HYDERABAD: Try using 'water' and 'Hyderabad' as keywords on Google and the first 10 results it throws up are the contact numbers of private companies supplying drinking water. The search results reflect the city's parched reality. Canned mineral water has been the lifeline for the middle-class urban dwellers even as those living in slum pockets queue up for drinking water at 4 am or even earlier, if the water board decides to become generous at that time. The city's population of an estimated 70-80 lakh needs 459 million gallons of water per day. The supply, however, is that of 340 million gallons that flow into the 7.53 lakh connections in the city. Officials note in summer months the city's ground water gets depleted adding to the demand. Water activists say Hyderabad's existing sources of water, Himayat Sagar, Osman Sagar, Manjeera and Krishna have all been reduced to cesspools owing to the high level of pollution. The proposed augmentation (of supply) from Godavari is likely to bring an additional 172 million gallons of water everyday into the city but until that happens, water woes would continue. Arogyasri fails to fix patient-bed ratio
Arogyasri may have made five-star treatment accessible to the poor and the city could be bursting at its seams with private hospitals that are forever on an expansion spree, but that hasn't changed the health reality of Hyderabad. There are just about 1.16 beds per 1,000 people living in the city. And the number of specialists could be rising in Hyerabad but the city is still battling health conditions such as that of anaemia. One encouraging sign of healthcare in the city has been the improvement in the infant mortality rate (the number of deaths per 1,000 infants under the age of 1) with the figure improving from a disturbing 52 in 2005 to 26 in 2008. Health activists continue to bleat over the skewed priorities of the government which covers major illnesses under Arogyasri but has failed to address basic healthcare issues. Ailments like tuberculosis continue to get reported and an increasing number of Hyderabadis are falling prey to respiratory diseases, the most common ailment seen among citizens.
Knocking the daylights out of Hyderabad
Hyderabadis will not forget the summer of 2010 in a hurry. Reeling under scheduled and non-scheduled power cuts, the summer left domestic users scalded and industrial players sulking over their losses. Faced with a shortage of 2 million units of power in the peak summer months and no available power to purchase, the discom was battling a severe power crunch imposing three to even four-hour long powercuts on denizens. Even at this time of the year, in a rare winter month of December, when the demand for power is not as much, CPDCL officials say that the transmission network is loaded up to 80 per cent even now, a demand which in power-speak is "full load''.
While there is no demand-supply gap being faced right now, the state is
better prepared to beat the heat in the summer of 2011 with the state giving permission and CPDCL already
tying up with suppliers to procure 1000 MW of power for the months of
March and April, which should take
care of the peak demand shortage of 400-500 MW.
The hassled Hyderabadi commuter
The city's expansion into its Greater form has little to do with its bursting roads. For, it was five years ago when the maximum number of vehicles were added to the city roads almost in tune with the number of people migrating to the city of Nizams to live their IT dream. So, from 10 lakh vehicles in the year 2000, the city now has 20 lakh vehicles on the road. While flyovers have sprung, they have not really ironed out commuting woes of denizens. The city saw a spurt in vehicles in the year 2005, thanks to the IT boom, following which authorities started widening roads. They chopped down trees and pushed back boundaries of houses and commercial establishments to make way for the big and small cars on the road even as it failed to strengthen or even introduce an effective public transport system apart from the much-criticised metro rail project, which is taking off the drawing board only now. With the city failing to develop alternate business districts in areas such as Uppal, Medchal or even Shamirpet, the core city area continues to get clogged.
Battling agitations, police unable to contain crime
The city police have had the toughest 2010. As the city witnessed a string of robberies and kidnappings, the police force had no choice but to remain focussed on controlling the many agitations that broke out during the year. In Hyderabad, if there were 132 murders in 2009, there were 128 in 2010. This does not include the Cyberabad murder statistics which has come down from 181 murders last year to 166 this year. What remains intriguing is the stunning worth of property stolen every year including in the year 2010. The value of property stolen this year, as estimated by the police stolen (in both Hyderabad and Cyberabad) is close to Rs 50 crore. Of this, property worth a little over Rs 20 crore has been recovered. A chunk of kidnappings this year have been related to real estate developers, owing to the slump and the money people had raised from the market.
The city's muck overflows in Musi
Denizens driving over the Musi everyday would possibly raise a stink if they knew just how much untreated sewage was being dumped into the shrinking river everyday. Going by the estimates provided by the Hyderabad Metro Water and Sewerage Board, over a 1,000 million litres of untreated sewage is dumped into the Musi daily with the three STPs treating only 550 million litres of sewage. Hyderabad produces over 340 million gallons of sewage per day. Apart from sewage, the city generates as much as 4,000 metric tonnes of garbage. This is dumped at a 700-acre ground at Jawahar Nagar. Now, the GHMC has written to collectors of Medak, Mahbubnagar and Nalagonda to allocate land for dumping grounds to cut short the longish commute from one end of the city to the other. Also, it has now undertaken a project to treat garbage before dumping. Meanwhile, HMWS&SB has also proposed to set up an additional 10 STPs to treat more sewage before dumping it in the Musi.
Just how safe is 'relatively safe'?
IIt's with mixed feelings that women receive official data on crime against them in Hyderabad. With 24 dowry deaths and 129 rapes in the twin cities in the year 2010, the crime rate against them seems to have hit a coincident constant, since 2009 also reported more or less the same figures. While women find Hyderabad light years ahead of 'dreadful' Delhi in terms of their safety, they wouldn't rate it as safe as Mumbai or even Chennai for that matter. And until the PNDT Act was enforced strictly in the city, Hyderabad was recording a plummeting sex ratio with it touching 933 in 2004, the lowest in the state. In the last three years, however, the figure has improved to 976 females per 1,000 males, but it is still lower than the sex ratio of the state which was 978 as per the 2001 census. Domestic violence continues in the state, but the number of cases registered with the police have not seen any jump, remaining static percentage wise. The police say that many cases get reconciled with the help of NGOs who counsel people when they come to file a complaint. However, over 1,300 cases of harassment were filed by women with the Hyderabad police.
