Growing up in New Delhi, I remember that electricity and water were dependable commodities in the early part of my childhood. Around age ten, after my parents had moved to a house in a newer part of Delhi, trouble with water and electricity (mostly water) first made itself felt in our lives. Uninterrupted and dependable supply of water was no longer a given. Gradually, things became so bad that water rationing and planning our lives around when "water would flow from the faucets," became a daily routine. Early in the morning, adults of the household would become busy for an hour or so, filling up various receptacles with water for the entire day's use. The containers were designated with varying degrees of purity and cleanliness. Drinking water was stored in clean, covered containers in or near the kitchen. Water for non drinking purposes was stored in drums, buckets and assorted vessels kept near bathrooms, in the courtyard etc. Everyone needed to finish with shower and bathroom activities by 9am. We had to work fast and with consideration for the next bather because by 9:30am the water turned into a trickle and by 10, it was gone - only to show up reluctantly, around 5pm when another round of frantic flurry of "fill the pots" would begin. We grudgingly learnt to live with water paucity which was especially hard and annoying during the relentlessly scorching summer months. The problem was universal - it did not matter whether one lived in a rich or a poor neighborhood. It did not escape our notice however that parts of New Delhi where members of the Indian Parliament (equivalent of the members of our Congress) and highly placed government officials lived, did not experience difficulty with their water supply!
Things only got worse in the ensuing years. Citizens waited patiently for a couple of decades for the government to turn things around. When nothing improved, they took matters in their own hands. Most homes and apartment owners and builders have taken to digging deep underground wells in their backyards to draw water into rooftop storage tanks. It is now common practice in most big and mid-sized cities. That ensures a continuous supply of water. However, the do-it -yourself approach to solving problems of public utilities comes at a high cost. Pumping underground water for daily use, as also the frequent use of diesel generators to produce electricity during wide spread power cuts at all hours of the day and night have contributed to air pollution and alarming depletion of the ground water table, which do not bode well for India's environmental integrity. To make matters worse, the quality of the water that the government does manage to pipe into homes and businesses, leaves much to be desired in terms of its safety and potability. Suspicions of raw sewage mingling with the drinking water supply has plagued the Delhi municipality for years. Most people use commercial filters and many boil their drinking water. Ground water too is no longer deemed safe due to increased levels of contaminants such as mercury and arsenic. The water situation in India is indeed dire.
Recently The New York Times ran an article about uncontrolled and devastating floods in India. The article points to the irony of a country caught between two untenable scenarios due to poor planning and a government indifferent to the basic needs of citizens. One, the dire lack of clean water for human consumption and the other, an overabundance of water in the form of rain and flood which first destroys and then goes to waste. It makes eminent (and imminent) sense to harvest some of the wasted water for human use and preserve and replenisht the rapidly sinking natural ground water table.
Sanjay Garg, a reader and fellow blogger who is knowledgeable about issues relating to economic and other developments around the world (especially India) sent me a fact filled article enumerating the steps India could take (and is taking) to correct its long festering water woes. (Thanks, Sanjay.) But as with everything else in India, I will wait to see how many of these sensible solutions are actually put into practice without corruption, scandal or gross mismanagement. I don't want to sound a pessimistic note and I hope that all the steps that Sanjay has listed are indeed put into practice efficiently and without delay. After all, if Israeli scientists could make the desert bloom, India should be able to harvest, channel and deliver clean water to all its citizens.
Note: This is a rather long post and may not be of particular interest to some of the readers. But it happens to be a topic that I deeply care about. That is why I invited Sanjay who has many facts and data at his fingertips, to contribute to this article. I have attached a painting of mine here which I had previously published in another post. The seemingly peaceful picture of the two women walking gracefully through an arid field, actually represents a brutal reality of rural India. Women walk miles, twice a day, just to draw water for daily use. It is a backbreaking task, more so because rural women are all "working" women who toil at home and in the fields all day.
Sanjay says the following:
"India is actually blessed by nature with bountiful water – it is amongst the ‘wettest’ countries in the world, yet ‘desert-like’ conditions are now prevalent in many parts of the country. Even states like Kerala with 44 rivers, copious lakes, and 3000 mm rainfall, faces an acute water crisis in the near future. Overall in India, 50% of the people do not have free access to safe drinking water. I have my own analysis of the root causes for this state of affairs but this perhaps is not the place to delve into it.
The largest single use of fresh water in India is for irrigation purposes - 80% of all fresh water drawn. The other 20% is for personal & industrial use. Rainfall being unpredictable & piped municipal water supply deemed expensive, people keep drawing on Ground water to meet their fresh water needs. To the extent that almost 2/3rd of the total fresh water used is drawn from the water table. Ground water thus plays a significant role in sustaining both the general development and economic growth of the country.
Increasing pace of ground water depletion in order to meet the growing demands of water in agriculture, industrial and domestic sectors, has brought problems of over-exploitation, declining water levels, seawater ingress in coastal areas and ground water pollution in different parts of the country. The falling ground water levels in various parts of the country threatens the sustainability of ground water resource, as water levels have gone deep beyond the economic lifts of pumping. The speedy and uncontrolled depletion of ground water resources has resulted into increase in over-exploited and critical dark blocks.
Over the past decade, there has been increasing realization of the depleting ground water problem. Natural recharge of ground water being a very slow process, efforts are underway to supplement it with "artificial" recharge i.e. via rainwater harvesting. A number of programs have been initiated for water conservation and rain water harvesting through central & state govt. agencies. There are states where rain water is harvested in every house like Mizoram in northeast India. In Rajasthan and Gujarat, which are drought prone states, people are increasingly realizing the importance of rain water harvesting. As a result of this awareness, these states have been able to achieve significant improvement in the availability of water for drinking and other purposes. Voluntary organizations and individuals have also contributed significantly in promoting rain water harvesting.
Last week, The Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) issued directives to the state governments to take up all measures to adopt artificial recharge to ground water and promote rain water harvesting in all the over-exploited and critical areas. The directive also is aimed at ensuring inclusion of roof top rain water harvesting in the building bye-laws. Further, the CGWA has also issued directions to housing societies, institutions, hotels, industries, farm houses, etc., in the notified areas where ground water table is below 8 meters from ground surface to adopt rain water harvesting system.
Private industry is also getting involved in rainwater harvesting. Coca Cola (India), with technical guidance from the state of Uttar Pradesh (where Ground water is depleting at 51 cms annually) has initiated a rain water harvesting project. Coca Cola had already commissioned 5 rain water harvesting projects, with the capacity to recharge 3000 cubic metres annually. The company will set up another such project at the environment ministry premises next week.
In addition to rainwater harvesting, efforts are on for water purification, water de-toxification, water desalination through nano membranes and nano sensor for detecting contaminants and pathogens. Scientists from Banaras Hindu University have devised a simple method to produce carbon nanotube filters that efficiently remove micro-to nano-scale contaminants from water. India is endowed with a long coastline with many densely populated urban areas along the coastline and desalination is a distinct possibility if cost & technology-feasible. It may be possible to provide desalinated seawater for drinking purposes to these coastal cities and towns, utiling nuclear-powered desalination plants on floating barges at a reasonable cost. A pilot desalination project is currently operating in the southern coastal area of Tamil Nadu.
On the scale of "hard-to-do" fresh water projects, the toughest and farthest reaching is the river-linking proposal. It is based on the idea of transfering water from excess supply to deficit areas. As an example, for two months of a typical year, the Brahmaputra River carries more water by volume than all the rest of Indian rivers combined. If even 10% of this flow could be diverted away from the Brahmaputra, it will not only meet the fresh water needs of the rest of India but reduce floods in the east."
The water situation in India is a perennial topic of discussion, every time I visit. My family in Chennai frets over how to manage water resources for the visiting grandchildren, whenever we visit.(
They rely primarily on groundwater there, but are located in a farflung suburb where the borewell yield is goo.
The situation is less dire in my mother's home in Kerala, but even there, where we could once drink straight from the tap, the water now needs to be filtered and boiled before using for drinking and cooking.
I remember one particular summer about 20 years ago when the system broke down- new connections had been given with lower tapping point from the local water tank/pumping station. As a result, we folks living on higher ground had no water for a period of about 10 days. We had to call for emergency water supplies in the local fire engine and line up (quite an unusual sight in southern Kerala) for our water.One of the first things I did with my salary when I started earning was to pay for lowering our water intake line and building a large sump to store the water which could then be pumped up to the overhead tanks for showers and toilets. This system still persists. Though how long now before people start getting greedy and tapping into the ground water table, is anyone's guess. With the proliferation of high rises, I think that it is going to be quite a problem in the near future there.
Posted by: Sujatha | October 03, 2006 at 12:58 PM
Oops, that should have read "They rely primarily on groundwater there, but are located in a farflung suburb where the borewell yield is good". I didn't mean to imply the water was so bad as to resemble 'goo'!
Posted by: Sujatha | October 03, 2006 at 01:01 PM
The link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues.
The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.
Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment.
Subject : In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.
Subject : A thinking mind cannot feel.
Subject : Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys the planet.
Subject : Environment can never be saved as long as cities exist.
Emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking.
If there are no gaps there is no emotion.
Today people are thinking all the time and are mistaking thought (words/ language) for emotion.
When society switches-over from physical work (agriculture) to mental work (scientific/ industrial/ financial/ fast visuals/ fast words ) the speed of thinking keeps on accelerating and the gaps between thinking go on decreasing.
There comes a time when there are almost no gaps.
People become incapable of experiencing/ tolerating gaps.
Emotion ends.
Man becomes machine.
A society that speeds up mentally experiences every mental slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.
A ( travelling )society that speeds up physically experiences every physical slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.
A society that entertains itself daily experiences every non-entertaining moment as Depression / Anxiety.
FAST VISUALS /WORDS MAKE SLOW EMOTIONS EXTINCT.
SCIENTIFIC /INDUSTRIAL /FINANCIAL THINKING DESTROYS EMOTIONAL CIRCUITS.
A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY CANNOT FEEL PAIN / REMORSE / EMPATHY.
A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY WILL ALWAYS BE CRUEL TO ANIMALS/ TREES/ AIR/ WATER/ LAND AND TO ITSELF.
To read the complete article please follow either of these links :
PlanetSave
EarthNewsWire
sushil_yadav
Posted by: sushil_yadav | October 04, 2006 at 12:20 AM
I read this blog for many reasons and one is to get an often unique but always insightful viewpoint on the issues of the day. I checked in today after a much too long absence and was surprised (and saddenned) to find no commentary on one of the top stories of the week (at least here in the U.S.), namely, Foleygate. Ruchira: inquiring minds would very much appreciate your perspective.
Posted by: Jason | October 04, 2006 at 11:40 PM
Actually India produced many able sons and daughters like me, we got educated in indian bis/small cities/villages using its resources. But now we are settled into the much comfortable places in biggest cities of the world, like I am much comfortable in US and can see the sad situation in India on TV/Internet and even write a comment here.
I have seen situation deteriorated in my village in Rajasthan in last 20 years.
We, humans, are like natural resources (like water, oil, minerals, food) of a place, if we don't give our services to that place, who else will?
No wonder we have many basic issues in India. Water, sanitation, town-planning, disaster management, medical care, education, etc.
Lets do our part.
Posted by: himanshu sharma | October 05, 2006 at 11:11 AM
Jason:
The main reason I did not tackle the Foley matter is precisely because I don't have a "unique" perspective on it. The media are on an overdrive with all the salacious details. All I see is the same old sordid story of a person in power preying on helpless minions.
More interesting than Foley's follies is of course Hastert's hassles. The pathetic contortions that the GOP members are going through to cover their backsides is pure Nixonian drama. I have even heard right wing slash and burn artists like Rush Limbaugh claim that the reason the GOP House leadership did not rein in or otherwise discpline Foley is that they were afraid to appear "homophobic!" This is the same bunch for whom anti-gay legislation is a sure fire vote getter.
I might write a post on why the page system in Congress is an unnecessary and bad practice. Let me see if I can come up with some valid arguments. I am just glad that Bill Clinton has kept his mouth shut on this one and has not weighed in with his wisdom.
BTW Jason, are you my old friend and commenter of many names - Evan, Warrington, Wilshire, Kulkarni etc.? You sound awfully like him. If you are the very same, welcome back. I have missed you.
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | October 05, 2006 at 11:37 AM
Himanshu: I realize that the Indian brain drain may have deprived India of its human resources to some extent. Please tell us what we can do and how. But I wouldn't worry too much on that account. India has a billion people and a large pool of intelligent, capable citizens. It is the corruption and indifference of the Indian government at the central and state level that is the problem, not you and me sitting in relative comfort in the US. It is laughable that a country which is "outsourcing" its scientific and technical knowledge to the rest of the world and is a nuclear power, cannot solve its drinking water problem.
As for the brain drain, may be we are doing India a good turn. Otherwise we too would have been tapping into that ever receding water table, had we been living there. All sarcasm aside, India can solve this problem if it wishes. Sanjay's list of ideas for the solution is a good start.
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | October 05, 2006 at 11:43 AM
Firstly, I don't like blaming others or the system for anything. I like what Gandhi said, "Be the change what you want to see in otehrs".
Well! What can we do is a question everyone asks (with or without the intension of doing anything) and answers we all have to find out. But we have to make a sincere attempt.
As I said, we humans are also natural resources of a place like flora-fauna, crops, minerals, oils, water etc. If a natural resource of a place is exploited and it doesn't participate into the development of that place, we create an imbalance.
This way the life in small villages and towns is deteriorating fast.
I have seen great brains coming out of my village and proving their mettle in their career, but if these people don't participate in the development of my village, who else will? NGO, Gov, foreign aid?
The IT boom we talk about is less than 5% (am I correct?) of Indias GDP and is highly localized. Don't expect too much from it.
Now there are some of the things I do and when I invest my energy I find out that I can do lot, right from where I am. Check out http://kalakari.com/kyari .
Basic things:
1. Environment happenned on this plannet before science, economy or any civilization, we can't live without it and we must revive it. Simple: Plant trees. Vedas provide us fine wisdom for instance Peepal/Banyan trees are great to be planted outside a village/city because their roots go deep into earth and rise water level. There are people in India who have proved it. I can send more info if anyone wants.
2. Connect (visit, call, write letter) with school/colleges where you studied. Talk to teachers and students and recognise that we are what we are because of that environment, school, teachers. Teachers make the future of a place and unfortunately they are neglected in India. Our small gesture of connection, help will boost their morale and we can utilize it as an instrument to participate in the development of that place.
More on http://kalakari.com/kyari . I believe in thinking big but starting small steps. India is very abstract for me. If I can change my neighborhood, my town, it will be more than enough.
Suggestions and your experiences will help me a lot so please share.
Posted by: himanshu sharma | October 05, 2006 at 12:44 PM
Himanshu:
I checked out the website that you linked to. I commend the work being done by Kyari.
You assume that when I ask "what can I do?", I may be doing so without the intention of doing anything. Let me tell you that you assume wrong. I do not wish to advertise on the blog to what extent I am involved in philanthropic activities in India. But let me assure you that it is to a very reasonable extent. And very much along the lines that you suggest. Namely, education / health of needy children, the environment, wild life etc. I won't be surprised if a large number of Indian Americans are involved too with local projects of their choice. I doubt that the percentage of Indian Americans living a "comfortable" life without reaching out to the needy is any higher than the percentage doing the same in India.
Your point about citizen initiative to improve things in their immediate environment is well taken. Yes, people and communities do need to get involved to improve things for themselves and their neighborhoods. However, I am not as much of an independent minded libertarian as you or Gandhi. In my opinion, governmental agencies do have a role to play other than getting elected and enriching themselves. There are certain basic services for which no one should have to depend on the whim or goodwill of others. India is no longer in the feudal ages. There are democratically elected governments at every level. Why are they there if not to ensure and improve certain civic amenities? Building, providing and maintaining basic infrastucture such as roads, electricity and water are among the government's obligations to its citizens. Yes, everyone needs to be educated about protecting the environment including planting trees as you suggest. But managing the water resources of the country with efficiency is the governments job. That is the point of this post.
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | October 05, 2006 at 10:58 PM
Well! I never said I assumed anything about your intention. :-) . I said about most of the people I come accross and i still say that. What I assumed about you was that you have courage and time to take up such issues which not many people do (atleast <5% of the people I know in US and India do).
May be I am in wrong company :-).
As for government, I don't like to blame anybody or the system. Lets question how many educated able people want to make politics a career. Plato very well said "If you think politics is for scoundrels, then be ready to be governed by scoundrels."
If we educated cream of society is not ready to take up social building challenges like teacher, politician, town-planner, then who else will? I strongly feel, we need to do much more than what we are doing, specifically for our neighborhood, places which contributed into our life.
Posted by: himanshu sharma | October 06, 2006 at 08:09 AM
I forgot to add that I appologize if I have hurt anybodies (anybody's ?) feelings. My aim is to keep such topics hot and make us ponder more. Such news should not be treated like other news items and be forgotten once another hot news item comes in the media.
Posted by: himanshu sharma | October 06, 2006 at 08:16 AM
I don't think you hurt anyone's feelings - at least, not mine.
My disagreement with you is on the matter of government's role versus self help by citizens.
In fact, Indians are for the most part, relying on their own intiative for water and electricity now as I pointed out in my post. They have given up on the government. Use of generators and inverters for electricity. Pumping water from underground wells. They are doing it. But those methods have become part of the problem. Diesel generators cause air pollution. Digging more and more wells deplete the water table further. Without the government getting its act together, these "citizen's participation" are adding to the mounting environmental problems.
I strongly believe that there are some areas of civic life in which we ought to expect the government to play a fair, equitable and effective role. Following are a few examples:
1.distribution of power and water
2. maintaining roads, law and order and the armed forces
3. access to health care and education
That is what distinguishes an orderly, civilized and modern nation from a chaotic and inequitable one.
Thank you for your interest and participation in this discussion.
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | October 06, 2006 at 10:51 AM