India Between Har Ghar Jal and ‘Luxury Litigation’: A Question of Water Quality.
Official promises of near-universal tap water sit uneasily with judicial indifference to quality standards for all consumers.
At a time when ‘Har Ghar Jal’ is celebrated as a milestone in public welfare, the Supreme Court’s refusal, in December 2025, to hear a public interest litigation on bottled drinking water standards should give us all pause. The court’s characterisation of the plea as ‘luxury litigation’ – something unworthy of judicial time when people still lack basic drinking water – unintentionally exposes the chasm between policy narratives and lived realities in India.
The case in question involved a petition urging the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to revise permissible levels of antimony and Diethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP) in packaged drinking water to align more closely with international benchmarks.
