Despite the keen interest of the go

Despite the keen interest of the government,
infrastructural development for sewage and
wastewater treatment has not kept pace with
wastewater generation. As a result, vast amounts
of polluted water are being discharged into natural
waterways, with poor-quality water and pollutants
above the permissible levels being released into
FIGURE 1. Distribution of Class-I cities, Class-II towns and Class-III towns in India in 2011.
Source: CoI, 2011.
the environment (MoEF 2009). Studies have
shown that farmers living close to cities have
had to change their crops to suit the declining
quality of irrigation water (Buechler and Mekala
2005). Proactive adaptation to water-quality issues
increases the cost of production while suboptimal
crop choices reduce benefits of livelihoods to
these farmers. With many components of the
water cycle being affected for years and the
increasing water demand for cities, there is a
sense of urgency to explore sustainable water
management strategies, while looking into the
multiple uses of wastewater and alternative