water water everywhere

Recently I met an IIT gold medalist, back-from-the-U.S., middle aged maverick, passionately extolling about how he was going to seed rain clouds in the Indian hemisphere and how it would save our largely agrarian economy from the vagaries of the weather gods.

I spontaneously asked if he would also know how to stop the rains? He looked at me with disdain, as if a clumsy clod had trod upon his toe and he thought it to be his privilege, his duty, to slap some sense in to the clod.

Today, with half the country going under water, I wonder, if I was so off the mark With my self-esteem restored, I begin to wonder, what is it that I should bring to your notice today sir…

The dichotomy of farmers with too much and too little water just hours apart from one another makes me think, why is it that we cannot seem to ever get our act together? And, I am not talking about the overflowing gutters and drains, clogged roads, traffic congestion, motorists stuck under bridges and people falling to their death in uncovered manholes but in a country so dependent on the land, what stops us from doing effective water management?

No one can control where or when the rains come, of course, but surely we have the power to alleviate our water woes. Sumita Dasgupta of the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment says, "India has a lot of water, …Even in drought years, we get enough. We just don't manage it." P. Chengala Reddy of the Indian Farmers and Industry Alliance lobby group goes further: "There is absolutely nil long-term planning."

Why sir? What are we waiting for? You must be knowing that women in Cherrapunji, the wettest inhabited place on earth, for six months of the year lift empty oilcans on their backs and trek a kilometer to a stream to fetch water, and then, some may not get enough!

As long ago as 1995, the then World Bank vice president Ismael Serageldin predicted: "If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water."

Nevertheless, I am sure you have more pressing issues at hand. Especially when the 40 crore helium balloon built for the games might be washed away by the rains and leakages in the stadia, or shall I say our system, may have thousands of crore flowing down the drain.

So for now, lets take a rain check and put the water issue, shall we say in a typical government style, 'under consideration'.