Millennium Water Story

🌍💧 Delighted to share our latest photo story:
NATURE-BASED WATER SECURITY AND CLIMATE RESILIENCE: LOCAL WISDOM FROM THE THAR DESERT

This visual journey explores Viprasar, a nearly 300-year-old community-created wetland system in Rajasthan that continues to provide water, support biodiversity, and strengthen resilience to drought through local knowledge and collective stewardship.

At a time when billions still struggle to realize the human right to safe water, Viprasar demonstrates how community-led, nature-based solutions can advance SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) while contributing to SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 15 (Life on Land).

We invite you to explore this inspiring example of how traditional wisdom and ecosystem stewardship can help build a more resilient future.

🔗 Read and share the full article:
https://www.millenniumwaterstory.org/Pages/Photostories/Water-and-Environment/Nature-Based-Water-Security-and-Climate-Resilience.html
📸Om Prakash Singh, co-founder Millennium Water Story

💧🌳 Can "greening" worsen water scarcity?

Afforestation is a key strategy promoted worldwide for tackling climate change, ecosystem restoration and water sustainability. But when restoration relies on water-hungry monocultures such as Eucalyptus, the unintended consequences for water security can be immense.

An eucalyptus tree can consume 50–90 litres of water per day, with roots extending deep into the ground in search of water during droughts.

In semi-arid areas across India, such as Chikkaballapur, Bengaluru Rural, and Kolar districts in Karnataka, eucalyptus and acacia plantations have been extensively developed under afforestation efforts. But the environmental cost of such 'greening' efforts has been high! Subsequent groundwater depletion and increasing water stress led the government to ultiately ban planting of these species in 2017. One such high risk eucalyptus plantation at Nandi Hills in Chikkaballapur district is shown in the photo.

As countries pursue ambitious restoration targets, we must remember that SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 15 (Life on Land) cannot be achieved at the expense of SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation).

🌱 The challenge is not simply to plant more trees, but to restore landscapes through afforestation in ways that also protect rivers, wetlands, groundwater, and the communities that depend on them.

👉Should water impacts become a mandatory criterion in all afforestation and restoration programmes? Share your views.

📷Om Prakash Singh, co-founder Millennium Water Story
💡 Learn more: www.millenniumwaterstory.org

🌿☕🍃 Green is not always good for water!🌊

When we think of tea, coffee, and rubber plantations, we often picture lush green landscapes. But beneath this greenery lies a huge yet less visible environmental cost—the disruption of natural water cycles.

The photo shows a tea plantation in Darjeeling, India, home to one of the world's most celebrated and highly valued teas. Renowned for its distinctive flavour and heritage, Darjeeling tea contributes significantly to India's economy and global reputation.

But plantations - whether tea, coffee or rubber - should be seen as a sustainability concern because that they are often established by clearing natural forests, replacing them with large-scale monocultures.

👉Why does this matter for water?

🍀 Natural forests regulate rainfall, recharge groundwater, maintain stream flows, and protect water quality.

💧 Tea, coffee, and rubber plantations cannot fully replace these ecological functions.

🍃 Tea plantations can increase surface runoff, reduce groundwater recharge, accelerate soil erosion, and contribute to downstream flooding and river siltation.

🌳 Rubber plantations can act like "water pumps," drawing large quantities of water from the soil and aquifers. Studies have linked them to declining stream flows, drying springs, and increasing water scarcity in surrounding landscapes.

🌍 The widespread use of fertilizers and pesticides in commercial plantations can further contaminate both surface water and groundwater.

As the demand for tea, coffee and natural rubber continues to grow, so does the area under plantations. This makes it increasingly important to ask:

❓ What are the long-term impacts on local water resources?
❓ Are we adequately assessing environmental costs before approving new plantations?
❓ Should environmental impact assessments become mandatory for large commercial plantations?

Protecting water security requires looking beyond the green cover and understanding how different land uses affect our rivers, streams, groundwater, and communities.

👉 Share • Discuss • Advocate
Protect forests, protect water. Demand stronger scrutiny of commercial plantations and their impacts on our watersheds.

📷Om Prakash Singh, co-founder Millennium Water Story
💡 Learn more: www.millenniumwaterstory.org

🚽Toilets Built, Waters still Polluted?💧

As the world strives to achieve SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), access to toilets has rightly been recognized as a fundamental human need. India's Swachh Bharat Mission has made remarkable progress, with more than 6.2 million household toilets constructed under SBM (Urban) since 2014–15, helping to significantly reduce open defecation.

But this image highlights a less visible challenge: what happens after the toilet is flushed?

Despite gains in sanitation coverage, more than 70% of India's sewage still goes untreated. Many households rely on septic tanks, pits, and other on-site sanitation systems. When these fill up, the collected sludge is often emptied into open drains, rivers, lakes, or vacant land without treatment.

In other words, the sanitation problem does not disappear—it is simply relocated.

Sanitation is not just about building toilets. It is about ensuring the safe collection, transport, treatment, and disposal of human waste. Achieving SDG 6 requires attention to the entire sanitation chain, otherwise public health and environmental goals both get undermined.

Clean sanitation systems don't end at the toilet—they end with safe treatment, and hence safeguarded water and environment.

👉Agree? Share this post and help shift the conversation from toilets alone to safely managed water and sanitation for all.

📷Om Prakash Singh, co-founder Millennium Water Story
💡 Learn more: www.millenniumwaterstory.org

When Coal Consumes Water!😢

At first glance, this photograph appears to tell a story about coal. But it is equally a story about water—its depletion, degradation, and disappearance from a landscape transformed by mining.

The image shows coal being extracted from an open-cast mine in the Jharia Coal Fields of Jharkhand, one of India's most important coal-producing regions. More than a century of mining has reshaped this once-forested landscape. Forests have been cleared, groundwater has been pumped out to keep mines operational, water bodies have been polluted, and underground coal seam fires continue to burn beneath the surface.

The consequences for water are profound. Continuous mine dewatering, deforestation, landscape disruption, and underground coal fires have contributed to a gradual decline in groundwater levels across the Jharia region. The resulting stress on aquifers has reduced water availability and intensified seasonal water shortages, revealing the often-overlooked connection between mining and water insecurity.

Jharia reminds us that water challenges are often hidden within development narratives. Behind every tonne of coal extracted lies a less visible story of stressed ecosystems, depleted aquifers, and diminishing water resources.

👉Water is as important as the minerals we extract from the earth. When mining ends, who should be responsible for bringing back clean and reliable water to the affected area?

📷Om Prakash Singh, co-founder Millennium Water Story
💡 Learn more: www.millenniumwaterstory.org

🌸Reflecting on the International Day for Biological Diversity | May 22🌸

These stunning white water lilies blooming at Kanwar Lake in Begusarai district, Bihar remind us of nature’s quiet beauty.

Yesterday, on International Biodiversity Day, we celebrated how water bodies like Kanwar Lake nurture rich biodiversity, especially flowering plants. These graceful white lilies against the blue waters offer powerful mental benefits — reducing anxiety and fatigue while providing both relaxation and emotional upliftment.

Healthy wetlands are essential for sustaining this biodiversity. By protecting our water resources, we preserve these natural sanctuaries that support countless species and bring peace to us.

Let’s take action today: Support local wetland conservation efforts and share this post to spread awareness! 💧🌿

Happy International Day for Biological Diversity! 🙏

Photo by Om Prakash Singh, co-founder Millennium Water Story
💡 Learn more: www.millenniumwaterstory.org

Sacred Waters, Shared Responsibility 🌊🙏

Across religions and cultures, water has long been regarded as sacred — a symbol of purity, life, healing, and spiritual renewal. Rivers are not only sources of survival, but also spaces of prayer, pilgrimage, and deep cultural meaning.

In Hinduism, this sacred connection is especially visible in the reverence for rivers such as the Ganga, Yamuna, Sarasvati, Narmada, Kshipra, Godavari, and Kaveri. Among them, River Ganga is regarded as the holiest, and worshipped as “Mother" who is believed to be a source of spiritual purification and liberation. For centuries, faith, rituals, temples, and entire civilizations have flourished along her banks.

Yet today, Ganga and many sacred rivers are polluted and under threat.

If water is sacred, then protecting rivers must become a shared moral and spiritual responsibility. True devotion lies not only in worship, but also in preserving clean and living rivers for future generations.

Respect water. Restore rivers. Protect the future.🌊🙏

Photo by Om Prakash Singh, co-founder Millennium Water Story
💡 Learn more: www.millenniumwaterstory.org

💧 Tap ≠ Safe Water. India's rural water story — then and now🚰

The photos here are from a village in Bikaner district, Rajasthan, documented in 2013. At this time, around 650 homes enjoyed piped water supply — but from borewells heavily laced with fluoride and salinity. Children who drank this water showed dental fluorosis. Adults reported joint pain and gut problems. No water treatment plant was ever installed to ensure 'safe' water supply. And the Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) later confirmed that this was not an exception but the national norm!

🔄 6 years forward - 2019 - came the new Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) — did things change?
JJM deserves credit for scale. Nationally, household tap connectivity jumped from 16% in 2019 to nearly 80% by early 2025. The mission explicitly prioritises fluoride-affected habitations, trains women in villages to test water quality, and funds water treatment plants — but where are these plants?

— Rajasthan alone accounts for 68% of India's quality-affected rural habitations as of January 2025 — 8,175 habitations still flagged for fluoride, salinity, arsenic, and other contaminants.

— And critically Rajasthan is annually withdrawing nearly 1.5 times the groundwater that gets recharged by rainfall — so the contaminated aquifers that fed pipes earlier are only getting worse.

JJM is presented as the most serious attempt India has made for ensuring rural right to water. But the gap between a tap and safe water — the gap this boy's teeth make visible — when will it get closed?

JJM report for the village still misses a water treatment plant but its 650 households continue to be served with piped drinking water at home! 😰

👉Share this post if you believe "Coverage is not the finish line, Quality is" 💬

Photo by Om Prakash Singh, co-founder Millennium Water Story
💡 Learn more: www.millenniumwaterstory.org

💧 IS TAP CONNECTION = SAFE WATER?
Two photos. Two states. One failure repeated across decades.

India has recently connected 150 million rural homes to piped water under the new Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM). A massive achievement!

But two photos from Punjab and Uttarakhand raise an uncomfortable question: what exactly could be flowing through those pipes? 🧵

📍Bathinda, Punjab. A waterworks built in the 1980s to treat canal water before it reached homes. The filter broke down. Nobody fixed it. For nearly 2 decades, villagers have been getting either contaminated canal water or groundwater with fluoride, iron & nitrate. No safe option exists.

📍Nainital, Uttarakhand. A village scheme drawing from a Himalayan stream — installed 1985. Its own operator says the treatment unit has never once been switched on. Nearly 4 decades of raw stream water delivered to rural homes. Residents are now reporting health problems.

⚠️These aren't isolated failures. They reveal a systemic gap: we build, we count connections BUT we do not maintain.

JJM has been extended to 2028 with ₹67,000 crores and a stated focus on operation and maintenance (O&M). But the Expenditure Finance Committee has already reportedly halved O&M funding for the extended period. Words and budgets here do not match.

✅What must JJM 2028 then learn from the past and fix now?
👉Measure water quality, not just connections
👉Ring-fence O&M budgets — no new scheme without a maintenance plan
👉Train, equip and pay village water operators fairly
👉Publish water quality data for every supply point, every month

🔁'Har Ghar Jal' (water to every rural home) is the goal. But a pipe without treatment could instead be a source of 'Har Ghar Bimari' (health risk to every rural home)😰😰😰

Share if you think 'safe' piped water is what matters — not just piped water 💬

📸Photo by Om Prakash Singh, co-founder Millennium Water Story
💡 Learn more: www.millenniumwaterstory.org

💧Changing Technologies, Unchanged Drinking Water Quality🥵

Somewhere in the Thar Desert, Rajasthan, a reverse osmosis (RO) plant—built to remove dangerous fluoride from groundwater for drinking water supply—stands silent today, rusting.

It was meant to serve a village in Jaisalmer district, where groundwater fluoride levels exceed safe limits by over 13 times. Today, it delivers nothing. It hasn’t worked for years. The people still drink unsafe water.

This is not an isolated failure. It’s a pattern.

₹70 million was spent to install 57 RO plants across Jaisalmer and Barmer. A 2018 audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) found every single one non-functional—primarily due to lack of maintenance.

📊 The scale of the crisis:
• Over 85% of rural water supply depends on groundwater
• 18,478 rural habitations are quality-affected
• 12,800 face high salinity
• 6,695 suffer from excess fluoride—the highest in India

A second scheme, Amrit Jal Pariyojana, installed RO plants in 500+ villages, with 7-year maintenance contracts. Yet many stopped working soon after installation.

The infrastructure exists. The contamination remains. The people continue to cope.

The Jal Jeevan Mission brings new hope—but its quality impact is undiscussed.

Installing systems and abandoning them is not development. It is a failure of accountability—and a violation of the basic human right to safe drinking water.

💬 What will it take to break this cycle?

📸Photo by Om Prakash Singh, co-founder Millennium Water Story

💡 Learn more: www.millenniumwaterstory.org