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Pushing Back Delhi’s ‘Day Zero’
To prevent a water crisis in New Delhi, city dwellers are being asked to take up the socially responsible act of catching rain where it falls, known as rainwater harvesting. Just how viable, however, are individual and household efforts for addressing the water challenges on the horizon? Drawing from a selection of documents and interviews, it contends that several disincentives deter people from acting on the clarion call of household-level rainwater harvesting. The observations shift the onus of responsibility back onto the centralised water system and the municipal agencies charged with water management.
The author would like to thank Sohail Hashmi for his insights and for his comments on an early version of this text. The author also gratefully acknowledges the generous funding of the Australian Research Council (DE160101178).
We get a lot of rain, yet we do not have water. Why? Because we have not reflected enough on the value of the raindrop. (CSE 2003: 3)