ABSTRACT
As its quantity and quality are both being increasingly challenged in a rapidly degrading planet, water, the life-sustaining resource, is perhaps predictably becoming a cause of discord and conflict with the issues of availability, distribution, security and safety – all coming under threat. In the water tower of the Himalayas, transboundary water concerns, unbridled hydropower development, rights over water, water diversion, unequal distribution, and now serious surface and groundwater contamination issues are being increasingly reported, documented and discussed in recent years, often also in the context of fuelling social unrest. Conflicts arising out of quality degradation of surface and groundwater have somehow not been discussed as visibly as the conflicts arising out of other water-related issues, although arguably it is just a ticking time bomb.
