Urbanisation and Drinking Water Security in Chennai City

Roughly every time the clock strikes there is another mouth to be fed and taken care of especially with the vital needs like water and shelter to the poor not only in rural areas but also in urban metropolitan cities of the developing countries. The present study aimed at answering two central questions: How safe drinking water in urban areas is? And how effective service delivery of drinking water is to the end-users? Chennai one of the four Metropolitan cities of India was selected for the study. As objectives, the study by way of capturing the options of people for the sources of drinking and its impact on health attempted to explore the status of service delivery of drinking water also. Finally it was inferred that there was a higher preference for packaged water available for Rs. 25-75 every twenty liters than the other water sources in urban households, on contrary the preference of people in the institutional environment was public water supply which is free and portable. Results of water quality tests and service delivery of public water supply system brought out the fact that the samples of all sources of water and the service provided were not matching the standards of safety prescribed which resulted in fatal consequences