The water crisis brings woes for Vasant Vihar
The water crisis gripping the Capital has reached the doorstep of Vasant Vihar, one of Delhi’s toniest residential colonies.
The colony is reeling under a daily shortfall of one million litres of water, severely cramping daily life.
‘It’s a miserable state of affairs. It’s completely ridiculous,’ said Prof P. Bhatia, a resident. ‘I spend an hour every morning telephoning for water and just hope that they (Delhi Jal Board) will send a tanker.’
The shortage has worsened over the last few days after a key pipeline carrying water to the colony burst, cutting off supply to homes of high-profile residents. ‘We have just been surviving for the past three days.
We have had to ration water and hope that normal supply will resume soon,’ said Om Prakash, who works at the Slovenian Embassy, one of several prominent addresses that dot this neighbourhood. The embassy is close to exhausting water in all its tanks.
‘We at the RWA are fed up hearing complaints from senior citizens and families. It’s just going from bad to worse,’ R.K. Vohra, the secretary of Vasant Vihar Residents’ Welfare Association, said.
The colony has been facing shortage of water in the summer months for at least a decade now. It’s been more than five years since residents got a declaration from Lieutenant Governor Tejendra Khanna – who lives in the neighbourhood – asking the Municipal Corporation of Delhi to look into the issue, but to no avail.
The neighbourhood requires 4.46 million litres of water everyday but, as of September 2011, only receives 3.44 million litres, a shortfall of more than one million litres.
Vohra has now approached chief minister Sheila Dikshit asking her to look into the way new constructions in the neighbourhood have compounded the problem.
The DJB’s response to residents’ complaints about lack of water is often arbitrary. ‘Sometimes tankers show up at 3.30 am and we have to be ready to collect water. Otherwise they don’t come at all,’ said Arjun Malhotra, an 80-year-old resident of the colony.
‘My daughter has been pushing me to just leave this place.’ Private tankers are costly. Although he has bought water from private tankers before at `1,000 for 6,000 litres, B-block resident R.S. Rana said this time the man he usually buys water from didn’t take his call.
‘We are paying some of the highest taxes in the city and this is what we have to live with,’ Rana said. ‘It’s wrong.’ The RWA has got assurances from local MLA Barkha Singh and the chief minister that the issue will be looked into – particularly with more buildings constructed and new water connections given to them without keeping the shortfall in mind.
‘It’s all red-tape. They keep saying they will examine the matter,’ said Vohra.