Our water fares miserably in UN quality report

In a report called World Water Development Report — Water for People, Water for life on the eve of the third World Water Forum to be held later this month in Kyoto, Japan, it also warns that the ‘‘water crisis is set to worsen despite continuing debate over the very existence of such a crisis’’.

India’s poor quality indicator value has been arrived at on the basis of quantity and quality of freshwater, especially groundwater, waste-water treatment and legal issues such as the application of pollution regulations.

Amongst the countries with the best quality are Canada, New Zealand, UK, Japan and Norway that follow Finland.

In developing countries, the pressures on water quality are particularly severe where institutional and structural arrangements for the treatment of municipal, industrial and agricultural waste-water are often poor, the evaluation said.

The report said that about two million tonnes of waste is dumped every day into rivers, lakes and streams. One litre of waste-water pollutes eight litres of freshwater.

Asian rivers are the most polluted in the world, with three times as many bacteria from human waste as the global average. These rivers also have 20 times more lead than those of the industrialised countries.