The Composition Water Management Index is supposed to measure the progress made by states in water management and the improvements in management over the time and Niti Aayog has the intention of publishing these ranks annually.The purpose of releasing these ranks is to push the states to increase their supply of drinking water for all rural and urban areas and contain the contamination of this water. This report is meant to increase the efficiency of water resources in all states.

The Niti Aayog’s latest report titled “Composite Water Management Index” says Delhi, along with 20 other cities, will be left without groundwater by 2020. This has rung alarm bells for Gurugram, which is only 20 km from Delhi. Gujarat was ranked the best state on the water management index followed by Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka while Rajasthan was ranked the lowest on the index.

Water problem in Gurugram:
In the last decade, the city witnessed a decline of 82 per cent in its water table. And in the past 40 years, more than 250 natural water bodies have gone dry. Though the Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) had declared Gurugram as a “dark zone” in 2008 and advocated urgent steps to boost the city’s water table, nothing much was done. The situation continued to worsen with realty boom and ever-increasing demand-supply gap. At present, the city’s groundwater extraction is at 308 per cent, outstripping neighbouring Faridabad (75 per cent), Palwal (80 per cent) and Mewat (85 per cent).The district administration was successful in dealing with illegal boring. But given the ever-increasing demand for water, check on illegal boring has been rendered helpless. One of the major factors leading to depletion of groundwater is the lack of optimum recharge even after good monsoon. This is because of a majority of natural water bodies and recharge zones have been lost due to mindless concretization.