NEW DELHI, India - Indian president Ram Nath Kovind has said the government has pledged to connect 90 percent of Indian rural households to a piped water supply by 2022.
Speaking during the India Water Week inauguration, the president said that connecting 600,000 villages was not just a project proposal but “is a sacred commitment”, according to the Economic Times.
Currently, 80 percent of water in India is used for agriculture and 15 percent by industry but that is expected to change as municipal demands for water increase.
The president said that new technologies are needed to reduce the toxic content of 40 billion litres of wastewater produced and to deploy it for agricultural purposes.
"Efficiency of water use and reuse, therefore, has to be built into the blueprint of industrial projects. Business and industry need to be a part of the solution," he reportedly said.
As well as rural challenges, water stress has become a perennial concern in most Indian cities, with 404 million new urban dwellers expected to be added up until 2050.
At the end of last year a knowledge paper from PwC called for government intervention at a local level to help develop water reuse schemes across India.
###
Read more
National policy is needed to drive water reuse in India, says PWC
