The fourth largest economy claim will remain an empty slogan as long as children drink unsafe water, women carry disproportionate burdens, and millions organise their lives around scarcity. Great nations are not built on statistics alone. They are built on the quiet assurance that every citizen can turn a tap and trust what flows out.
Ranjan Solomon
INDIA today stands 120th out of 122 countries for access to safe drinking water. Only two nations fare worse. This is not a marginal statistic buried in a technical report; it is a civilisational indictment. Water is not a luxury, not an “aspiration,” not a lifestyle upgrade. It is the first condition of life. When a country fails at water, it fails at the most elementary level of governance.
India’s ranking on water quality highlights a severe crisis, with rural areas suffering disproportionately from lack of piped, safe water (84% need it), relying heavily on groundwater, while urban areas face rapid depletion, contamination from sewage/industry, and inadequate treatment, worsening health issues like diarrhoea and typhoid, despite government efforts like Jal Jeevan Mission, showing stark differences in infrastructure and quality between city and village access.
In the context of lop-sided development policies and practices, we must examine the Rural vs. Urban divide in water conditions.
* Rural: Heavily dependent on groundwater (85% of supply), leading to rapid depletion and contamination; many households lack piped water, often fetching water from distant sources, increasing burden on women and girls.
* Urban: Struggling with overloaded systems, untreated sewage, industrial waste, and poor water treatment, leading to high levels of polluted surface and groundwater, despite some access to public taps.
The challenges are not a cake walk. It requires serious political will and the end of tom-foolery by the people’s representatives. When challenged, they remind the people of policies and intent. Policies and intent don’t deliver clean water. Feeling the earth on-the-ground would help. Or, a treat of unhealthy water to the visiting VIP with the caveat: “Drinking this water could endanger your health once and for all”
* Contamination: High levels of pollutants in both surface and groundwater make water unsafe.
- Groundwater Depletion: India is the world’s highest user of groundwater, leading to sharp declines in water tables.
- Infrastructure Gaps: Lack of piped water in rural areas and overwhelmed systems in cities.
- Public Health Impact: Poor water quality directly causes diseases like cholera, typhoid, and diarrhoea, particularly in vulnerable areas.
Government Response and Outlook has resulted in half-baked measures despite initiatives like the Jal Jeevan Mission aim to improve water access, but progress is slow, and water security remains a major concern. What words describe this virtual tragedy? Poison in our wells, streams, rivers, water bodies? India faces major challenges with polluted rivers, contaminated groundwater (up to 70% in some assessments), and inadequate wastewater treatment, affecting hundreds of millions.
And yet, this same country is told repeatedly and triumphantly that it is now the fourth largest economy in the world.
Poor water quality contributes to diseases like diarrhoea, typhoid, and cholera, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths annually. Initiatives like the Jal Jeevan Mission aim to improve access, but critics argue progress is too slow. Around 600 million people in India experience high to extreme water stress, and many rural areas lack access to clean water. This ranking underscores a critical public health and environmental issue in India, demanding urgent systemic solutions.
The question that must be asked, and cannot be postponed any longer, is brutally simple: what does economic greatness mean when people cannot safely drink water? Water exposes the hollowness of India’s growth narrative in a way few other indicators can. A nation can survive poor branding, diplomatic setbacks, even political instability. It cannot survive poisoned wells, contaminated taps, tanker mafias, and dried-up rivers. Unsafe water seeps into every aspect of life—health, education, productivity, gender equity, and dignity. It is the most unforgiving measure of state failure because it touches everyone, every day.
In villages across India, women still walk kilometres for water, often carrying pots heavier than their own children. In urban slums, families queue at odd hours for municipal tankers, unsure if the supply will arrive. In cities that boast world-class airports and luxury housing, groundwater is collapsing and tap water is increasingly unfit to drink. Even middle-class households rely on private purifiers, bottled water, or expensive tankers quietly normalising a crisis that should have triggered national alarm.
Unsafe water is the outcome of policy choices – not conveniently blamed on geography
Decades of neglect of public water systems, reckless urbanisation, industrial pollution, river mismanagement, and climate blindness have converged into a full-blown water emergency. Yet, instead of treating water as a public good and a constitutional right, it has been reduced to a commodity – priced, privatised, and unevenly distributed. Those who can pay survive. Those who cannot, suffer silently.
This is where the claim of being the world’s fourth largest economy collapses under its own weight. Economic size does not translate into social capacity if wealth is concentrated, misallocated, and detached from human need. If growth does not deliver safe water, it has failed its most basic test.
The health consequences alone are staggering. Unsafe water fuels diarrhoeal diseases, kidney ailments, stunting in children, and repeated illness that drains household incomes. India’s high rates of child malnutrition are inseparable from water quality and sanitation. You cannot nourish a child on contaminated water. You cannot build human capital on disease.
Healthcare systems then buckle under preventable illnesses. Families lose workdays, children miss school, women absorb the burden of care. Productivity declines, not because people are unwilling to work, but because the foundations of health are eroded. No economy can claim strength while bleeding energy through preventable suffering.
Education too is compromised. Schools without reliable water and sanitation see higher dropout rates, especially among girls. Attendance falls during water shortages. Learning becomes secondary to survival. A country aspiring to global leadership cannot afford classrooms where thirst and illness overshadow curiosity and growth.
Employment and livelihoods are equally affected. Farmers face water stress, crop failure, and rising costs. Urban workers lose hours securing water rather than earning wages. Informal settlements—home to the backbone of India’s labour force – are the most water-insecure. Growth statistics do not capture this daily erosion of economic potential.
The irony is painful. India celebrates mega-projects, high-speed corridors, and international summits while water infrastructure remains archaic or absent. Budgets prioritise visibility over viability. Water governance is fragmented across ministries, states, and agencies, with little accountability and even less coordination. River-linking is proposed as spectacle, while local water bodies die unnoticed.
The deeper problem is philosophical. Development has been redefined as scale rather than sufficiency, as optics rather than outcomes. The state seeks honours—rankings, applause, geopolitical stature—before securing basics. But history shows that enduring national strength is built quietly: through clean water, universal health, quality education, and social equity.
The global rankings India dislikes are not insults; they are diagnostics. Being 120th out of 122 on safe water is not about image. It is about survival, justice, and moral responsibility. To dismiss such data while boasting of economic rank is to confuse national pride with national denial.
Inequality sharpens the crisis. The wealthy insulate themselves with private solutions. The poor absorb the consequences. Water scarcity and contamination thus become instruments of exclusion, reinforcing caste, class, and regional divides. When water is unsafe, equality becomes impossible.
If India truly wishes to be taken seriously as a global power, it must first take its people seriously. Water must move from the margins of policy to its centre. Public investment, decentralised water management, pollution control, aquifer protection, and climate resilience are not optional—they are foundational.
The fourth largest economy claim will remain an empty slogan as long as children drink unsafe water, women carry disproportionate burdens, and millions organise their lives around scarcity. No amount of GDP can wash away that reality.
Great nations are not built on statistics alone. They are built on the quiet assurance that every citizen can turn a tap and trust what flows out.
Until that is achieved, India’s honours are premature. Basics first. Honours later.
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Ranjan Solomon is a writer, researcher and activist based in Goa. He has worked in social movements since he was 19 years of age. The views expressed here are the author’s own and Clarion India does not necessarily share or subscribe to them. He can be contacted at ranjan.solomon@gmail.com
