Remember Audrey Hepburn's Eliza in "My Fair Lady"? Remember her irritation with "the rain in Spain/mainly fall(ing) on the plains?'' Currently, the South Indian, especially Tamil, plains would find this ditty absolutely replicating their tragic fate. It is raining hugely, almost like cloud bursts, there so much so that roads are now as good as rivulets.
And yet, this very Chennai, now soaked to the gills, strictly only a metaphor, please, d(r)ies for a drop of water in the summer! Needs summer water (t)rains! So there is a complex conundrum now a days, of course, due to climate change, whereby rain water is washed away in to the sea, while destroying the civic amenities along the way, and later in the summer, there is a huge potable water crisis!
Sure, everybody chooses to smirk at the Puneites' bathing habits for the summer water shortage. How about the Konkan area? Suffers the Chennai fate, too. Look at Kolhapur-Sangali drowning every monsoon, while the next door Mangaon/Jat/Waduj being dry as a bone!
What is the solution? Linking the rivers? How feasible is that? Huge costs, geographical complexity, inter-state problems, issues with the Center for funds, multiple are the issues!
Instead, compulsory rainwater harvesting could be a feasible solution? Would not it improve the water table? During the summer, desilting lakes, dams, rivers could help. Building small bund dams, digging small lakes and canals on the POP principle may help, right?
Multiple useful, meaningful, small but smart solutions is the need of the hour, right? Oh, yes, Aamir Khan's "Pani Foundation" tried and tested some of these techniques, too, right?What do you have to say?
Pratima@ Necessity is indeed the mother of inventions, says Einstein. Of water scarcity and flood management, too!
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