In Delhi slums, families cut grocery budgets to buy drinking water

In West Delhi’s Sarai Basti, Manoj lines up blue drums outside his two-room house, waiting for a tanker that may or may not come. The 35-year-old daily wage labourer earns about Rs 15,000 a month, but nearly a fifth of his income goes toward bottled drinking water for his wife and two children.

“Look at the water we get,” he says, pointing to a bucket filled with yellow, foul-smelling liquid. “I spend up to Rs 3,000 every month on drinking water. If we fall sick from this, the hospital bills will be worse,” Manoj told The Tribune. He buys a Rs 80 Bisleri bottle every day, always keeping three in stock.

What Manoj faces is part of a citywide crisis that weighs heaviest on Delhi’s informal settlements. A recent Greenpeace India Water Audit found that 34 per cent of Delhi’s basti households depend on private suppliers, 29 per cent on government tankers and 21 per cent on water ATMs. Nearly 80 per cent respondents reported frequent shortages, especially between March and July. In Daya Basti, where about 3,000 jhuggi-jhopdis crowd together, there are no water ATMs.

The Delhi Government had promised 3,000 water ATMs in April this year, but only 20 were installed by June — none in Daya basti.

“The few ATMs that do exist are too few in number and often fail to deliver the promised 20 litres of free water,” Greenpeace survey report found.

In Daya Basti, Nirmala has managed to build a cramped three-storey house to fit her family of 12, including children and grandchildren. To get by, the household relies on 20-litre water bottles, each costing Rs 20.

“We need at least three every day for drinking and cooking,” she says. That adds up to nearly Rs 1,800 a month — an impossible sum for most families living on daily wages.

“Earlier we used to get drinking water from a tap nearby, but it went bad and became undrinkable,” Nirmala recalls. During election campaigns, she once confronted a local councillor: “Great, you are giving us food, but please also tell us how we should drink water?”

Most households in Sarai and Daya Basti earn between Rs 6,000 and Rs 15,000, and often spend up to 15 per cent of their income on water — a cost that eats into food, health and education.

In fact, households like Nirmala’s with more members than five often cut their grocery budgets due to water expenses.

Delhi’s 2025 Heat Action Plan had promised 3,000 ATMs offering 20 litres of free water per household daily, but for thousands, the promise remains out of reach. The result is long queues, missed work hours and spiralling expenses.

The Tribune reached out to Water Minister Parvesh Sahib Singh asking about the status of installation of water ATMs in Delhi’s informal settlements and the Delhi Jal Board, inquiring about the challenges in ensuring clean drinking water for informal settlements in Delhi, but did not receive a response until the publishing of this report.

As Manoj stacks his bottles for the day, he voices what many in the city endure: “Food we can manage. But without clean water, what do we do?”