Need for a National Water Policy

                                                                                    *Saumitra Mohan

            The Rain God has been playing pricey for sometime in this country. All the skyward prayers and purported rain-invoking rituals seem to have been in vain with the rainfall still remaining elusive and erratic in many parts of India. The erratic and delayed onset of rains is said to have negatively impacted agriculture in this country. With the water crisis looming large on the horizon, the subject experts and scribes are seemingly having a field-day diagnosing the problem and related issues, while also prescribing endless solutions.

            This is where the nub lies. We have all known the problem and solutions for long. But when it comes to acting on the sundry recommendations, everyone everywhere falls short and comes a cropper. And this has somewhere to do with the way we do our politics today. Our decision-making is beholden to the generosity of the political class who, more often than not, shrink from taking right decisions while playing to the gallery of the voters. It is this attitude and the emergent situation which have been playing havoc with the way we deal with every issue in this country including water.

            The almost ‘free water’, ‘No User Charge’ or ‘free electricity’ policy has somehow cost us dearly, with the same resulting in the extensive and mindless use of ground water by all the stakeholders, almost verging on the criminal. The stakeholders including agriculturalists, industrialists or the hoi polloi see no merit in water conservation by way of a prudent and discrete consumption of the same. However, the time has definitely come for all of us to soak in all the available water wisdom by doing a rethink on our water consumption patterns. 

            Today, the 18% of the global population living in India has access to only 4% of its usable water, with 163 million Indians lacking access to safe potable water. The National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) in its recent report has painted a very grim picture of India’s water scenario. As per a report shared by the NITI Aayog, 22 Indian cities including New Delhi shall run out of water by 2020. One could only imagine the ensuing chaos and mayhem as a result thereof unless we start bracing ourselves for the eventuality in right earnest immediately.

            As we know, 21% of our diseases are water-borne and with no access to safe drinking water, almost 200000 Indians reportedly die every year because they don’t have access to safe drinking water. It is suggested that a humongous 600 million Indians face ‘high to extreme’ water stress in the country. The situation is only going to aggravate in times to come. Thus, we are virtually sitting on a ticking time-bomb in the form of a potential health emergency waiting to unfold. Poor state regulation and gross mismanagement over the years by our water managers have today resulted in our rivers and water systems being heavily contaminated by the presence of solid waste therein. The high coli-form content at many stretches of these water systems make the same unusable and unfit for human consumption.

            It is really painful to note that notwithstanding 70 years of independence, India has seen the safe piped drinking water reaching only 70 percent of urban and 19 percent of rural households in this country. It is really laudable though that the Government has finally given piped water supply its deserved attention by not only committing to reach the same to all the rural households in five years by way of launching a ‘Nal Se Jal’ (Water from Tap) scheme, but also creating a dedicated Ministry in the form of ‘Jal Shakti Mantralaya’ for a more holistic and coordinated approach to India’s water problem.

            A better convergence of the same with national programmes like ‘Namami Gange’, ‘Swacch Bharat Abhiyan’ and similar state government initiatives could pay rich dividends to ensure better policy outcomes, thereby addressing the problem of inegalitarian access to water resources in certain parts of India. If we don’t wake up in time to come out with a geographically-customised water policy, our dreams of becoming a developed country or a ‘superpower’ is sure to be dashed against our water woes, not to speak of our health and food security being severely compromised.

            Be it a sound watershed management, building of smaller check-dams rather than big-ticket behemoths, construction of more percolation tanks linked to main service tanks, popularising dedicated ‘on-farm tanks and ponds’ for agricultural purposes, better networking and deepening of our canal systems, imposing a population-specific progressive user charge, a regional river-linking plan to be gradually upgraded into a full-fledged national river-linking project, incentivising water harvesting and water conservation behaviour, encouraging more and more afforestation, renovating and redoing our traditional water systems while creating more water storage capacities for better recharging of our groundwater aquifers are some of the solutions that the Government needs to consider with more gravitas than has been done so far.

            The required policy and regulatory support should be immediately in place. It is felt that all the municipal and PRI bodies should hugely incentivise and make it mandatory for all the private and public buildings to have a ‘roof-top water harvesting structure’ as far as practicable, while also recycling most of the water we use to make the same usable for different purposes including drinking. The regulatory machinery must ensure zero discharge of industrial, household and municipal waste into our rivers and water systems, thereby not only improving the quality of water, but also saving the entire aquatic ecosystem therein.

            We also need to do a rethink on our cropping patterns. By traditionally cultivating water-intensive crops like rice, sugarcane, soybean, wheat and cotton, we have been unwittingly depleting our water resources. The export of such crops actually means indirectly exporting water to the recipient countries. We must selectively switch from the more water-intensive crops to the more water-efficient crops like pulses, oilseeds and other cash crops which give better returns on the investment of all kinds of resources including water, labour and capital.

            According to the Central Water Commission, India receives 4000 billion cubic metres of rains, while it requires only 3000 billion cubic metres of waters for its populace as of now. However, as per the recent Composite Water Management Index Report by the NITI Aayog, country’s water demand is projected to be twice the available supply by 2030. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), an individual requires 25 litres of water daily for meeting one’s basic needs for hygiene and foods.

            While India’s per capita average water use is much more than this as of now, the same is going to be severely compromised in near future if we don’t sit up and take corrective measures instantaneously. And while we do all this, we must raise the general awareness among all sets of stakeholders regarding the looming water crisis and the related imperative to conserve the same. We urgently require the framing of a National Water Policy today to nudge every stakeholder to imbibe a more responsible water ethos than we have cared so far. One only hopes that with an intent and determined Government leadership, all stakeholders could come together for taking the water problem bull by its horns.

Enriching Our Eternal Consciousness

            The proliferation of a mindboggling array of ‘Baba’ and ‘Guru’ within and without the length and breadth of this country adumbrate to the increasing alienation in human life which keeps multiplying with increasing complexities of our day-to-day life. The growing alienation and estrangement are actually more from the carnal and material world, thereby pushing people in search of the reason and relevance of our daily struggles to make ends meet.

            This often pushes people towards the supposedly better-endowed spiritual savants to make the ‘head and tail’ of the generally inscrutable turn of events in their life. The people would rather make their life more meaningful than remaining stuck in the mundane mumbo-jumbo. After attaining and enjoying the basic comforts and pleasures of human life, they long to stretch themselves further to explore the real purpose behind a repetitively boring and unexciting life, often trapped in a routine rut and rat race.

            We the humans are often stuck in a habitual chase of false gratifications. We seldom realise that the pleasure we seek and achieve turn out to be very short-lived after the same is achieved and we again begin the same race in search of another holy grail of happiness and contentment, shifting our goalpost further. These attainments and achievements could be aiming for the possession of physical objects or non-physical and amorphous chimaera like cherished pride, ethos or values.

            It is the latter which is more trouble and tricky than the former. Our fight and struggle for championing and securing a set of ethos and moral values often bring us more pain than pleasure, thereby compromising the very quality of our life. Besides, we know very well that these ethos and values are spatio-temporal, changing with space and time.

            Many of the values, ethos, mores traditions and customs which were very sacrosanct and worth fighting for in the distant past have suddenly become outdated and passé today in one part of the world while they still remain valuable in other parts. ‘slavery’, ‘Sati’, ‘untouchability’ and prohibition on widow remarriage’ were parts of Indian culture at one of Indian history and have become unthinkable in modern India.

            The human society has multiple codes and ways of establishing human and marital relationships in different parts of the world. Whatever is profane in one part is acceptable and permissible in other part of the world. An incestuous relationship in one part of the world appears perfectly normal in other part. So the human society has itself not evolved a consensus about the values and ethos to structure its social and communal life.

            And why not, these values and ethos develop and evolve in keeping with the variable circumstances and conditions specific to a people or its geography. The cultural diversity and differences as visible in human society across the world makes our life really interesting and attractive. The problem arises when we unnecessarily fight for the supposed superiority and one-upmanship of one’s own culture.

            It would be more than advisable for us to accept the beautiful variety in our life. We must learn to respect the ‘salad bowl’ nature of human life unless and until the following of one’s culture starts interfering and conflicting with the enjoyment of cultural rights of others, while simultaneously trying to evolve common societal ethos. The human society and consciousness won’t evolve and enrich itself unless and until we learn to simultaneously evolve a sense of discrimination for respecting the cultural values and ethos of others.

            Let the superiority, if at all required, of cultural values and ideas be decided through time, practice and individual choice rather than trying to impose one set of values over others, often at the expense or to the exclusion of others. Some of us who lack a healthy sense of discrimination, an ability to tell chaff from the grain, not only live in the darkness of ignorance but also suffer endless miseries. Like Don Quixote tilting at the windmills, their life gets wasted in fighting an imaginary battle with imaginary enemies without getting any time for indulging and exploring their lives further to add values to their eternal consciousness.

            Most of us live through our lives like zombies, without ever pausing to understand the reason and rationale behind the ‘whys and wherefores’ of human life. We, thus, waste a beautiful opportunity afforded by the Almighty to improve and enrich our eternal consciousness. If we walk carelessly, we shall surely bump against a stone or get knocked down by an obstacle. We are actually repeatedly engaging in behaviour which hurt ourselves no end.

            But the problem is we have all been doing this unknowingly without our ever realising the same. We must exercise better discrimination and discretion in our quotidian day-to-day lives to use the same as our permanent guide in all our thoughts and actions, to know the value or relevance of one’s vocation or avocation, to know what is it which we are doing or going to do is of permanent value to our eternal consciousness rather than haggling over trinkets and trivia of carnal existence.

            Our problem is that despite often knowing and comprehending the difference between the right and the wrong, we still choose the latter. We must not forget the golden advice enshrined in the ‘Bible’ saying, ‘Don’t do unto others what you don’t want to be done unto you’. More often than not, we try to get even with someone who has hurt or humiliated us, thereby bringing us to their level and eliminating the difference between them and us.

            We must remember that as long as we are trying to get even with others, we can never get ahead of them. Let’s learn the right lessons from the wrong people rather than doing the other way round, as we invariably do. By gloating over the hurt and pain of others we dislike, we are actually debasing ourselves and devaluing our eternal consciousness. If we are always engaged in the rat-race for keeping up with the Joneses, we can never realise the eternal peace and satisfaction as would afford us an opportunity for self-exploration.

            It is only when we look beyond our personal comforts and selfish desires by denying and depriving ourselves the mundane pleasures that we enrich ourselves, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Only when we raise our consciousness and individuality beyond the routine and ordinary, we become extraordinary and begin to realise the intoxicating power of altruism and doing good to others. The ensuing empowerment from evolving perfection and upliftment of our being is nothing less than heavenly bliss.

            Perfection means a mental and spiritual state when all our desires and senses are under our control and we are the absolute master of our ‘Ego’ masquerading as our ‘Self’. It is our false Self as Ego which keeps blurring our vision and constricts our understanding of our real eternal ‘Self’, unsullied and untouched by the hydra-headed clutches of the selfish senses. We may not have control over how someone behaves and treats us, but we definitely can choose to decide as to how should we respond and react to an external stimulus coming in the form of a positive or negative overture. Our free will should be harnessed and prepared well enough to be our true pathfinder.

            Remember, the sun shines over all of us equally without any discrimination. It is completely up to us to feel the pleasing, soothing and life-giving stellar rays. If we shut ourselves in dark corners or close our eyes, we shall never feel and savour the life-giving divine bounties. Similarly, the divine grace is equally available to all of us; it is up to us to explore and feel the same. Only those near fire can feel the heat, not those away from it.

            We should find time and ways to feel the divine and glorious presence of the Almighty all around us. All our high positions and possessions keep us tied to the plane of mortals like millstones round our neck. It is advisable that even while we attend to our duties and responsibilities in the material world, we still find time to explore the deeper recesses of our sublime and eternal ‘Self’. That’s why, all the kings and rulers of ancient India were saints or saintly, being repository of all the uplifting human virtues and values, almost like Plato’s Philosopher King. Some of the examples would include Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Mahavira and King Janaka.

            As has been duly proven, our thoughts, being energy vibrations in motion, are very powerful. We are all children of our thoughts. We become what we think. If we think of worldly or material pleasure, we shall attain them. If we desire permanent, unchanging bliss, we shall get the same. Electricity does not have a name, but appliances do even though it is electricity which animates them all. Similarly, the soul does not have a fixed name or identity but the physical bodies definitely have.

            While in body, the soul takes a name, acquires multiple identities and remains entangled in them. After death, the soul goes back to being a possibility of numerous lives as part of unmerged cosmic consciousness. The fact is that we are always attached to the present in spite of the fact that it shall soon become the past. But we still continue doing all wrongs due to our affection and attachment to an elusive present, while ignoring our eternally present spiritual ‘Self’ or consciousness. We must not spoil and starve our eternal consciousness for the false nourishment of the mortal and impermanent physical forms.