India is building at an unprecedented scale. Across the country, highways are expanding into economic corridors, metro systems are reshaping urban mobility, airports are multiplying, and large-scale housing and industrial projects are transforming city peripheries. Flagship programmes such as PM GatiShakti, Bharatmala Pariyojana, Smart Cities Mission, AMRUT, UDAN and PMAY are accelerating infrastructure growth and redefining urban development priorities.Water (Pexels)Construction has become a visible marker of economic progress. Yet beneath this rapid transformation lies an environmental challenge that remains largely invisible: The enormous quantity of water consumed during construction activities.At a time when Indian cities are grappling with groundwater depletion, seasonal water shortages, tanker dependence, and increasing climate variability, construction water use remains one of the least measured and least regulated components of urban water governance. And that 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 labour camps on-site.Studies indicate that building construction in India consumes nearly 2 to 3.6 kilolitres of water per square metre of built-up area, while the actual requirement can be significantly lower, closer to 0.5 kilolitres per square metre, depending on construction practices, material selection, and water management systems. A substantial proportion of this consumption is associated with concrete curing, which alone can account for nearly 50–60% of total construction water uses in conventional projects.Beyond buildings, infrastructure projects such as roads, flyovers, metro systems, thermal power plants, and industrial parks also have significant water requirements during construction phases. Dust suppression measures, increasingly mandated under air pollution control regulations, are adding further demand in urban regions.The concern is not merely the quantity of water being consumed, but also its source. In many Indian cities, construction projects continue to depend heavily on groundwater abstraction or tanker water sourced from peri-urban and rural areas. In water-stressed regions, this creates indirect competition between urban infrastructure expansion and local domestic or agricultural water needs.Yet despite the scale of this demand, construction water consumption remains largely absent from mainstream urban water accounting systems.India is already among the world’s most water-stressed countries. Its annual per capita water availability declined to nearly 1,486 cubic metres in 2021 and is projected to decrease further to around 1,235 cubic metres by 2031, driven by rapid population growth, urbanisation, and the increasing impacts of the climate crisis.Urban centres are witnessing increasing pressure on both surface and groundwater resources. Cities such as Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, and Hyderabad have repeatedly experienced severe summer shortages and growing dependence on water tankers.At the same time, India’s construction sector is expected to expand rapidly to meet rising demands for housing, mobility infrastructure, logistics hubs, and industrial development. This means construction-related water demand will continue to grow, even as cities struggle to secure basic water supply.Despite this, sustainable construction discussions in India continue to focus predominantly on energy efficiency, carbon emissions, and green building materials, while construction-stage water consumption remains weakly governed and poorly monitored.India has introduced several important policy initiatives around water sustainability. Programmes such as AMRUT 2.0 promote treated wastewater reuse, water efficiency, and improved urban water management. The Jal Shakti Abhiyan has also increased focus on water conservation and recharge.However, there is still no dedicated national framework governing construction water consumption. Existing regulations address the issue only partially and in fragmented ways.The National Building Code (NBC) primarily focuses on plumbing systems, operational water demand, and wastewater management after occupancy. 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 curing, but they do not establish benchmarks for water efficiency or consumption limits during construction.Similarly, the Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) regulates groundwater abstraction in notified areas, but construction water extraction often remains weakly monitored, particularly for smaller or decentralised projects relying on private tankers or borewells.Even green building rating systems such as GRIHA and IGBC address construction water reduction only through limited voluntary credits. The weightage assigned to construction-phase water efficiency remains relatively small compared to operational performance indicators.As a result, India currently lacks standardised benchmarks for construction water consumption, mandatory metering and reporting protocols, sector-specific efficiency targets, and integrated monitoring systems linked with urban water governance. This absence of measurable norms creates a major governance vacuum.What cannot be measured cannot be effectively governed. Today, two similar construction projects in different cities may consume vastly different quantities 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, policymakers lack reliable datasets, urban local bodies cannot assess cumulative construction-related demand, and water optimisation remains largely voluntary. India has already demonstrated the effectiveness of benchmarking frameworks in sectors such as energy efficiency. Mechanisms such as the Energy Conservation and Sustainability Building Code (ECSBC) and appliance star-rating systems have helped standardise performance expectations and improve accountability.A similar approach is now urgently required for water construction. Potential indicators could include litres of water consumed per square metre of built-up area, activity-wise consumption norms, percentage of treated wastewater reused, and mandatory site-level metering and reporting. Such metrics could help integrate construction activities into broader urban water planning frameworks.The challenge extends beyond on-site consumption. Construction materials themselves carry a substantial ‘embodied water’ footprint, referring 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 across manufacturing and cooling processes.Yet most water efficiency discussions in the building sector continue to focus on operational water consumption after occupancy, while ignoring the large volume of water embedded in construction materials and processes before a building even becomes functional.A lifecycle-based approach to water governance could encourage low-water construction materials, recycled aggregates, prefabricated systems, circular construction practices, and disclosure of embodied water footprints. Construction water governance in India must evolve from fragmented compliance measures to a more structured regulatory framework. This could include national benchmarks for construction water consumption, mandatory water audits for large projects, digital monitoring systems, integration of water efficiency into building approvals, and incentives for treated wastewater reuse. Stronger regulation of groundwater extraction and restrictions on freshwater use for non-potable construction activities are equally important.Urban local bodies can play a key role by linking project approvals with water management and reuse plans.Importantly, technology already exists. Solutions such as curing compounds, recycled water systems, sensor-based monitoring, and low-water construction practices are increasingly available. The real challenge lies in institutional adoption, monitoring, and enforcement.At the Sustainable Buildings Division of The Energy and Resources Institute, ongoing work on construction water assessments across building and infrastructure projects continues to highlight significant opportunities for improving water efficiency through better monitoring, reuse practices, and construction-stage water management.As Indian cities continue to expand, sustainable urbanisation cannot simply mean building faster, it must also mean building within the ecological limits of available water resources.(The views expressed are personal)This article is authored by Tarishi Kaushik, fellow, Sustainable Buildings, TERI.