NITI Aayog CEO makes a case for putting price tag on water
May 06, 2016 23:41
Amid drought in some states, National Institution for Transforming India Aayog or NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant on Friday pitched for considering water as a commodity, saying pricing is very critical for realising its economic value and making people respect the scarce resource.
"As long as you don't price water, you will never get the economic value of the water and we will never get to respect water until you don't price it," Kant said at a panel discussion in New Delhi.
Citing example he said, "Many of these lessons come from smaller cities like Singapore. They have done extremely well in terms of water conservation ... rain water, dual piping ... treating water as a commodity so the pricing of water is very critical."
He was of the view that India needs to do several things around water and there is not single solution to deal with the issues related to water.
"It is not one single solution. We need to create a huge moment around watershed. We need to do a lot of work around conservation and presentation about recycling of water...use a better technology in term of recycling of water. We need do a lot of breakthroughs in desalination of water," he added.
It is not the first time that government think tank has talked about pricing water. The erstwhile Planning Commission has also deliberated on the issue.
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