India is manufacturing on an unprecedented scale. Across the country, highways are expanding into economic corridors, metro systems are reshaping urban mobility, airports are expanding, and large-scale housing and industrial projects are transforming city peripheries. Major programs like PM Gatishakti, Bharatmala Pariyojana, Smart Cities Mission, AMRUT, UDAN and PMAY are accelerating infrastructure development and redefining urban development priorities.
Construction has become a visible indicator of economic progress. Yet behind this rapid change lies an environmental challenge that is largely invisible: the consumption of enormous amounts of water during construction activities.
At a time when Indian cities are grappling with groundwater depletion, seasonal water shortages, tanker dependence and increasing climate variability, building water use remains one of the least measured and least regulated components of urban water governance. And this is becoming a serious policy gap.
Water is essential for almost every stage of construction. It is used for concrete mixing, curing, plastering, dust suppression, cleaning machinery and supporting on-site labor camps.
Studies indicate that building construction in India consumes about 2 to 3.6 kiloliters of water per square meter of built-up area, while the actual requirement may be much lower, closer to 0.5 kiloliters per square meter, depending on construction practices, material selection and water management systems. A large portion of this consumption is associated with concrete curing, which alone can account for approximately 50–60% of total construction water use in conventional projects.
Apart from buildings, infrastructure projects like roads, flyovers, metro systems, thermal power plants and industrial parks also require significant water during the construction stages. Dust suppression measures, increasingly mandated under air pollution control regulations, are creating further demand in urban areas.
The concern is not just the quantity of water consumed, but also its source. In many Indian cities, construction projects rely heavily on groundwater extraction or tanker water obtained from suburban and rural areas. In water-stressed areas, this creates indirect competition between expanding urban infrastructure and local domestic or agricultural water needs.
Yet despite the scale of this demand, construction water consumption is largely absent from mainstream urban water accounting systems.
India is already one of the most water stressed countries in the world. Its annual per capita water availability declined to about 1,486 cubic meters in 2021 and is projected to further decline to about 1,235 cubic meters by 2031 due to rapid population growth, urbanization and the growing impacts of the climate crisis.
There is increasing pressure on both surface and groundwater resources in urban centres. Cities like Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi and Hyderabad have repeatedly experienced severe summer shortages and increased dependence on water tankers.
Also, India’s construction sector is expected to expand rapidly to meet the growing demands for housing, mobility infrastructure, logistics hubs and industrial growth. This means construction-related water demand will continue to grow, even as cities struggle to secure basic water supplies.
Despite this, the sustainable construction discussion in India remains primarily focused on energy efficiency, carbon emissions and green building materials, while construction-level water consumption remains weakly regulated and poorly monitored.
India has launched several important policy initiatives around water sustainability. Programs like AMRUT 2.0 promote re-use of treated waste water, water efficiency and better urban water management. Jal Shakti Abhiyan has also increased focus on water conservation and recharge.
However, there is still no dedicated national framework to regulate construction water consumption. Existing rules address this issue only partially and in a fragmented manner.
The National Building Code (NBC) focuses primarily on plumbing systems, operational water demand, and post-occupancy wastewater management. Environmental clearances issued under the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) framework often require water management plans for large projects, but compliance mechanisms and reporting standards vary significantly across states and project categories.
Indian standards such as IS 456:2000 specify water quality requirements for concrete mixing and treatment, but they do not establish standards for water efficiency or consumption limits during construction.
Similarly, the Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) regulates groundwater withdrawals in notified areas, but monitoring of construction water withdrawals often remains weak, especially for small or decentralized projects dependent on private tankers or borewells.
Even green building rating systems like GRIHA and IGBC address construction water reductions only through limited voluntary credits. The importance given to construction-stage water efficiency is relatively low compared to operational performance indicators.
As a result, India currently lacks standardized benchmarks for building water consumption, mandatory metering and reporting protocols, sector-specific efficiency targets, and integrated monitoring systems linked to urban water governance. This absence of measurable criteria creates a major governance void.
What cannot be measured cannot be controlled effectively. Today, two identical construction projects in different cities may consume very different amounts of water, yet there is no regulatory framework to determine whether that consumption is efficient or excessive.
Without benchmarks developers are not accountable for water performance, policy makers lack reliable datasets, urban local bodies cannot assess cumulative construction-related demand, and water optimization remains largely voluntary.
India has already demonstrated the effectiveness of the benchmarking framework in areas such as energy efficiency. Mechanisms such as the Energy Conservation and Sustainability Building Code (ECSBC) and the appliance star-rating system have helped standardize performance expectations and improve accountability.
A similar approach to water conservation is now urgently needed. Possible indicators could include liters of water consumed per square meter of built-up area, activity-wise consumption norms, percentage of treated waste water reused and mandatory site-level metering and reporting. Such metrics can help integrate construction activities into broader urban water planning frameworks.
The challenge extends beyond on-site consumption. Manufacturing materials themselves have a substantial ’embodied water’ footprint, which refers to the water consumed during extraction, manufacturing, processing and transportation.
Materials such as cement, steel, bricks, glass and concrete are highly resource intensive. Cement production alone involves significant water use in the manufacturing and cooling processes.
Yet most water efficiency discussions in the building construction sector continue to focus on operational water consumption after occupancy, while ignoring the large amounts of water contained in construction materials and processes before the building is functional.
A lifecycle-based approach to water governance can encourage low-water construction materials, recycled aggregates, precast systems, circular construction practices, and disclosure of embodied water footprints.
Building water governance in India must evolve from fragmented compliance measures to a more structured regulatory framework. This could include national standards for construction water consumption, mandatory water audits for large projects, digital monitoring systems, integration of water efficiency into building approvals and incentives for re-use of treated waste water. Strong regulation of groundwater extraction and restrictions on freshwater use for non-potable construction activities are equally important.
Urban local bodies can play an important role by linking project approvals to water management and reuse plans.
The important thing is that the technology already exists. Solutions such as treated compounds, recycled water systems, sensor-based monitoring and low-water manufacturing methods are increasingly available. The real challenge lies in institutional adoption, monitoring and enforcement.
At The Energy & Resources Institute’s Sustainable Building Division, ongoing work on construction water assessment in building and infrastructure projects continues to highlight important opportunities to improve water efficiency through better monitoring, reuse practices, and construction-phase water management.
As Indian cities continue to expand, sustainable urbanization cannot just mean building faster, it must also mean building within the ecological limits of available water resources.
(Views expressed are personal)
This article is written by Tarishi Kaushik, Fellow, Sustainable Buildings, TERI.
