A man living (in chawls) in Mumbai
pays Rs.700/- a month for 10 minutes
of water to a person, who owns a
tap, two streets away. These are
illegal water connections, but for
a proper water connection, one has
to pay Rs. 3lakh to Rs. 4lakh.
For the richer classes it doesn’t
matter. They run a shower all day,
while half a mile away, people are
standing in queue holding buckets
for two hours to get half a bucket
of water.
There are certain things that you
can say based on your ability. If
you work hard, you earn more money,
you can buy expensive car, travel
in 1st class and own a big house.
However air, water and basic food
are essential for living, they cannot
be priced.
The idea of getting swimming pool
recharged in your house from the
near by agricultural areas is very
wrong.
We have to educate everyone, the
privilege and the under privileged
that water is meant for communities
but not an individual. We have to
teach them that their own future
generation will pay the cost. By
their collective activity they are
depriving their kids and grand kids
of water.
It is now the turn of urban areas
to face the music, because agriculture
areas are already destroyed. With
the depletion of water level in
agricultural areas, agriculture
cannot support people, so the community
gets disrupted. This disrupted community
moves to the city. For example,
Udaipur is running out of water.
So they are taking water from the
farming areas around 20km away.
They are bringing pipes from the
catchment areas. The farmers are
agitating as their water is being
used up. As the water dries up there,
they will move in to the city as
the water is being moved in to the
city.
Later even the city will run out
of water. So we are heading to very
horrific position, where people
will be at war with each other for
water.
A person staying in a building with
enough water supply will definitely
get attacked by other water-deprived
people. We can stay with out food
for three days, but by the end of
three days we are so weak that we
can’t fight. You will go and
kill a person, if you don’t
get water for at least half a day.
We have to understand the social
unrest that will take place due
to scarcity of water.
All the things like stock exchange,
world economy going down, who will
win in elections is not that important
as compared to the fact that we
are running out of water.
