Is the Water Really Yours?

"Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink." Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote those words over two centuries ago to describe abundance without access. Today, the crisis has acquired a far more unsettling meaning. Water may still be everywhere, but increasingly, it is not for everyone. In the twenty-first century, access to clean water is no longer determined solely by geography or rainfall. It is increasingly shaped by wealth, politics and power. The question is no longer whether there is enough water. The question is: who owns it, who controls it, and who gets to decide who drinks it?

This uncomfortable reality came into sharp focus when former Nestlé chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe argued that considering water a public right was an "extreme" idea and that water should instead be viewed as an economic good. The statement triggered outrage across the world, not merely because it challenged a moral principle, but because it reflected a growing global trend the commodification of one of humanity's most essential resources. Across several countries, multinational corporations have extracted vast quantities of groundwater for bottled water and beverage production, often from regions already facing severe water stress. While companies defend such practices as legal and regulated, they have repeatedly been accused of depleting local aquifers, polluting freshwater sources and leaving communities to bear the environmental costs.

The irony is impossible to ignore. Nearly 97 per cent of the Earth's water is saline. Of the remaining 3 per cent that is freshwater, most is locked away in glaciers, ice caps and deep underground reserves. Less than one per cent is readily accessible in rivers, lakes and shallow groundwater for human use. This tiny fraction sustains more than eight billion people, feeds agriculture, supports industries and maintains ecosystems. Yet access to this shared resource is becoming increasingly unequal.

India offers one of the clearest illustrations of this contradiction.

Across drought-prone districts in Rajasthan, Bundelkhand, Vidarbha and parts of southern India, women and young girls walk several kilometres every day carrying empty pots in search of water. Many spend hours waiting beside public taps that function for only a few minutes. Others draw water from ponds and borewells contaminated with fluoride, arsenic or industrial waste because there is no safer alternative. For these households, water is not simply a utility; it determines health, education and dignity. A girl who spends four hours fetching water is also a girl who misses school. A family forced to drink contaminated water is also a family pushed closer to disease and poverty.

Now consider another image. Premium bottled water, marketed as "glacial", "natural" or "mineral-rich", sits on supermarket shelves and luxury hotel tables. It has become a lifestyle statement, consumed by celebrities, corporate executives and affluent households willing to pay hundreds or sometimes thousands of rupees for a single bottle. The contrast is striking. Both the rural woman and the wealthy consumer are drinking water. But one drinks to survive, while the other consumes exclusivity. The difference is not the water itself. It is inequality.

The crisis is no longer confined to villages. Indian cities are rapidly becoming theatres of water inequality. Every summer, images emerge of water tankers arriving in neighbourhoods where residents scramble with buckets and containers. At the same time, gated communities continue to maintain green lawns, private swimming pools and high water consumption.

Groundwater levels continue to decline even as urban demand rises. According to several government assessments, India is among the world's largest users of groundwater, with extraction exceeding natural recharge in many regions. Climate change, erratic monsoons and rising temperatures are only deepening the crisis.

This is where the debate moves beyond scarcity to justice.

Water cannot be treated like any other commodity because it is indispensable to life itself. Markets may determine the price of luxury goods, but access to drinking water cannot depend solely on purchasing power. In 2010, the United Nations formally recognised access to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right. That recognition carries an important moral implication: governments have an obligation not merely to supply water but to ensure that economic inequality does not determine survival.

This does not mean that private participation in water management has no role. Technology, investment and efficient distribution systems can improve service delivery. But when profit becomes the primary objective, communities living around water sources often find themselves excluded from the very resource that sustains them. The challenge, therefore, is not simply about public versus private ownership. It is about ensuring that commercial interests never override the fundamental right of citizens to safe and affordable water.

India's future will increasingly be shaped by how it governs this resource. Policies must focus on groundwater conservation, rainwater harvesting, restoration of lakes and wetlands, protection of rivers from pollution and equitable distribution of drinking water. Equally important is recognising the invisible labour of millions of women whose daily lives continue to revolve around collecting water. Water security is not only an environmental issue; it is also a question of gender justice, public health and social equality.

Ultimately, the debate is not about bottled water or multinational corporations alone. It is about the kind of society we aspire to build. A civilisation cannot claim progress if clean water becomes a privilege reserved for those who can afford it while others struggle for every drop. Development loses its meaning when access to life's most basic necessity is determined by income rather than humanity.

The next time we pour a glass of clean water without a second thought, perhaps we should ask a simple question: Is this water really ours or has it become another resource that only some can truly claim?

If you'd like, I can also Make this read even closer to an Indian Express Sunday Opinion piece by incorporating recent examples such as Plachimada (Kerala), the Hima Das water crisis, Cape Town's Day Zero, Bengaluru's groundwater depletion, and the growing bottled water industry in India, making it more data-rich and contemporary.