Those of us who buy bottled water without thinking twice should shut up about the water problem. We deserve it. And we deserve what is going to happen in the future. We deserve the water mafia. We deserve corporatisation of water. We deserve the foul smelling water dripping from taps. We deserve to pay a hundred times more for water. With every litre consumed.
Why, you ask.
For if we had questioned that why don’t we get clean water in our taps we would not be here in the first place - throwing our hands in despair while a handful of people hold our water supply to ransom.
Those of us living in cities where monsoon is aplenty deserve to pay hefty sums for water tankers and fill our tanks with worm infested water. We deserve the trickle supply from the municipal corporation.
Why, you ask.
Why indeed the question would come back to us. Why isn’t our building or house equipped with a water harvesting system? Who will come and do it for us? If we don’t know how water harvesting can solve our water problems, whose fault is it? We have access to more information than any other generation of people in any other age. What stops us from googling water harvesting and finding out just how we can benefit from it.
Those of us living in cities where rivers used to run fresh, deserve the gutters these rivers have become. We deserve the Yamuna and the Mithi and the Ganga and the Chambal. Polluted and out of breath.
We deserve the gutters and our complains should end up like bags of degraded plastic thrown in the river at 2000 per second.
Why, you ask.
Why indeed the question will fill our nostrils like stench. Why don’t we come out in numbers and protest. It’s our rivers. If the land mafia would rather they run dry then take the land mafia to task. If the industries would rather they carried effluents and not water, then let the industries know that there are far bigger things than profit.
Fresh water is disappearing fast from the face of this planet. And in India we used to have enough. We wasted it. We are wasting it. Millions of litres every second. There is only one thing we must remember. It’s not government’s water. It’s not municipality’s water. It’s not Coca-Cola’s water. It’s our water. It’s our problem. And we will have to solve it. Unfortunately it will require more than us using 5 litres less water every day. It will require us asking some serious questions. Addressed to ourselves, to begin with.
Further reading:
India’s Imminent Water Crisis
http://www.arlingtoninstitute.org/wbp/global-water-crisis/606
Water Pollution in India
Let’s switch off the lights
There seems to be nothing left to see here anymore. That the unsustainable mining is destroying the country and its ecology and its people has nothing to do with climate change.
That we are killing people so we can “mine happiness” has nothing to do with climate change.
That the tigers being hunted for Chinese libido has nothing to do with water scarcity has nothing to do with climate change.
That Coca-Cola destroying the groundwater has nothing to do with climate change.
That Monsanto is trying to sell GMOs in the name of climate change has nothing to do with climate change.
That our corrupt government officials are trying to introduce a Biotech Bill which will take away our right to protest, our food security has nothing to do with climate change.
That we are destroying our agriculture and then inviting companies like Monsanto to take over has nothing to do with climate change.
That while in the International Year of Biodiversity we are propagating GMOs which will destroy biodiversity and lead to monoculture has nothing to do with climate change.
That several hundred million villages in India go without electricity every day and that clean coal is being touted as the panacea to cure that problem has nothing to do with climate change.
Let’s switch off the lights.
And let us all feel glad that we did our bit for the environment.
Epilogue
Last heard Gurgaon in Haryana, India celebrated Earth Hour for 14 hours on March 22, 2010
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