0:02 we start in india with a closer look at
0:04 that most precious commodity
0:07 water the united nations considers
0:09 access to safe sufficient and affordable
0:11 water a universal human right but
0:14 globally more than 2 billion people are
0:17 still denied that right and in india
0:19 that translates to less than 50 percent
0:22 of the population in mumbai one
0:24 organization is fighting to secure water
0:26 for communities that have not had this
0:38 this four-year-old child has escaped
0:40 school to walk around his home in bhimnagar
0:41 bhimnagar
0:43 an informal settlement in suburban
0:46 mumbai to collect water
0:48 many children here fill cans and buckets
0:50 with water to take home to their families
0:52 families [Music]
0:54 [Music]
0:56 sometimes these children tap into
0:58 pipelines that run below roads to fill
1:07 [Music]
1:08 parents find themselves in tough
1:10 situations where they are forced to ask
1:12 their children to skip school to get
1:14 water instead because the parents have
1:15 to tend to their jobs as sweepers
1:22 but an effect of water scarcity is that
1:23 the future of children in these
1:27 settlements is being destroyed
1:29 many shanties like these date back to
1:32 the 1950s and are usually home to people
1:40 cleaners offers clerks and their
1:42 liberals who have been excluded from the
1:45 city's development initiatives
1:47 one significant effect of this is that
1:50 around 2 million residents here have no
1:56 it was in the 19th century that rapid
1:58 industrialization and a boom in the
2:00 textile industry made mumbai a
2:02 commercial hub
2:04 spurring large-scale migration of people
2:07 from other cities towns and villages
2:09 leading to an exponential growth in the
2:11 city's population
2:13 the shanties you see now have become an
2:16 unmistakable symbol of inequality in
2:21 the authorities hope that the absence of
2:24 basic amenities like water and plumbing
2:26 would make these settlements
2:28 inhospitable and that they would
2:29 eventually disappear
2:32 but the opposite happened
2:34 today a collective is working to get
2:36 people here their right to water
2:39 in 2012 the organization pani hack
2:42 smithy filed a public interest lawsuit
2:44 in the bombay high court
2:46 it wanted to prevent the local
2:47 government from stopping what
2:50 infrastructure projects in slums two
2:52 years later the court upheld the
2:54 citizens right to water even in
3:04 in 15th december 2014 we got a judgment
3:07 and this judgment has two major
3:09 major
3:11 i think the historic
3:13 acceptance by the court or the
3:14 directions by the court
3:16 one is
3:19 water right to water is a precondition
3:22 to right to the life with dignity number two
3:23 two
3:25 providing drinking water is the
3:28 responsibility of the
3:29 urban local government
3:31 so far the group has supported around
3:33 ten thousand people to get access to
3:36 piped water across mumbai suburbs [Music]
3:42 [Music]
3:45 the painter jaimati also volunteers at
3:46 pani hack smith
3:49 and has now helped process around 400
3:52 applications for water connections
3:53 he has seen an improvement in both the
3:55 mental and physical health of his community
3:57 community
3:59 hundreds of thousands around mumbai
4:01 still live without formal access to
4:03 water even as more people come to the city
4:04 city
4:06 and though their right to water has been
4:08 legally established the road to gain
4:15 joining us is sunita narin general
4:17 director of the center for science and
4:19 environment in delhi sunita welcome to
4:22 the program
4:24 thank you melissa
4:26 i wonder how much of a priority clean
4:34 this government has made clean water
4:36 access a top priority and that needs to
4:40 be said and understood i mean it has put
4:42 clean water has been a priority for most
4:44 governments but this time the prime
4:46 minister has really stuck his neck out
4:49 to say this is something that we need a
4:51 tap in every household and the tap has
4:54 to have water and what i like about that
4:56 is for the first time we are focusing on
4:59 the sustainability of the water supply
5:01 because the problem till now has been
5:02 that we've had
5:05 water supply has been an infrastructure
5:09 issues but with climate change and with
5:10 all the changes we are seeing in
5:14 rainfall what needs to be secured is not
5:16 the tap but the water in the tap and
5:19 more importantly clean water in the tap
5:22 and that's really about
5:25 managing pollution and managing
5:27 rainwater harvesting making sure you
5:29 replenish your groundwater so that you
5:31 do have water in the tap
5:33 you've touched on so many issues here i
5:35 want to go to the infrastructure part of
5:37 it first though
5:39 prime minister narendra modi has pledged
5:42 to bring piped water to all of india's 192
5:44 192
5:46 million rural homes over the next four
5:49 years that's a lot of people is this
5:51 roll-out possible in that time frame and
5:53 how much of it is just political posturing
5:59 well you know uh for any government
6:01 setting a goal like that is very
6:03 important and i think
6:04 what i
6:06 feel strongly as an environmentalist and
6:08 somebody who's been working on water for
6:11 so many for decades now is that it is
6:15 good to see such an important such a big
6:18 intention that we are going to put water
6:20 in the hands of people clean water in
6:23 the hands of people not just taps and i
6:25 want to emphasize this because the
6:27 government program for the first time
6:30 has not focused on just infrastructure
6:33 it is focused on the availability of
6:36 clean water supply and so i think the
6:38 prime minister has to be lauded for this
6:40 i think it's also important that there
6:42 is a big ambition and from what i am
6:44 understanding and our reporters on the
6:47 ground are bringing back that there is a
6:51 lot of activity to repair replenish
6:53 the water supply systems that were lying
6:56 in decrepit position situation in
6:59 villages but i think what i am seeing
7:01 more hope is that there is an emphasis
7:04 today in investing in the ecological
7:07 infrastructure in the catchments of the
7:10 tanks in desalting the tanks in making
7:13 sure that there are that we recharge our
7:16 groundwater systems because uh prime
7:19 minister's uh water program has to be
7:21 seen in the context of climate change
7:24 when we are going to see massive changes
7:27 in our water systems whether it is
7:29 drought or floods and you've seen that
7:31 in germany as much as we've seen that in india
7:32 india
7:34 absolutely i want to talk a little bit
7:36 about that can you talk about the
7:38 relationship between climate change and
7:40 having enough water there's no point in
7:43 the pipes if there is no water tell us a
7:46 little bit about that
7:48 so melissa that's always been the
7:50 biggest issue because you know we've had
7:52 a huge emphasis on infrastructure but
7:55 not sustainability of the water supply
7:58 and the water supply in and you know i i
8:01 you know india is a massive country
8:04 villages are all you know our remote
8:06 villages are massive villages so you
8:09 need an ability to be able to hold and
8:11 capture the rain where and when it falls
8:14 that's what sustainability means now
8:16 that cannot happen without community
8:18 participation people have to be involved
8:21 in capturing and maintaining their local
8:24 water systems but with climate change is
8:26 getting worse because with climate
8:28 change we are finding india in many
8:30 cases got rain in a very limited period
8:32 now we are going to get more rain in
8:35 fewer number of rainy days which means
8:38 more floods and more droughts and our
8:40 ability to hold the water to be able to
8:43 recharge the groundwater will become
8:45 critical that's sustainability in an age
8:47 of climate change
8:49 sunita and orion thank you so much for
