Minister in favour of 'pricing' water

Observing that India was the 'biggest waster' of water, Union water resources minister Pawan Kumar Bansal on Wednesday batted for pricing of the scarce resource.

Terming the issue of pricing water as a 'politically volatile question', particularly for politicians, Bansal said 'this is the need of the hour today that people like me, people in the government and people in the public life also muster the courage to say that water needs to be priced adequately'.

He said the quantity of water which is bare minimum for an individual could be made available for free.

"But above that level water has to be priced." The minister was addressing Water 2010 conference organised by Confederation of Indian Industry in New Delhi.

He later said the idea of pricing water was his personal view. Bansal lamented that India is termed as the 'largest waster' of water in the world and stressed the need to conserve the natural resource.

Noting that the per capita availability of water was declining at a very high rate, Bansal said in the early 1950s, 5300 cubic meters of water was available per person.

Now, the per capita availability has gone down to less than 1700 cubic meters, he said.

Bansal said by the year 2050, the per capita availability of water in the country could decline further to less than 1500 cubic meters.

On groundwater depletion, he said according to statistics, in Delhi, Punjab and Haryana, its level has gone below 50 per cent.

While talking about irrigation, Bansal said the sector, which gets 83 per cent of the total available water pegged at 1123 billion cubic meters at present, will get competition from other sectors in its usage.

He said though India's population was 16 to 17 per cent of the total global population, it had a mere four per cent of the world's water resources.