NEW DELHI: Jal shakti via salt water. With the prime minister making countrywide sufficient clean water supply by 2024 a top priority, and water shortage in major urban centres grabbing headlines, Niti Aayog is working on a plan to exploit India’s vast coastline and its marine waters by desalinating sea water and supplying it to population centres via a network of pipelines.
The plan is to set up floating desalination plants in marine waters under India’s command or set up plants along the country’s 7,800-km coastline. Under international law, territorial sea of a sovereign state extends to 12 nautical miles from its coastline and the maritime exclusive economic zone (EEZ) can be up to 200 nautical miles. India’s maritime EEZ is estimated to be 1.63 million square km. Niti Aayog’s plan is also energy efficient, as it seeks to use solar energy or ocean energy for the project.
The government’s think tank will soon come up with a detailed plan listing various technologies that can be used in different states to help set up commercially viable desalination plants.
The Aayog will handhold the newly formed Jal Shakti ministry, providing it with the cost analysis and project viability report for such plants. Following this, a policy on desalination plants will be framed, a senior government official told ET. He spoke off record.
“The government will soon come up with a directive for the ministry to kickstart work in this direction,” the official said.
India’s Worst Water Crisis
“This would be followed by a clearly outlined policy that can make sea water usable in most cost-effective manner as water is the priority area for the government,” the official added.
According to a Niti Aayog report on water management index last year, India is currently suffering from the worst water crisis in its history with the country ranked at 120 among 122 countries in the quality of water. By 2020, it said, as many as 21 major cities of India will run out of water and face ‘day zero’— a term that got popular after a major water crisis in Cape Town in South Africa, which means literally switching off most of the city’s tap for a day.
The report said 600 million people face high-to-extreme water stress, 75% of households do not have drinking water on premises and 84% rural households do not have access to piped water. Moreover, factors such as rapid climate change and ongoing over-extraction of groundwater, mainly for agriculture, are pushing the system to a breaking point, the Aayog had observed. The think tank’s desalination plants plan comes in this context. Countries like Israel have been successful in using desalinated water for wide use. Currently, as much as 70% of household water comes from desalinated sea water in Israel.
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