‘2/3rd World Population Could be Under Stress Due to Water Scarcity by 2025’

Kolkata: Around 1,800 million people would be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity by the year 2025, when two-thirds of the world population could be under stress, an expert said here on Tuesday. In India, which is one of the major countries hit by the menace of arsenic contamination of groundwater, the government projects have suffered due to lack of people’s involvement, West Bengal government’s Arsenic Task Force Chairman K.J. Nath said at a workshop organised by the Sulabh International Social Service Organisation (SISSO). “During 1970s and 80s, a large number of people in the Ganga-Brahmaputra plains (West Bengal, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Assam) were affected by arsenic contaminated groundwater. The government programmes providing arsenic free water involves operational problem as people are not involved in it,” said Nath. He pointed out that in the 1930s and 40s, surface water was the primary source of drinking water. But due to epidemic of diarrhoea and cholera, the government shifted to deep tubewells and that brought the problem of arsenic. Permissible amount of arsenic in drinking water is 0.05 mg/l in India as per Bureau of Indian Standards. (IANS)

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