The role of larger reservoirs for sustainable water supplies in large Indian cities
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01/01/2008
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Urban India
Urban water demand is rapidly growing in India due to high growth in urban population and rapid industrialization. Meeting this demand is a big challenge for the urban planners in India. Incidentally, the large urban areas are experiencing faster growth in population, and most of them are in arid and semi arid regions, which are naturally water-scarce. As a result, water supplies from local water resources including aquifers are falling far short of the high and concentrated demands in most urban areas. Under such situations, these large cities have to rely on distant large reservoirs. Given the structure and pattern of urban population growth in India, the paper argues that urbanization would be jeopardized in absence of water supplies from large reservoirs.