Mapping Bundelkhand’s Water Crisis

India is facing a water crisis of unprecedented proportions. According to NITI Aayog’s Composite Water Management Index (CWMI) report, released in June 2018, nearly 600 million people are facing high-to-extreme water stress and the situation is likely to worsen as the demand for water is set to exceed the supply by 2050. This report was India’s first comprehensive collection of nationwide water data. Recently, another report from the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) revealed that only a quarter of rural households in India have piped drinking water in their yard or houses. The states with the lowest access to tapped drinking water in both rural and urban households are Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Bihar. The crisis is most