Chapter 18 - Challenges and mitigation techniques for clean rural water supply in Himachal Pradesh, India

Abstract

The problem of pure water scarcity has become a global concern and if the problem is not addressed promptly, later it may cause havoc for the entire mankind. Jal Shakti Abhiyaan was introduced in India to showcase the importance of clean water and sensitize citizens to conserve water consciously. Himachal Pradesh is a state in India where around 90% area comes under villages and suffered from a lack of awareness, development, and water treatment techniques. Water is considered economically inexpensive compared to the myriad of infrastructure, raw materials, and various resources involved in the refining processes, due to its huge availability on our planet, and this industrial aspect fails to consider its intrinsic environmental and social value. Water is required in several fundamental processes in manufacturing, daily human life, planting, drinking purposes, household work, cooking, etc. Due to the tremendous increase in industrialization and urbanization, the water is getting polluted day by day as surface water sources as well as groundwater sources. There are many techniques to treat wastewater along with several flaws. To achieve sustainability in water, it is important to treat the water (clean water and sanitation-SDG 6), save marine biodiversity (life below water-SDG 14), and recover and reuse the materials from water through circular material management for further repurposes. In this article, the effect of water pollution by different contaminants on biodiversity/life, the available mitigation techniques, the scenario of water issues in Himachal Pradesh, and future scopes have been discussed.