Assuming you’re talking 70L per day, the worst case using desalination is about 20$ per year. So, at that useage level water is not really a long term issue.
It’s a corruption and distribution issue.
Let me guess, there are bacteria in it's water which are too hard to filter out/kill?
One district collector (Irayanbu) tried to fight the sand mafia but he was transferred soon after.
I think what you are saying that you don't hold it, but that you are thinking on those lines.
However, please don't do that, as it is not good for health.
I don't know how well [1] explains it, but at least makes one aware.
[1] https://www.geisinger.org/health-and-wellness/wellness-artic...
edit: added context
Also I think what constitutes wasting water is context dependent. For instance the amount of wasted food that is a problem is a feast vs a famine is very different.
Maybe they’re right? If there’s not enough water for everyone to use it like it falls from the sky then maybe we need to rethink how we use water?
Why?
Yes personal data protection it's a good thing to think about, maybe not the highest prio problem though.
We call it Sandy with special offers. If you'd like to pay extra you can get a special-offer-free experience. If you don't like the idea of any data collection you can just buy a cat litter box and have your own Sandy (without the added features).
Don't see how this is an issue.
Your toilet startup has a website?
(Websearching a bit, seems normal toilet water usage is 30 - 100 liter water a day, sounds like a lot to me.)
Do you really see the 'climate change era' providing robust enough infrastructure that we'll still be kitted out with smartphones?
Seems to me yes people can have mobile phones, and still no water. Have a look at this comment by someone who apparently lives? has lived? in the relevant areas:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20260143
> A good part of people seem destitute, yet they have good mobile phones.
Inexpensive mobile phonoes aren't that expensive and where I live also the beggars have phones. To me seems realistic with a future where everyone is conneted with a phone, and at the same time starving and being ill because of polluted water (or no water).
We already see metals being harvested from infrastructure. I expect that to get worse -- and worse faster in more impoverished areas. It seems to me that the remaining hospitable climes will face increasing pressures on their resources, and the luxury of nearly-free electricity powering smartphones will be fleeting.
At the same time, shipping phones to far away places where there is a "shortage" of phones, and selling them there, is going to be more profitable, per shipment, than shipping water to that same place.
And one needs just a few shipments of phones, for everyone to have a phone. One ships just 0.1 kg phone per person, once. Compared to 10 or 100 kg water per person and day.
With that in mind, I'm thinking phones will continue to be prevalent, in comparison to water, in areas where there's a drought.
1. Water crisis is bad but a good fraction of people (most of the upper and middle class) are getting by through exploitation of ground water. My guess would be half of the city still has usable ground water accessible through bore wells including where I live. However these Wells going dry is a common occurence. Someone is digging a deeper well every day in my street alone (no exaggeration). Heck, my house with 4 tenants is already exhausting it's 5th borewell. The day these Wells collectively stop giving water is when things are going to get very interesting.
2. The government here doesn't really consider water as an utility it's actually responsible for. All the articles you see are mostly talking about drinking water. The pipe system in the city is barely capable of only providing drinking water to most people even if most of the water sources are full. It is everyone's assumption that if you need more than a few tens of liters per day per person for things like showers that's completely on you, not the government. This is not going to change anytime soon. The entire plumbing system is riddled with leaks everywhere and no metering. People have also built systems to abuse this plumbing (by using motors) so unless we get a sudden abundance of water this system cannot provide the water the city needs.
3. Most importantly, if ground water runs out, the city really doesn't have any alternative for water in any developed country sense. No usable River for hundreds of miles and every river that CAN provide water originates in a different state and none of them are prepared to share their resources.
4. Chennai the city alone has more people than most Scandinavian countries. The desalination plants are not going to provide more than a few tens of liters per head even if their capacity multiplies by ten.
5. While there's always blame on people here for wasting water, I'd argue that it's outrageous. Even the worst offenders don't waste that much water compared to any Western standards. My household is definitely in the lower quartiles of how much water we use but I estimate we use at best 50-70 liters of water per head per day including everything. Even if I don't want to think like this, I subconsciously think twice before using the toilet (maybe if I hold it for a while I can go one less time?). People here should not be blamed for abusing water, water should be a basic necessity for our lives.
6. Just three years back this city literally drowned in a flood that was far worse than what happened in Houston.