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The article discusses the issues focused upon in the Population Summit held in October 1993 in New Delhi, India. Organized by 15 of the world's scientific academies, this gathering was the first large-scale collaborative activity of its kind. It brought together academicians and other invited scholars representing over 60 scientific academies to examine the relationships between population, natural resources, and the environment. The massive volume that resulted from the summit, covering the invited papers plus some peripheral materials, was published quickly, well in time to serve as background papers for the September 1994 International Conference on Population and Development. The underlying theme in the New Delhi manifesto is the need for internationally coordinated planned action. Improved pricing, taxing and regulatory policies that take into account environmental costs, thereby influencing consumption behavior is an ambitious goal. In sum, to criticize the groping for social improvement is to attack virtue, virtuous people and the greatest offense of all, a reform-minded international bureaucracy.

An early version of this article was prepared as a background paper for the Population Summit of the World's Scientific Academies, held in New Delhi during 24-27 October 1993. and was also the basis of the 1993 Sidney Ball Lecture at the University of Oxford, a much-shortened version of which was published in Scientific American (Dasgupta 1995a) These essays, in turn, were based on ideas that were developed in my book, An Inquiry into Well-Being and Destitution (Dasgupta 1993). In preparing this article, I have benefited greatly from discussions with Kenneth Arrow, Carol Dasgupta, Jack Goody, and Paul Seabright. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, 884 million people lack access to water and 2.6 billion lack access to sanitation. In the past 20 years, there has been important progress made in these areas at the international level. But despite some milestones, significant challenges remain to be addressed. Some of these milestones reflect recommendations from the New Delhi Statement, which endorsed the principle of 'Some for All Rather than More for Some', and its four guiding principles,1 as do some of the remaining challenges. Other trends have emerged since then, as well. This article identifies the main political developments over the last 30 years and examines some barriers to the progress of attaining universal water and sanitation provision. It also outlines some of what we have done or not done in implementing the concepts contained in the New Delhi Statement, and identifies some key lessons for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the water supply shortage in India as its population continues to boom. Water pollution is just one of the many problems that India is facing, more to this is the availability of water where the city of Delhi is the forerunner of this looming water crisis. India consider it an ambitious plan to connect the majority of its river basins through a vast network of canals, diverting billions of litres from the more water-rich river basins to those with less. Although it is unclear whether the solution is effective, the logic behind such plan is to capture the surplus water that flows wastefully to the sea which resulted from the variable distribution of precipitation.