In July 2019, The Indian Express carried a PTI report that the government body Niti Aayog was preparing a proposal for a series of floating seawater desalination plants off India's coastline of more than 7,500 kilometres. A senior official said the aim was to tie desalination to the Sagarmala port programme and to pipe the water to large cities. The trigger was the acute shortage in Chennai after poor rainfall. An index report by Niti Aayog had put 600 million people in India under high to extreme water stress.
The report showed how the 2019 water crisis in Chennai turned seawater desalination in India into a question of national planning, linked to the expansion of the country's ports.
Source: The Indian Express