Also by Richard Damania

There is a strange contradiction at the heart of India’s relationship with water. We revere it in our rituals, celebrate it in our music, and consider it holy in our rivers. Yet, we also waste it with abandon, pollute it with impunity, and price it as though it were infinite. On World Water Day, and in the context of increasing pressure on finite resources in a resource-constrained world, it is time to look for new water solutions for India.

India holds 18 per cent of the world’s population but only 4 per cent of its freshwater. Per capita availability dropped from 1,816 cubic metres in 2001 to roughly 1,486 in 2021. By 2050, we will approach the scarcity threshold of 1,000 cubic metres. In a rapidly growing and urbanising country, demand is already beginning to outstrip the sustainable supply of water. These are binding constraints on growth, investment, and human wellbeing.

Compounding this situation is a climate reckoning. The Indian monsoon no longer behaves as it once did. In 55 per cent of our tehsils, rainfall has increased by more than 10 per cent over the past decade compared to the previous three, but this also comes with challenges: Heavy showers within a few hours overwhelm drainage systems designed for a different normal. Meanwhile, 11 per cent of tehsils, concentrated in the Indo-Gangetic plains, have seen critical declines during the June-July sowing window. Between 2019 and 2023, extreme climate events cost India about Rs 5 lakh crore. More than 80 per cent of India’s population now lives in districts vulnerable to hydro-meteorological disasters.

Yet precisely because the challenge is so stark, the opportunity is equally immense. Water is both a problem to be managed and a resource to be optimised. If we strengthen its governance, it can become a catalyst for economic transformation across every sector. Here’s how we can move from treating water as a free resource to recognising it as a strategic national asset.

First, broaden our understanding of where water actually resides. India’s water policy has traditionally focused on blue water — rivers, lakes, and aquifers — while paying less attention to the vast reservoir of green water stored in our soils. This is the moisture held in soil that plants use for growth. Globally, around 60 per cent of rainfall is stored in soils as green water. And though it is invisible, it is vital, sustaining rainfed agriculture across large parts of the country. Healthy soil organic carbon is the cheapest and most effective water storage system available to us. When we degrade soils through chemical-intensive farming, we lose this moisture memory. Transitioning to regenerative practices — mulching, no-till farming, cover cropping — is necessary to manage it. So is the need for protecting upstream natural forest cover, which acts as a reservoir for downstream farms. India would benefit from a National Green Water Mission to co-manage water and landscapes: One that aligns procurement policies toward water-efficient crops, protects upstream forests that regulate downstream flows, and treats soil as the strategic asset that it is.

Second, confront the distortions embedded in agriculture. The Green Revolution made India food-secure, but it also made the farm sector water-insecure. Agriculture consumes nearly 90 per cent of water in India, yet crop water productivity stands at just $0.52 per cubic metre — a third of China’s. India is using its most precious resource in the most productive ways possible. Strategic diversification matters here. Today, our procurement and fertiliser subsidies are locked into water-intensive rice, draining both aquifers and the public exchequer. Shifting just 3.6 million hectares from rice to millets and pulses could save 29 billion cubic metres of water annually, roughly a fifth of India’s household water use. This will deliver a triple dividend: Better nutrition, environmental relief, and fiscal savings on subsidies, all flowing from the same intervention.

Third, launch a National Circular Water Economy Mission to treat used water as a resource, not waste. Only 28 per cent of urban used water is treated today; reuse remains negligible. But a treated used-water economy could unlock a market worth Rs 3.2 lakh crore by 2047, recover biogas and fertilisers, and create over 1 lakh new jobs. This requires city-specific reuse targets, public-private partnerships, and a shift in mindset from disposal to recovery. The technology exists; what is needed is the appropriate governance architecture to deploy it at scale.

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Fourth, reimagine cities as sponges rather than concrete sinks. India’s built-up area has increased by nearly a third since 2005, creating impervious surfaces that block groundwater recharge and magnify flood risks. Cities need blue-green infrastructure — wetlands, urban forests, permeable surfaces — integrated into urban design to absorb stormwater, slow runoff, and recharge the aquifers we will rely on when the rains stop. Over half of Delhi’s 1,300 water bodies have been lost to encroachment. Protecting and restoring this natural infrastructure, as seen in the transformation of the Yamuna Biodiversity Park, is climate resilience and economic prudence. Beyond city limits, a Swachh Bharat Mission 3.0 for peri-urban areas could be considered, which would decentralise waste treatment and sludge management and prevent pollution at source.

Finally, reform water governance: Move towards decision-making that implements transparent water accounting, and ensures enforceable regulation. India’s world-class digital public infrastructure can enable real-time water accounting and bulk water trading. Tariffs must move toward cost recovery for those who can pay, with direct subsidies for the vulnerable, because right now, in many cases, the poor pay high rates to unregulated tankers, while official tariffs in most cases do not cover the full cost of service delivery. With supply chains weaponised and natural resources fast becoming geopolitical tools, water remains the one resource we cannot plan poorly for — it is finite. This is the right time to leverage it as an opportunity. Our collective response could determine not just India’s environmental future, but the very shape of India’s economic destiny.

Iyer is executive director, World Bank, Ghosh is CEO, Council on Energy, Environment and Water, and Damania is chief economic advisor, Planet Vice Presidency of World Bank. They are co-authors of Water, Nature, Progress: Solutions for a New India (2026), forthcoming.

© Indian Express