Traditional stepwells were biotechnology. Today’s RO filters are a confession of failure. Until we restore the microbial ecosystems that naturally purify water, typhoid and tragedy will remain our national companions. To stop the 190,000 annual deaths, we must stop seeing water as a commodity and start seeing it as a life form.
Uzair Qadri
Over the last week, we have been confronted with the sad news of the deaths due to water contamination in Indore. The tragedy unfolds in numbers that should shake us awake. On average, India witnesses approximately 190,000 deaths annually from typhoid. They are preventable deaths occurring because we have fundamentally misunderstood what water security means.
My early understanding, like that of many, centred on a simple equation: typhoid came from Salmonella typhi bacteria in contaminated water, and the solution was in creating watertight compartments of pure water, isolated from any contamination. But it isn’t merely about sterile water. It’s about living water—water teeming with beneficial microorganisms that naturally suppress pathogenic bacteria through competitive exclusion.
Traditional water bodies in India once sustained this microbial balance. Wells, stepwells, tanks, etc., were ecosystems where beneficial bacteria, algae, and microorganisms created natural filtration systems. The baoli (stepwell) wasn’t just some ostentatious architecture; it was biotechnology, allowing water to interact with air, sunlight, and stone surfaces that harboured microbial communities capable of breaking down organic matter and outcompeting pathogens. The johads of Rajasthan, the ahar-pyne systems of Bihar, the kuls of Himachal, etc., worked precisely because they understood water as life, not as a commodity. That understanding today stands shattered. The consequences are now manifest in every dimension of our water crisis.
The Infrastructural Collapse
As per a NITI Aayog report, 70% of India’s surface water is contaminated. Over 163 million Indians lack access to clean water near their homes. In urban areas, 50-70% of sewage flows untreated directly into water bodies. As per the Delhi Jal Board (DJB), Delhi alone generates 3,596 million litres of sewage daily; barely half receives even primary treatment.
The Yamuna, once a living river, now carries more sewage than water for much of its urban stretch. The Ganga, despite billions spent on cleanup, receives 3,000 million litres of untreated sewage daily from riverside cities. These aren’t rivers anymore; they are open sewers masquerading as sacred waters. When water bodies become waste dumps, when rivers become drains, typhoid finds its breeding ground.
The Land Crisis
The land tells its own story, inseparable from water. India has 18% of the world’s population but only 4% of its freshwater resources. Population pressure, shrinking land holdings, and mindless urbanisation are central to why water can no longer sustain life.
Groundwater depletion proceeds at alarming rates across large parts of the country. The water table in Punjab drops 70 centimetres annually. In Rajasthan, districts like Jaisalmer have seen water tables plunge over 30 metres in three decades. Urbanisation devours 1,000 hectares of land daily, replacing aquifer-recharging surfaces with impermeable concrete. Chennai’s 2019 water crisis—when the city of 10 million nearly ran dry—wasn’t anomalous; it was prophetic. The city’s lakes and wetlands, once numbering over 600, have shrunk to barely 27 functional water bodies.
Desertification advances relentlessly. Nearly 30% of India’s land faces severe degradation. In states like Gujarat, Karnataka, and Rajasthan, productive land transforms into wasteland at rates of 2-3 million hectares annually. When soil loses its organic matter, it loses its capacity to hold water. Rain that once percolated now runs off, carrying topsoil and leaving behind hard, impermeable surfaces. Dead soil rejects water. And water that isn’t held by soil cannot support the ecosystems that make it safe to drink.
The Privilege Of Escape
In the face of such comprehensive failure, those who can afford it seek individual solutions. RO systems have become the middle-class escape hatch, yet they waste 3-4 litres for every litre purified. In a country facing water scarcity, this luxury of waste is obscene. A household using 20 litres of RO water daily discards 60-80 litres—enough to meet another family’s basic needs.
Boiling, once ubiquitous, has become abhorrent and blunt in the face of challenges that overwhelm it. Chemical treatment with chlorine creates its own toxic byproducts, trihalomethanes linked to cancer and reproductive issues, particularly in water already laden with organic matter and industrial effluents.
But here is the fundamental truth: a household with RO sits atop the same contaminated aquifer as its neighbour. The privileged merely delay their encounter with the crisis; they don’t escape it. Antibiotic-resistant typhoid strains emerging from this environment threaten everyone. The XDR (extensively drug-resistant) typhoid identified is spreading fast in India. When first-line antibiotics fail, when even third-generation cephalosporins prove useless, typhoid becomes what it was in the 19th century: a death sentence.
The Sewage Catastrophe
With sewage understanding almost absent in public and policy circles, the crisis deepens. Only 37% of urban India has sewage networks, and even they function poorly. Open defecation, pit latrines, septic tanks, etc, leak directly into groundwater. Rural areas fare worse, with over 50% lacking proper sanitation despite Swachh Bharat’s claims.
Even where toilets exist, the question remains: where does the waste go? Faecal contamination closes the loop: what goes into the ground returns through tube wells, through hand pumps, through the very sources families depend upon. Studies in Uttar Pradesh have found 75% of hand pumps testing positive for faecal coliform bacteria. It isn’t a failure of access, it’s a failure of systems, of understanding that human waste must be integrated into nutrient cycles, not abandoned to contaminate water sources.
The Destruction Of Natural Systems
Traditional wisdom understood integration of water, soil, vegetation, waste, and life forming one continuous web. Wetlands that once filtered water have been “developed” into tech parks and housing complexes. Village ponds that recharged aquifers are now ubiquitous garbage dumps or construction sites. The 60% loss of wetlands since independence represents not just ecological destruction but a large-scale elimination of natural purification systems worth billions in ecosystem services.
Kolkata’s East Kolkata Wetlands, a Ramsar site, naturally treated the city’s sewage through aquaculture and agriculture. It is now under constant threat from real estate pressure. Each beautification project, each urbanisation scheme that paves over natural systems, represents not progress but a unidimensional regress, basically the elimination of the very mechanisms that could make water safe.
The Invisible Deaths
It is only natural, then, that deaths happen in and out, day in and day out, some murmured, some trumpeted, and some very silent. The deaths generally concentrate among those who have been systematically marginalised. Dalit communities, urban slums, tribal populations, women, etc, bear mortality rates three to four times higher than national averages.
The Basic Question
Therefore, the basic question has to be: access to healthy water, access to water which makes life possible, not extinguishing it in the nascent stages. Water isn’t a service to be delivered through pipes and purifiers. It is a living system requiring healthy catchments, functioning wetlands, organic soil cover, integrated waste management, and microbial diversity.
Conclusion
Until policy recognises this, unless public understanding grasps that healthy water emerges from healthy ecosystems, not from technology alone, deaths will continue to remain statistics. The question isn’t access to water. It is whether we’ll recreate the conditions where water can actually sustain life—all life, from the microorganisms that make it safe to the children who drink it. Everything else is a temporary mitigation of a crisis we refuse to fundamentally address.
mo*************@***il.com