water

we indians use water for everything - right from cooking our food to washing our butts and even until recently fighting... recently there was a fwd of a presentation that said something as unbelievable as world wars being fought over water and armed personnel guarding small water reservoirs... at that time it seemed unbelievable and too imaginative... but today it seemed quite real and scary...

everybody knows what the verdict is going to be - release some xx% of water to TN and keep (100-xx)% of water for KN. people are so imaginative that they wait till the verdict to start the protests. and yes coming to the imagination and the ignorance that drives it, i can't believe what i was reading on the posts on the different discussion boards... some were inspired from Mary Antoinette of the french revolution - "let them buy bisleri"... some said Cauvery originates in KN and hence all the water belongs to KN... why should we even share even a bit of that water... if this is going to cause further trouble to kannadigas, we will form our own country out of our state...

ok, i might actually be writing only anti KN comments here, but i never said i am being fair... i am not hearing both sides because the tamils have nothing to say other than "please give us water" in a more authoritative tone as if it is their birthright... well come to think of it, how many birthrights have we already neglected and desecrated to consider this on a seperate plane?

the tamilnadu government to my knowledge is a game of tennis played between the 2 prominent political parties or rather their leaders... there is always the habit of throwing the blame-ball into the other's court... never have they focussed on anything of use to the people of TN, but only on bashing each other when they have the upper hand. this water issue has also been handled in the same way - the focus of the governemnt over the years has been only on cauvery... TN pleads everytime, KN refuses, the tribunal forces KN to release water, the people of KN are agitated by the sympathy created by the KN government, TN people are happy over the victory achieved by the TN government and all the attention focussed away from the apathy every year on and on and on and on... the water problem surprisingly is a comment that i remember being mentioned in a 1952 tamil movie...

a few months or even years back there were talks of distilling the water from the sea, rainwater harvesting, closing out the borewells, and many more schemes aimed at saving water in TN. but all have been just a drain for the money siphoned out by the government. nothing usful has come out of it. a simple request like RWH which is to be ensure the colective well being of the people when implemented well, does not bring any cooperation from anyone. the people dont want to invest that 500 rupees into this simple procedure, the authorities don't care if it done properly or whether it is just a pipe leading nowhere, the neighbours and other people of the state support the intelligence of the owner and copy his ingenuity... there are other rivers in tamilnadu that have either been polluted beyond use or exploited for their sands and rocks during the dry seasons when they should be could be cleaned and deepened, cachement areas created or expanded in such a way so as to minimise losses and use the water that gets drained to the seas during the monsoons as sewage... the bores have touched depths as much as 500 feet and to think that earlier wells were hardly 10-15 feet deep, not even 15 years ago, because i myself have seen such wells and i wont hesitate to say it in a court of law... and on a thought, maybe this water table erosion was the reason that farmers are not getting enough water and cauvery is taking the whole blame...

a google result yielded some more distressing news: there were 4-5 other rivers too facing similar charges... a sad state for the country... considering that the northern lands have a perennial supply of water, even they are not spared of the water problem. the shocker was when i read that cherapunji. one of the wettest places receiving very heavy rainfall is facing water shortages... brahmaputra sends huge quantities of water into the ocean every year, and this amount is aprroximately 3 times the maximum requirement of the 4 southern states... the plan to connect the major rivers of india has suffered the usual lethargy in understanding the importance... it might come up soon, but when the context is so expensive to even think about...

this water issue has been nothing short of been exploited at the cost of all the citizens by the politicians of india to maintain their places. scores of demonstrations and fasts, proposals, meetings all achieving no purpose but to give the right amount of media exposure to the politicians who never have the necessity for river water when they can get the mineral water free-for-life as bribes... the media too has been having a field day passing judgements; winner: TN, first runner up: Kerala, losers: KN and pondicherry... this is going to fuel the ego between the states and result in more violence... and this is crazy as i cannot even have a friendly jibe fearing diplomacy and racial harassment...

however though, not everything is lost... this time the goverments have also learnt some lessons. they have been shrewd enough in anticipating a probability of violence (which is almost as high as the probability of the sun rising in the east) and have posted police force to the tune of about 16000 personnel in bangalore alone... this could be because bangalore being the most IT savvy city of KN has people glued to their computer screens and so once the verdict is out they can immediately post remarks on the net and order weapons on e-bay and rush out of office to burn buses... so all the terrorist IT folks have been sent home before they can cause harm, and the other workers have been sent home too lest they demand overtime for working on a national holiday. yeah i forgot to mention, they removed the expensive volvos out of the roads first.

i am not in a position to suggest anything new to the people or their servants - the government and the political parties. however, it is time something long term was arrived at considering that india is made of indians and that we are taught to be proud of the unity in diversity since the time of our school textbooks... however it is not as easy as blocking the wind by closing the door... whatever is done needs to be done at a higher big picture level... as for example in the cauvery issue, it is not enough if the water is released now... the states have to arrive at better policies and regulations to manage the water and other natural resources effectively instead of having a team of consultants or a tribunal advising them to start using toilet paper.

for this, the people of india need to stop dreaming and wake up... and also think on their own, not just for their own.