As the water crisis worsens by the day in the city, especially in the outer zones, the prices of water tankers are skyrocketing. The cost of 12,000 litres of water has for the first time crossed the ₹2,000 mark in parts of the city.
In the absence of any regulatory mechanism for pricing of water tankers, the prices are random and extremely variable. There have been instances of water tanker businesses charging even as high as ₹2,500, for a load of 12,000 litres in Whitefield and Varthur areas, worst affected by the water shortage this summer, sources in the water tanker business said. Even a tractor of 4,000 litre capacity is being sold in the range of ₹700 - ₹1,000, and a 6,000 litre tanker load costs in the range of ₹1,200 - ₹1,500, said Ajay Gowda, a water tanker dealer in South East Bengaluru.
The high demand for water and low supply as many borewells have gone dry due to failed monsoon, has driven the prices northwards. “We are now going as far as 25 km away from the city to get water. The area of commercial exploitation of water is shifting further away from the city. Every trip the tanker travels over 50 km. While we were able to fill a 12,000 litres tanker in under half an hour earlier, it now takes more than 3 hours as the water levels have gone down and become thin. This limits the extent to which we can extract water in a day,” explained Praveen Reddy, a water tanker businessman in Doddanekkundi.
