cleaners offers clerks and their
liberals who have been excluded from the
city's development initiatives
one significant effect of this is that
around 2 million residents here have no
it was in the 19th century that rapid
industrialization and a boom in the
textile industry made mumbai a
commercial hub
spurring large-scale migration of people
from other cities towns and villages
leading to an exponential growth in the
city's population
the shanties you see now have become an
unmistakable symbol of inequality in
the authorities hope that the absence of
basic amenities like water and plumbing
would make these settlements
inhospitable and that they would
eventually disappear
but the opposite happened
today a collective is working to get
people here their right to water
in 2012 the organization pani hack
smithy filed a public interest lawsuit
in the bombay high court
it wanted to prevent the local
government from stopping what
infrastructure projects in slums two
years later the court upheld the
citizens right to water even in
in 15th december 2014 we got a judgment
and this judgment has two major
major
i think the historic
acceptance by the court or the
directions by the court
one is
water right to water is a precondition
to right to the life with dignity number two
two
providing drinking water is the
responsibility of the
urban local government
so far the group has supported around
ten thousand people to get access to
piped water across mumbai suburbs [Music]
[Music]
the painter jaimati also volunteers at
pani hack smith
and has now helped process around 400
applications for water connections
he has seen an improvement in both the
mental and physical health of his community
community
hundreds of thousands around mumbai
still live without formal access to
water even as more people come to the city
city
and though their right to water has been
legally established the road to gain
joining us is sunita narin general
director of the center for science and
environment in delhi sunita welcome to
the program
thank you melissa
i wonder how much of a priority clean
this government has made clean water
access a top priority and that needs to
be said and understood i mean it has put
clean water has been a priority for most
governments but this time the prime
minister has really stuck his neck out
to say this is something that we need a
tap in every household and the tap has
to have water and what i like about that
is for the first time we are focusing on
the sustainability of the water supply
because the problem till now has been
that we've had
water supply has been an infrastructure
issues but with climate change and with
all the changes we are seeing in
rainfall what needs to be secured is not
the tap but the water in the tap and
more importantly clean water in the tap
and that's really about
managing pollution and managing
rainwater harvesting making sure you
replenish your groundwater so that you
do have water in the tap
you've touched on so many issues here i
want to go to the infrastructure part of
it first though
prime minister narendra modi has pledged
to bring piped water to all of india's 192
192
million rural homes over the next four
years that's a lot of people is this
roll-out possible in that time frame and
how much of it is just political posturing
well you know uh for any government
setting a goal like that is very
important and i think
what i
feel strongly as an environmentalist and
somebody who's been working on water for
so many for decades now is that it is
good to see such an important such a big
intention that we are going to put water
in the hands of people clean water in
the hands of people not just taps and i
want to emphasize this because the
government program for the first time
has not focused on just infrastructure
it is focused on the availability of
clean water supply and so i think the
prime minister has to be lauded for this
i think it's also important that there
is a big ambition and from what i am
understanding and our reporters on the
ground are bringing back that there is a
lot of activity to repair replenish
the water supply systems that were lying
in decrepit position situation in
villages but i think what i am seeing
more hope is that there is an emphasis
today in investing in the ecological
infrastructure in the catchments of the
tanks in desalting the tanks in making
sure that there are that we recharge our
groundwater systems because uh prime
minister's uh water program has to be
seen in the context of climate change
when we are going to see massive changes
in our water systems whether it is
drought or floods and you've seen that
in germany as much as we've seen that in india
india
absolutely i want to talk a little bit
about that can you talk about the
relationship between climate change and
having enough water there's no point in
the pipes if there is no water tell us a
little bit about that
so melissa that's always been the
biggest issue because you know we've had
a huge emphasis on infrastructure but
not sustainability of the water supply
and the water supply in and you know i i
you know india is a massive country
villages are all you know our remote
villages are massive villages so you
need an ability to be able to hold and
capture the rain where and when it falls
that's what sustainability means now
that cannot happen without community
participation people have to be involved
in capturing and maintaining their local
water systems but with climate change is
getting worse because with climate
change we are finding india in many
cases got rain in a very limited period
now we are going to get more rain in
fewer number of rainy days which means
more floods and more droughts and our
ability to hold the water to be able to
recharge the groundwater will become
critical that's sustainability in an age
of climate change
sunita and orion thank you so much for
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