Abstract
The paper is aimed at the research of the water provision issue in a region of developing world in order to suggest solutions. India was chosen for the completion of assignment, because it as the developing country is characterized by a free market, low standards of democratic governance, human rights guarantees, the active development of social programs and industrialization. Being the second largest country in the world by population, India has faced significant water scarcity problems. The proper statistics was provided to support risk worsening. Two methods of water provision, namely waste water treatment and desalination of sea water, were compared and discussed. Currently, reverse osmosis is used for seawater desalination and wastewater treatment. Undoubtedly, electrodialysis is a promising method for the purification of waste water from the dissolved electrolytes, but in all cases the use of this method, it is necessary to consider the possibility of clogging of the membranes by suspended and colloidal substances. Based on the carried out comparison, certain recommendations were given.
Water-Supply Problem in India
The development of mankind is accompanied by an increase in world population and increasing demands for resources from the economy. One such resource is fresh water, which shortage is quite acute in some regions of the Earth. In particular, permanent access to drinking water resource does not have more than a third of the global population, i.e. more than 2 billion. It is expected that by 2020 water shortage will act as one of the major obstacles to the further development of mankind (Science daily, 2014). To the greatest extent it relates to developing countries, where there is intensive growth of the population; high level of industrialization is accompanied by environmental pollution and in particular water; there are the lack of water treatment infrastructure, significant demand for water from agriculture and middle or low level of social stability, authoritarian structure of society.
India, like many other countries, is suffering from a shortage of water. It ranks second in the world in terms of population after China. The number of people living in India is 3.5 times greater than the population of the United States, while its area is only about 30% of the state. The ever-growing number of residents creates a huge burden on all the country’s natural resources (Trading economics, 2015).
According to the figure above, most sources are polluted with household and environmental runoff. Although in recent years, India has made progress by providing access to drinking water to the entire population, about 21% of infections in the country occur because of unsafe drinking of water (Water.org, n.d.).
Especially because of the lack of clean water the rural population suffers; only 14% of these people have access to the benefits of civilization like sewerage and running water. This situation is not unique, and the tourist industry contributes to this sad situation. The vast majority of employees of the tourism industry noted a link between the emergence of new hotels and a reduction in the volume of water, but, according to respondents, only 13% of hotels are involved in providing water locals. Modern hotels with a vast territory require constant water supply, often to the detriment of the region’s population: according to statistics, in the resorts tourists use four times more water than natives (Becken, 2014).
Methods of Water Provision
Despite the fact that different types of metropolitan cities face problems of varying degrees of intensity, related to the water system infrastructure, experts in this field use similar approaches to solving these problems. Most experts consider a priority of the modernization and improvement of infrastructure. Projects related to modernization and investments do not include the introduction of innovative solutions that can provide an opportunity to review the approaches used in the cities on water. According to experts in the field of water supply, in the next 5-10 years, the major role will belong to rather improving the efficiency of existing infrastructure than the construction of new plants and facilities (Becken, 2014).
India is looking for alternative water supplies.
In rivers and other water bodies, the process of self-purification of water is natural. However, it is slow. While industrial and domestic wastewater was small, rivers coped with them by themselves. In our industrial age, due to a sharp increase in waste, ponds no longer cope with such a significant pollution. The first way of water provision is waste water treatment. Its main advantage is the presence of large amounts of municipal and industrial waste water in all parts of the country. Besides waste water reusable are not discharged into natural waters and do not pollute them. The main disadvantage is the fact that the water obtained after conventional waste water treatment can be used only for irrigation and industrial purposes. To bring it up to drinking water, the quality needs a complicated process of complex processing. Additionally, there is such a problem as a psychological barrier associated with the use of purified water (Debu C., 2014). A high-performance implementation of wastewater treatment, in particular, physical and chemical, out of which one of the most effective is the use of reagents, may have a significant impact on improving water circulation. Use of the reagent method for treating industrial wastewater does not depend on the toxicity of impurities present that, compared with the method of biological treatment is essential (Kumar, 2015).
The second way of dealing with water scarcity, which has many supporters and is used extensively in a number of water-scarce regions of the world (for example, in the Gulf countries) is the desalination of sea water. In India, more than a thousand of desalination plants operate, and in the next five years, their number is projected to increase to 25% per year. In the five major coastal cities – Mumbai, Calcutta, Madras, Surat and Vizag – the demand for desalinated water is 5.815 billion liters / day, but will increase by about 8% a year (Indian Desalination Association, n.d.).
Such states like Tamil Nadu and Gujarat willingly accepted the idea of using sea water and in recent years have built a large number of desalination. The others are slow to perform such projects. The main problem is a large difference between the expected rates for water and desalination cost per one cubic meter. In one of the Indian municipal, water tariff is 10 rupees / m3. Meanwhile, in the desalination alone the cost of operation and maintenance is more than 35 rupees per m3 of desalinated water. Another problem is associated with electricity. In order desalinator works successfully, it is necessary to provide continuous and stable power supply room (Kumar, 2015).
Recommendation
In desalination plants of reverse osmosis the main cost item is in energy. However, the improvement of high-pressure pumps and turbines of energy recovery could allow increasing efficiency and reducing energy consumption. The use of nuclear and solar energy to desalinate contributed to a significant reduction in the cost of the water produced. The quality of the membrane markedly improved, and the increase in terms of their operation had a positive effect on the level of capital and operating costs. Over the past 10 years, the cost of reverse osmosis plants has fallen by almost 60% (Indian Desalination Association, n.d.).
Opponents of the use of desalination plants pay attention to the harm caused to the short sea ecosystem: process brine solution is discharged back into the sea and impact on the marine flora and fauna. However, this problem has recently been successfully achieved by improving filtering technology.
Therefore, using the desalination of sea water can alleviate the problem of water shortage in India, but is unlikely to solve it completely. The country needs to have a variety of water sources. To prevent a looming water crisis requires joint action of public and private investors.
For example, today, there are political solutions to reduce water losses, to improve water management and to reduce the need for resources. Many countries have already adopted laws on the conservation and efficient use of water; however, these reforms have not yielded tangible results. Currently, the contract sizes of private companies are smaller than in the 1990s, but the sheer number of such contracts has increased. Over the past 15 years, 54 countries expressed their willingness to allow private companies in water infrastructure and the number of countries continues to increase. Over time, small national companies capture an increasing share of the market from multinational corporations, leading to increased competition. According to supporters of the privatization of water supply systems, the main advantages of this approach are greater efficiency, greater funding, better quality management and higher quality services. Those who are skeptical about the participation of private companies indicate problems such as the high cost of services to consumers, focus on profit, political risks and insufficient supply (Kumar, 2015).
References
Becken, S. (2014). Water equity – Contrasting tourism water use with that of the local community, Water Resources and Industry, 7-8, p. 9-22.
Debu C. (2014). Water crisis in India – problem and its solution. [online]. Available at http://www.mapsofindia.com/my-india/society/water-the-next-looming-crisis [Accessed: January 3, 2016]
Indian Desalination Association (n.d.). Introduction to Desalination. [online]. Available at http://www.indaindia.org/intro_desalination.htm [Accessed: January 3, 2016]
Kumar, S. K. A. (2015). Environmental Policies in India. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House.
Science daily (2014). Worldwide water shortage by 2040. [online]. Available at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140729093112.htm [Accessed: January 3, 2016]
Trading economics (2015). India – Indicators. [online]. Available at http://www.tradingeconomics.com/india/indicators [Accessed: January 3, 2016]
Water.org (n.d.). India. [online]. Available at http://water.org/country/india/ [Accessed: January 3, 2016]
