Tech hub Bengaluru faces severe water shortages as summer approaches

By Swati Gupta

India’s tech hub of Bengaluru is struggling with water shortages amid a drought, with the crisis expected to escalate as summer approaches.
 

Authorities are supplying water to residents in the city of 13 million people using tankers as a lack of rainfall dries up thousands of borewells. The Karnataka government has imposed a cap on how much the tanker suppliers can charge to prevent price gouging.

Bengaluru is home to the country’s $194 billion IT services industry. Indian cities have intermittently struggled with water shortages due to the over-use of ground water and climate change causing a shift in the weather and reducing much-needed rainfall. With summer approaching, temperatures can climb to as high as 40C (104F), exacerbating the situation.

Residents should use water “very judiciously” and for essential purposes only, Ram Manohar, chairman of Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Board, told a news channel earlier this month. 

About a third of the city’s residents depend on groundwater, the Associated Press reported, citing authorities as saying some of the 13,900 borewells in the city have been drilled to 1,500 feet.

About 7,000 borewells have dried but authorities are making other arrangements, Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar said last week, adding there is no crisis.

Rapid urbanization has also contributed to the water shortage in the country. In 2019, the city of Chennai in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu suffered a water crisis for weeks due to heatwaves and a bad monsoon in 2018.