Water everywhere, cleaned, packaged

Rail Neer, the brand of water sold by the Indian Railways through its subsidiary Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), undergoes a series of purification and cleaning processes before it is packaged.

The dwindling of safe fresh water supplies has forced people in the urban areas to increasingly look at packaged water as a means of meeting some or all of their daily requirements. While this cannot be a substitute to drinking water provided through piped distribution systems, it holds significance, as it provides a safe option that is readily available, has much better quality perception and is easy to carry anywhere, anytime. But, the quality of water sold very often may be of suspect quality.

The IRCTC’s water brand is produced from water with very high net suspended particles with up to 2,800 parts per million (ppm) of impurities is purified into one with 200 ppm. But, not all packaged water sold keeps to such standards.

Due to the lack of trust in the quality of supplied water, people are resorting to packaged water, as one of the options for meeting their daily drinking water requirements. Hence, providing packaged water solutions is fast emerging as a business opportunity. The bottled water industry is now estimated to be worth around Rs 1,000 crore and is growing around 40 per cent per annum.

However, there are issues pertaining to adherence to quality standards, distribution, pricing, infrastructure, environmental concerns among others.

Underwriters Laboratories, the US-based bottled water compliance analysts and plant inspection services provider, now offers a certification mark which is similar to BIS mark for producers of bottled water and is in the process of trying to get Indian bottled water sellers to opt for their certification. “We are working with IIT to develop the quality certifications for India,” said Jeffrey B Smith, GM, Underwriters Laboratories.

The quality of water that we consume is of prime concern. In India, providing access to clean and safe drinking water, irrespective of the socio-economic strata has remained a chimera.

As of now, the drinking water scenario is not encouraging. The main reason for the poor access to safe water is the inability to finance and adequately maintain necessary infrastructure. Overpopulation and scarcity of water resources are also some of the contributing factors.