Water India Expo 2025: Pragati Maidan, Delhi

• NRW varies between 30% and 50% in Indian cities. This calls for introduction of new metering solutions, equipment and automated processes to assess, monitor and control NRW.
• Smart Cities Mission and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) focus on reducing NRW.
• Metering, instrumentation, equipment supply has a business potential of around $32 billion in India.

Irrigation System

• More than 80% of available water resources in India is being currently utilized for irrigation purposes where, the average water use efficiency of irrigation projects is assessed to be only of the order of 30-35%.
• Innovative methods including; sprinkler, cloud-based micro-irrigation system, drip irrigation, rainwater harvesting, etc., are being adopted to reduce water usage.

Water Supply & Distribution

• India receives an average annual rainfall of 1170 mm, but stores only 6% of rainwater. (Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation)
• Water levels in 91 major reservoirs of India are at 25% capacity — 30% lower than last year, and 25% less than the average storage in a decade (Central Water Commission)
• India will have a water deficit of 50% by 2030 (Asian Development Bank)
• Arsenic laden water, which has many adverse health effects, affects over 900 million people in India. (Central Ground Water Control)

Wastewater Treatment

• India’s total water and sanitation sector is worth $420 million, with an annual growth rate of 18% (World Bank).
• Almost 80% of water supply flows back into the ecosystem as wastewater.
• Currently, India has the capacity to treat approximately 37% of its wastewater, or 22,963 million litres per day (MLD), against a daily sewage generation of approximately 61,754 MLD from more than 900 sewage treatment plants, according to the 2015 report of the Central Pollution Control Board.

Solar-powered Water Supply

• In 2014, the Government of India announced a target to install 1 million solar water pumps, equivalent to approximately 3,000 MW, for irrigation and drinking water by 2021.
• As of January 2018, 142,000 solar pumps have been deployed in India.
• More than 50 per cent of these pumps have been deployed in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Government Initiatives

• Several initiatives have been undertaken by the government to deal with the water and sanitation crisis looming ahead of India.
• 2014 – Five-year Namami Gange Programme focuses on cleaning the Ganga
• 2015 – Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT)
• 2017 – National Water Quality Sub Mission on Arsenic and Fluoride to provide safe drinking water to about 28,000 affected habitations in the country by March 2021 with an outlay of INR250 billion.
• 2017 – ‘Har Ghar Jal’ (water in every household) was another scheme with a mission to provide piped drinking water supply to all households by 2030.