Chennai's drought has tough lessons for Asia's economies
Chronic water shortages risk hampering industrial globalization
Nikkei Asian Review
James Crabtree
JULY 31, 2019 03:01
Chennai is meant to be India's great manufacturing center, a self-styled "Detroit of Asia," with plans to transform itself into a global hub for electronics and smartphone exports. But lately this megacity has made headlines for a less happy reason: running out of water.
For months many of Chennai's seven million residents have survived on deliveries from tankers, lining up each morning for a daily water ration. These travails illustrate a wider problem which will soon be faced by many other developing Asian countries, in which water supplies begin to act as a major barrier to industrial development.
Currently about half the country is experiencing drought-like conditions. ...Although the current drought is not directly the result of climate change, Chennai provides a worrying vision of what the United Nations recently dubbed "climate apartheid," meaning a future where the poor suffer environmental calamities which the rich can mostly pay to avoid.
The city's predicament gives a taste of wider problems that will soon hit other megacities too. Many other major Indian commercial centers are running out of water, notably the southern tech hubs of Bangalore and Hyderabad. Jakarta and Dhaka face similar fates. Taps in Manila in the Philippines were turned off temporarily earlier this year too.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Chennai-s-drought-has-tough-lessons-for-Asia-s-economies