Tuesday 9 October 2012

Ecological Crisis is here

It is not economic crisis or political crisis that threatens India's future, it is ecological crisis that is leading us to disaster. There is water scarcity, and different states are fighting over water rights. When the Supreme Court has given orders to release water from dam(in Karnataka) to an adjacent state(Tamil Nadu) which has no rivers and water problem, it is not carried out. On Monday, water was stopped against orders. States claim to be little republics on their own as if the Indian Union means nothing to them.
The rivers are the real life lines of India. Human settlements formed where there was supply of water--on river banks. The population of the settlement indicated the supply of water in the lakes or rivers nearby. Wells were dug and small villages or hamlets grew around them. The steady flow of water sustained the people there. And people took only the water which they needed and thus kept the flow of the river in a steady speed. But with greater industrialisation, we could no longer be content; and we reduced the flow of the river--stagnating it in dams, storing for agriculture and used it for generating electricity. Drainage system of mainland India cannot sustain a large population.Water from the perennial rivers and streams cannot supply water for all year round. Now rivers are reduced to sewage drains. Water Pollution Control Board was established in 1974, it can do nothing to control pollution for it has no power. River cleaning projects are given crores and crores of Rupees but no river has been cleaned and restored. Many rivers have completely dried up(like Tamiraparani) and have disappeared altogether. Along with the river, the legends--essence of our culture, also disappears. Rivers are encroached upon. Sand is mined and taken away for construction activities.
 Water policies do not matter anymore, it is people's will that is a hurdle to progress. Nobody allows water to be given to a neighbouring state which has dried up rivers.Competitive rights are unsustainable; people are going against the law of the land to evade sharing water rights. There is need to change the mindsets of the engineers--we should store the water in the ground water table itself and take it when needed. Dams and en catchments do not work out on the long run.Projects for generating electricity do not turn out well as they were planned to be They produce 20% of the capacity they were meant to produce. When the flow is gone, then how will electricity be produced? Yamuna's 22 km(which is 2% of it total length) stretch accounts for 70% of pollution in it. What regulatory measure can take to stop this pollution?Sewage treatment plants do not work, as there are no regulatory bodies to control and regulate its activities. To save rivers, we have to keep it flowing. So we do not have living rivers(only legends of rivers last).We live in the land of dying rivers where desertification has begun. Originally we had 14 major rivers, 44 medium size rivers and 55 minor rivers--we were once a country full of rivers. Our civilisation took root in their banks.Now where will we go without water in our rivers?

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