Gujarat Water

Gujarat is a state in Western India, sometimes referred to as the Jewel of Western India. It has an area of 196,204 km2 (75,755 sq mi) with a coastline of 1,600 km (990 mi), and a population in excess of 60 million. The state is bordered by Rajasthan to the north, Maharashtra to the south, Madhya Pradesh to the east, and the Arabian Sea and the Pakistani province of Sindh to the west. Its capital city is Gandhinagar, while its largest city is Ahmedabad. Gujarat is one of the most urbanized states of India. Over the past three decades Gujarat has emerged as one of India’s most urbanized states with a high level of industrialization. It has an urban population of 2.4 crores accounting for 42.6 % of the total population of the State, that is, 6.03 crores.

Gujarat falls under semi-arid zone. The long sea coastline along Saurashtra, Kutch and other parts creates the problem of salinity ingress, which affects the ground water quality on coastal belt and because of scanty and uncertain rainfall, the replenishment in dam is also not reliable, hence this areas are always under water deficiency. It has just 2.28% of India’s water resources and 6.39% of country’s geographical area. The State has an average annual rainfall of 80 cm with a high coefficient of variance over time and space and as a result droughts have been frequent.

With depleting ground water resources, more and more cities need to resort to extension of piped network from water sources. Addition to that about one fifth municipalities of Gujarat do not have water treatment plant to cater even present population. This ends with a host of other problems like poor reliability measured in terms of number of hours of supply, poor quality of water etc. For instant, Groundwater quality deteriorates due to the discharge of untreated industrial effluents, urban wastewater, over use of pesticides by irrigators and seawater intrusion either directly from casual disposal or indirectly as seepage from treatment lagoons or infiltration from surface watercourses or canals. Water quality threat is when water is tapped from sedimentary formation due to water flow in adjacent rock types and mineral compositions of rocks, water quality is affected. Often over-exploitation of groundwater magnifies inherent salts i.e. TDS, fluorides, Chlorides.

Administratively, the urban areas are classified as Municipal Corporations and Municipalities classified as ‘Class- A to D’. There are 8 Municipal Corporations and 162 Municipalities. All 8 Municipal Corporations of the state include urban population of 150 lakhs. Whereas, 22 “A” Class(having population more than 1,00,000), 30 “B” Class (having population more than 50,000 and less than 1,00,000), 45 “C” Class (having population more than 25,000 and less than 50,000) and 65 “D” Class (having population more than 15,000 and less than 25,000) Municipalities include population of 60 lakhs. Responsibility of water supply in all these cities lies with Urban Local Bodies and water supply is largely concerned in cities of Gujarat.

A research work by Gujarat Technological University (GTU) under PhD programme is taken to help to improve the quality of water in urban aiming multi-objective technological solution for drinking water quality stress urban Gujarat. It is also intended to provide citizens of urban Gujarat to know quality of drinking water available to them at any point of time. It is real time information app to provide details of quality of water and to advice them whether it is FIT or UNFIT for potable use.

This app will help decision makers by providing MIS for gap analysis and identification of water quality stress area to improve quality of water, on other hand to user to advice about drinking water across the Gujarat State of India. The app will also guide other water supply agencies across the globe to develop similar decision making tool.