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Twenty-one cities in India will run out of groundwater by 2020

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Re: Twenty-one cities in India will run out of groundwater by 2020

#21

Post by josephh »

gingabriska wrote: post #10

Is there a way to limit the size of these big cities? What if they start requiring a domestic visa process to let in the people from other states? Everyone wants a life of high standards of living which cities provide along with employment. If we do not limit the number of people who can get in, it will naturally result in whole population of India moving into these cities. This will result in people making wherever…

That is exactly what totalitarian regimes like North Korea do to maintain the high living standards in certain cities.

Mobility rights is seen as a fundamental human right and is protected by constitution in most countries.

What needs to happen is to provide economic incentives for people to spread out, not through laws that limit ones right to movement.

Re: Twenty-one cities in India will run out of groundwater by 2020

#22

Post by thaumasiotes »

bobosha wrote: post #8
carboy wrote: post #5

India does not have a water issue, they have a population issue, but it’s really hard to mange the population, so natural resources are being consumed beyond sustainability. This problem is not confined to India, it’s a problem with humanity. Nature is working on a correction.

I beg to differ, India's population density is comparable to many Western European countries. They a problem of population distribution. Like many developing nations, populations cluster in large cities leading to pressures on resources.

> India's population density is comparable to many Western European countries.

I went down worldpopulationreview.com's list; I'll post my list annotated with country size as a reply to this comment.

Findings:

India, the country, is #28. It has essentially equal population density to the Netherlands (#29, in Europe!), while being a modest 87 times larger. Belgium (#33) has only slightly less density, and India is merely 102 times bigger.

The next European country down is England at #50. It's much closer to the size of India -- 8% as large -- and has two-thirds the density.

Pakistan is #55; it's about four times the size of England with comparable density.

#59 is Germany; it's less than half the size of Pakistan with comparable density. Luxembourg and Liechtenstein, who you might have thought would have super-high density, are equal to Germany. (Monaco and Vatican City really do have super-high density.)

The only other country-sized European countries in the top 70 are Switzerland and Italy, #68 and #69. They have half the density of India. Italy is a tenth of India's size. Switzerland is slightly larger than the Netherlands.

Bangladesh, by the way, is #12, with more than double the density of India (in about 1/20 of the space).

So I can't agree that India's population density is comparable to "many Western European countries". It's comparable to a couple of diminutive European countries. Equal density over 100 times the area is not what you would expect; it's something very unusual about India.

In fact, we can just compare the regions directly. Europe has 743 million people in 10 million square kilometers of land for an average density of 74.3 people per square km. India (including Pakistan and Bangladesh) has 1740 million people in 4 million square km, for an average density of over 400 people per square km (roughly equal to the density of India the country, which makes sense), about 6 times the figure for Europe.

Re: Twenty-one cities in India will run out of groundwater by 2020

#23

Post by chii »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #12
jdonaldson wrote: post #4

I always thought watersheds were a great way of defining state-level regions. They're more stable than boundaries set by rivers, and are more natural than arbitrary lines of latitude/longitude. In the (near) future, there's going to be a lot of hand wringing over who has what rights to which water. The only way to completely solve it is to have one region be in control of the entire course of the water's flow. https:…

Watersheds may be a little too large to work well as administrative regions.

or go all in, and establish a world government. I think a single governing body is the only true way forward for humanity, if humanity is to move beyond earth and be a space faring civilization.

Re: Twenty-one cities in India will run out of groundwater by 2020

#24

Post by thaumasiotes »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #22
bobosha wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I beg to differ, India's population density is comparable to many Western European countries. They a problem of population distribution. Like many developing nations, populations cluster in large cities leading to pressures on resources.

> India's population density is comparable to many Western European countries. I went down worldpopulationreview.com's list; I'll post my list annotated with country size as a reply to this comment. Findings: India, the country, is #28. It has essentially equal population density to the Netherlands (#29, in Europe!), while being a modest 87 times larger. Belgium (#33) has only slightly less density, and India is mere…

Areas are taken from Wikipedia, with water area removed where Wikipedia lists water area. This list is the full top 30 "countries" plus whoever I thought was of interest down to #70. Many areas are rounded.

     1. Macau               30 square km
     2. Monaco               2.2
     3. Singapore          720
     4. Hong Kong        1,070
     5. Gibraltar            6.7
     6. Bahrain            778
     7. Vatican City         0.44
     8. Maldives           298
     9. Malta              316
    10. Sint Maarten        37
    11. Bermuda             39
    12. Bangladesh     138,000
    13. Palestine        5,800
    14. Saint-Martin        53
    15. Mayotte            374
    16. Barbados           439
    17. Lebanon         10,300
    18. Taiwan          36,000
    19. Mauritius        2,000
    20. Aruba              179
    21. San Marino          61
    22. South Korea    100,000
    23. Nauru               21
    24. Saint Barthelemy    25
    25. Rwanda          25,000
    26. Comoros          1,659
    27. Tuvalu              26
    28. India        2,970,000
    29. Netherlands     34,000
    30. Israel          21,000
    33. Belgium         29,000
    37. Japan          365,000
    47. Vietnam        310,000
    50. United Kingdom 239,000
    55. Pakistan       860,000
    59. Germany        357,000
    68. Switzerland     40,000
    69. Italy          294,000

Re: Twenty-one cities in India will run out of groundwater by 2020

#25

Post by krageon »

jdonaldson wrote: post #4

I always thought watersheds were a great way of defining state-level regions. They're more stable than boundaries set by rivers, and are more natural than arbitrary lines of latitude/longitude. In the (near) future, there's going to be a lot of hand wringing over who has what rights to which water. The only way to completely solve it is to have one region be in control of the entire course of the water's flow. https:…

Let's take a moment and remember that a lot of the bad aspects of what happened to India after the brits left was because they divided up the country and then washed their hands in innocence. Now you propose to do it again. Why? It did not work well last time, and somehow you imagine dividing it along the lines of a single relatively minor (as in it's eminently solvable, not because it has little impact) problem that it will go better now.

I don't follow your reasoning about this at all.

Re: Twenty-one cities in India will run out of groundwater by 2020

#26

Post by krageon »

modi15 wrote: post #15

There have been a flurry of alarmists posts like these but somehow I cant wrap my head around how will we run out of water. I stay in Bangalore and some people do have the problem of water - but for the most part it doesnt seem to be an issue of 'lack' of water perse but mostly distribution issues. Bangalore has been having intermittent rains throughout the summers and even though few people use them now, but if situ…

There is a water shortage and you propose to solve it with two solutions that don't currently exist. Not everyone harvests rain water right now. The solar that you speak of doesn't exist, and filtering sea water is definitely not as simple as "using some of that solar power".

It is a problem because the situation currently is looking pretty bad. As far as I can tell people are not denying that a solution is possible. When is it not?

Re: Twenty-one cities in India will run out of groundwater by 2020

#28

Post by ahamedirshad123 »

amrx431 wrote: post #7
jdonaldson wrote: post #4

I always thought watersheds were a great way of defining state-level regions. They're more stable than boundaries set by rivers, and are more natural than arbitrary lines of latitude/longitude. In the (near) future, there's going to be a lot of hand wringing over who has what rights to which water. The only way to completely solve it is to have one region be in control of the entire course of the water's flow. https:…

> Granted, redrawing the map based on watershed doesn't solve India's problem Thats a recipe for political disaster. Identity based politics is the only paradigm of politics in India. Currently southern states in India are organised on linguistic identity and every now and then there are statements from main-stream politicians calling for secession and establishing a separate country to counter the influx for North I…

What are you smoking? That's what happen when you try to impose your language on us through some education policies. That's what happens when you remove the Tamil name with some name in a language somewhat foreign to us.

And calling us racists? Who coined the name madarasi for South Indians? It's the north of Vindhya.

Re: Twenty-one cities in India will run out of groundwater by 2020

#30

Post by amrx431 »

ahamedirshad123 wrote: post #28
amrx431 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Granted, redrawing the map based on watershed doesn't solve India's problem Thats a recipe for political disaster. Identity based politics is the only paradigm of politics in India. Currently southern states in India are organised on linguistic identity and every now and then there are statements from main-stream politicians calling for secession and establishing a separate country to counter the influx for North I…

What are you smoking? That's what happen when you try to impose your language on us through some education policies. That's what happens when you remove the Tamil name with some name in a language somewhat foreign to us. And calling us racists? Who coined the name madarasi for South Indians? It's the north of Vindhya.

I dont know as to why you would infer that I am calling a couple of hundreds of million people racist. I will restate what my assertion is. Identity politics is the political paradigm in India. Majority of the populace in India votes on basis of identity, caste, creed or religion. The linguistic identity of people is the best and only identity politics that is there. Now if reorganisation of Indian states on basis of water considerations will lead to situations were politicians will exploit and portray the reorganisation as imperialistic designs of north Indian hegemonies of Hindi and Hindutva policies even though the policy will be based on water considerations. Add to this the influx of Chinese and Pakistani influences and situation may get worse and we might have a humanitarian crisis on our hand.

And I do reiterate that I am not against linguistic units of governance.

And also this is the worst case scenario but nevertheless a scenario. All depends upon how our politicians portray these to citizens and when it comes to politicians, we never know.

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