Bengaluru Battles A Deepening Water Crisis

Bengaluru, once known as the city of lakes, now faces a recurring and intensifying water shortage and flooding crisis. The historical network of lakes and channels that sustained the city has shrunk alarmingly. Once, lakes were not merely aesthetic or recreational spaces. Aside from being hubs of socio-cultural activities, they were essential reservoirs for rainwater, replenishing aquifers, preventing floods, and supporting livelihoods like farming and fishing.

As groundwater levels plummet and lakes continue to shrink, the city’s ecological and hydrological balance are at risk due to decades of mismanagement, encroachments, and poor governance.

Where did the lakes and rajakaluve go?

In Kempegowda’s Bengaluru (16^th century), lakes were a well-planned, inter-linked system of irrigation tanks that conformed to the natural valleys of the city – Hebbal, Koramangala-Challaghatta, Vrishabhavathi, and Arkavathi. The cascading system connected by channels (or streams) and stormwater drains called rajakaluve supported fishing, livelihoods, and domestic use in an otherwise dry region.

Lake maintenance was handled by local communities, with dedicated groups responsible for canal upkeep, desilting, and fishing. The communities and their informal governance were eventually cut off when the British government took control of the lakes in the 1700s. Culturally unimportant to them, the lakes made way for development to house an increasing population. Piped water from the Arkavathy river was introduced in the 1890s to meet the growing demands of the city, and by the 1930s, the number of lakes in Bengaluru had started decreasing. By 1961, only 280 lakes remained. The situation worsened in the 1970s, and the Cauvery water supply was introduced to address the increasing demand for water.

The following decades saw rapid development and encroachment, and further loss of lakes and rajakaluve. By the 2000s, concerned citizen groups started pushing for restoration, but by the 2020s, only 183 choking lakes remained.

Highlighting commonly flooded, low-lying areas like Marathahalli, Rainbow Drive, Kendriya Vihar, and Brookfield, Shashank Palur, Senior Hydrologist at WELL Labs explains, “Stormwater drains were placed at the lowest elevations in the valleys. They were encroached or built over, but the water will still flow that way, causing floods.”

Today, nearly 235 acres of lake land have been encroached upon by government agencies and private developers.

Notable examples include Manyata Tech Park, built on Nagavara Lake’s floodplains and stormwater drains,  Kalasipalya on the former Kalasipalya Lake bed, and Rainbow Drive layout, constructed over paddy field floodplains.

The Dharmambuddhi Lake is now home to the Kempegowda Bus Station and the Sri Kanteerava Stadium and parts of Cubbon Park stand over the former Sampangi Lake bed. Several other lakes once stood where the Karnataka Golf Association’s golf course, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) headquarters, and several residential layouts are located, and have now vanished from maps and public memory.

Governance failures and privatisation

The privatisation of lakes began in the 2000s due the inability of the government to maintain and manage the lakes in the wake of rapid urbanisation, encroachment, and deterioration of the lakes.

​The Lake Development Authority (LDA), established in 2002 to conserve lakes, faced staffing and financial constraints. To cope, they leased out lakes under a public-private partnership (PPP) scheme for maintenance to private companies on a “Develop, Operate, Transfer” basis. Commercial activities like boating, water sports, and amusement parks were to generate much-needed revenue. However, this commercial exploitation degraded and polluted the lakes, and restricted public access for citizens and traditional users like fishermen and washermen.

Public backlash and legal challenges culminated in the High Court establishing guidelines for lake

management. Subsequently, the LDA – which had limited authority and no regulatory powers – was replaced by the Karnataka Lake Conservation and Development Authority in 2015, which was later dissolved in 2018, and the Karnataka Tank Conservation and Development Authority was established.

Parts of Nagavara Lake, leased in 2004 for 15 years, were developed into the Lumbini Gardens, which became popular for boating and water activities. Citizen groups objected to lake privatisation, citing concerns over public access of commons, local livelihoods, and ecological vulnerability.

The lease was cancelled in 2019 for violations including polluting the lake. Hebbal lake, leased to East India Hotels (The Oberoi Group), was reclaimed by the Forest Department in 2021 following the destruction of bird nesting grounds.

In 2011, the Karnataka High Court directed the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to remove all encroachments on stormwater drains. By 2014, 405 kilometres of encroachment (on the 856 kilometres of stormwater drains) had been identified, but action was delayed.

A 2016 National Green Tribunal (NGT) directive called for a 75-metre buffer around lakes to protect critical catchment areas. The Supreme Court overturned this in 2017, reinstating smaller buffers from the Revised Master Plan (RMP) 2015, citing city expansion needs.

The lack of regulatory oversight and weak enforcement resulted in further lakebed encroachments for construction by private entities, facilitated by the by Bangalore Development Agency (BDA).

The present and looming future

Bengaluru’s lakes are severely degraded and 85% of the existing lakes are severely polluted. Pollution, disconnection from stormwater drains, and altered inflow patterns have left them unable to support ecosystems, human use, or flood management.

The lack of consensus and collaboration among stakeholders on the role of urban lakes is a challenge. “Lakes need to be rejuvenated as per their function and purpose. Once used for irrigation and domestic use, their only purpose now is recreation and aesthetics. Their main function needs to be groundwater recharge, flood mitigation, and rainwater harvesting,” says Ramprasad Dasa, co-founder of Friends of Lakes, an informal citizen group that works to conserve the city’s lakes.

Dasa adds, “Flooding is inevitable. These lakes were historically designed very well, and had sluice gates, outlets, and channels which are gone now. They are now full of sewage; so, rainwater has nowhere to go, and sludge and silt are blocking the percolation needed to recharge groundwater.”

A 2023 Indian Institute of Science (IISc) report titled Groundwater Outlook of Bengaluru City – April 2025 Projections warns of severe water scarcity in 80 wards by summer 2025. Parts without the Cauvery pipeline are heavily reliant on borewells and water tankers, disproportionately increasing costs for the poorer communities.

Rejuvenation, restoration, and recommendations

While desilting, fencing, aeration, and clean-ups led by citizen groups and NGOs have helped restore lakes like Kaikondrahalli, Jakkur, and Puttenahalli, the scientific accuracy, long-term efficacy, and consistency of these efforts vary.

“The unscientific way of lake rejuvenation being carried out by private agencies and CSR groups needs to stop. They merely dig a larger bed without following any engineering principles, testing the structural integrity of the bund, or inspecting the infrastructure – all without considering the long-term repercussions,” says Palur.

Biocon Limited, through a CSR effort led by environmentalist Anand Malligavad rejuvenated the Yarandahalli Lake in 2022. The unscientific construction of the inlet and outlet pipes now causes the stormwater drain to overflow into the neighboring residential areas instead of the lake, highlighting that rejuvenation plans cannot be generalized and must consider the unique placement, function, and position of the lake in the interconnected series.

In 2022, a section of the newly-rejuvenated Subbarayanakere Lake’s bund collapsed, resulting in activists filing an RTI for the plans. The low-elevation lake is ideal to capture rainwater, and the generic soup-bowl design did not fit the requirement. Additionally, BBMP did not construct drains to catch and channel rainwater into the lake, resulting in seepage and collapse of the bund’s section.

As a counter to these issues, several digital platforms now offer critical information required for lake conservation. The Rajakaluve Encroachment Finder compiles BBMP data on encroachments while the Bengaluru Lake Information System (BLIS), launched by IISc, maps and monitors the city’s lakes, providing data on water quality, land use, and ecological health.

Experts outline multiple interventions like mapping and removing encroachments, restoring inter-lake connectivity to reduce flooding, maintaining floodplains, promoting native vegetation, restricting untreated sewage and waste dumping, public awareness, and reinstating a protective buffer zone around the lakes. Lakes are multi-stakeholder systems, and effective interventions need to engage all stakeholders for sustainable and inclusive governance.

“When there is a mechanism of citizen-led lake groups, the government needs to collaborate and engage with them, so that the citizens can be the actual caretakers of the lakes. Participatory governance is extremely important in this context,” says Dasa.

Bengaluru now stands at a crossroads. The city not only needs the right governance and infrastructure upgrade, but also multi-stakeholder involvement and ownership to restore and maintain its lakes and water systems. The alternative is a fast-growing, water-scarce city, increasingly reliant on unsustainable solutions like water tankers. Therefore, maintaining Bengaluru’s lakes is critical not only for water security, but also for climate resilience and social equity.

Palur says, “We need proper groundwater mapping and systems to reduce dependence on groundwater. To be more equitable, the existing infrastructure and technology need an overhaul, as does the water pricing strategy.”

(Published under Creative Commons from Mongabay India. Read the original article here)