💧 A Nation Sinking in Its Own Waste
Even after 75 years of independence, over 70% of Indian cities lack basic sewage and garbage disposal systems. Cities with billion-dollar valuations, skyscrapers, and “smart city” tags cannot move water off their streets during rains.
Why? Because India doesn’t just have a drainage crisis—it has a governance catastrophe.
Delhi’s drains, meant for 38 million people, serve only half that number. Bengaluru, which generates 1,800 million litres of sewage daily, treats just 30%. The rest flows into streets and lakes.
Mumbai’s 160-year-old British-era drainage system gasps under 22 million bodies and billions in real estate greed. And when disaster strikes—as it did in Old Rajendra Nagar in July 2024—it kills not just bodies, but dreams.
Three young aspirants, preparing for the civil services, drowned in a flooded basement. The country never noticed.
🌪️ When the System Itself Is the Killer
Let’s be clear: this is not just poor planning—it’s systemic betrayal. Cities have turned rivers into sewage dumps. The Yamuna carries 2.9 billion litres of untreated waste daily.
Mumbai’s Mithi River has been narrowed by over 50% due to slums and encroachments.
Bengaluru’s Vrishabhawathi is now a black river of corporate sewage. Of India’s 603 assessed rivers, 46% are severely polluted, as per a 2025 report.
Floodplains have been devoured by highways, malls, and luxury apartments. Wetlands, nature’s own flood buffers, have been erased.
Since 1990, India has lost 40% of its wetlands. Chennai’s Pallikaranai marsh, once 5,500 hectares, is now a tenth of that, sacrificed for airport expansions. And when the rains come, the water has nowhere to go—except into people’s homes, lungs, and coffins.
💸 The Price of Progress? Blood and Bribes
Corruption is the rot that drowns us. Desilting contracts worth ₹1,500 crore in Mumbai went to shell companies. Delhi’s ₹3,000 crore sewerage plan is stalled, its funds leaking like the city’s pipes.
Bengaluru’s AMRUT scheme met only 20% of its sewage targets—allegedly due to kickbacks and contractor-politician nexuses. The Namami Gange project, with ₹32,000 crore pumped in since 2014, has 68% of its sewage treatment plants non-functional.
While the elite race across global cities, the poor in India wade through filth and disease. In slums, where only 5% have piped water, life is reduced to a slow death.
🚨 Lessons from the World—and from Ourselves
Cities like Tokyo, Singapore, and New York have built systems to capture, clean, and reuse water. India, meanwhile, captures headlines—of avoidable death. Tokyo’s underground flood tanks can store 13 million gallons. New York’s drainage network is 10,600 km long and smart-monitored. Singapore’s green roofs and swales mimic nature. India builds expressways through floodplains and calls it development.
But hope glimmers: Indore’s waste model and Meghalaya’s Umngot River protection show transformation is possible. It demands rage. It demands reform. It demands accountability.
🔥 This is Not Climate Change. This Is Civic Collapse.
Each death in the floods is a murder by neglect. Each overflowing drain is an indictment of the state. Each lost dream is a reminder that urban India is not drowning—it’s being drowned.
So here’s what we must demand—today, not tomorrow:
- Separate stormwater and sewage networks.
- Enforce river reserve zones.
- Restore wetlands like Pallikaranai and the Ganga’s floodplains.
- Jail corrupt officials and contractors.
- Upgrade infrastructure with citizen oversight, not just cement.
When the rains return, will we still pretend this is fate? Or will we rise—with fists, with votes, with voices—to ensure this flood is the last?
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.