It took the deaths of her husband and son to force authorities to supply it to the slum she calls home.
But earlier … the water used to be rusty, we could not even wash our hands or feet with that kind of water," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in Delhi.
Water pollution is a major challenge, the report said, with nearly 70 percent of India’s water contaminated, impacting three in four Indians and contributing to 20 per cent of the country’s disease burden.
"Our surface water is contaminated, our groundwater is contaminated.
See, everywhere water is being contaminated because we are not managing our solid waste properly," said the report’s author Avinash Mishra.
You fall ill because you don’t have access to safe drinking water, because your water is contaminated."
"The burden of not having access to safe drinking water, that burden is greatest on the poor and the price is paid by them."
Crippling water problems could shave 6 per cent off India’s gross domestic product, according to the report by the government think-tank, Niti Aayog.
To tackle this crisis, which is predicted to get worse, the government has urged states – responsible for supplying clean water to residents – to prioritise treating waste water to bridge the supply and demand gap and to save lives.
Currently, only 70 per cent of India’s states treat less than half of their wastewater.