The city of Kochi is facing unique water related problems like continued increase in population due to urbanization and industrialization which is causing severe decline in the quality and quantity of water. It is against this background that the budget of the Kochi Municipal Corporation for the year 2014-2015 decided to have a local water policy for Kochi to deal with the water crisis in the city. This is a first time ever in India that a local self government is developing its own local water policy under the purview of the National and State water policies.

Water audit at the city scale helps to understand the potential sources, the ward wise and sector wise demand for water and the spatial variation of scarcity in the corporation area. 

Kochi Water Policy

Kerala has a high vehicle population of over more than 10 million vehicles on the road. These vehicles roughly benefit 20 percent of the total population of Kerala, the rest 80 percent depend upon public transport and shared mobility systems. Catering to all these demands, the state has reached a point where the pollution is on the rise and global warming poses a negative impact on the state. According to Air Quality Index, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Thrissur are the three districts where the air quality has gone from good to moderate. The pollution and accidents on roads have increased because of the increase in number of vehicles and there is a real need to tackle the situation. As a result, the solution formulated by us is the introduction of Electric Vehicles (EVs). EVs promise lesser emissions and noise and supports shared mobility system. The number of vehicles on the road is expected to get reduced with the introduction of modern shared transport systems like Electric Buses and e- Auto rickshaws. They will provide comfortable and fatigue free ride, with no polluting gases, and much reduced vibration and noise. This will attract vehicle owners to move to shared mobility. Calicut, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram are selected as pilot cities because of their connectivity and geographical position. The strategic positioning of these cities gives us an advantage to implement the policy in a way that it reaches more people and connects to them with ease.

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