Published in Dwarka Express on 2.9.23

Namakkal district in Tamil Nadu has become the second-best district in India in water management according to India’s Jal Sakthi Ministry for the year 2022. The district has 5 municipalities, 19 town Panchayats and 322 village Panchayats had geared up to solve the acute water crisis. A holistic approach was followed by the administration involving communities to face the crisis and they adopted rain water harvesting, percolation tanks, check dams across rivers and rivulets, village ponds, trenches and artificial recharge structures and what not. The result was that the district became water surplus. A few STPs were provided as part of Tamil Nadu Govt’s Nadanthai vaazhi Cauvery scheme. Some encroachments were removed simultaneously

Not a big deal, if alone the powers that be, make a comprehensive plan of action and it becomes a reality when people become partners. Today rainwater harvesting has become mandatory in multi storied complexes, though we often come across the concern vociferously expressed by residents that the RWH units are either defunct or defective. Many a time the connecting tubes from terrace are clogged or filled with muck and the RWAs find it difficult to incur additional cost in revamping the system or repairing the filter media as it involves capital cost.

Under this backdrop, it becomes necessary to resort to natural rainwater harvesting systems in the form of tanks, ponds and reservoirs which can cater to the summer needs in addition to recharging the ground water. There is a dire need to save all lakes and water bodies which should be desilted. Allocation of funds for dredging, de-weeding and desilting are essential to save the natural waterbodies. Strom water drains must not be encroached and any violation needs to be firmly dealt with.

Coming to Bangalore, Kempe Gowda, the visionary and architect of Bangalore who lived in 16^th Century envisaged that water is needed in the city if his dreams are to come true, and he built number of tanks and reservoirs during his short span of 59 years. These tanks were slowly destroyed or disappeared from the google maps. We are searching for water in moon and India’s Chandrayan is known to have traced a few evidences of water. But, the day to bring water from Moon or Mars is a remote possibility though, it can’t be ruled out. But it may not be a surprise when we hear a news that some alien, extra-terrestrial or an UFO land in plant Earth in search for water. Perhaps they would report in their planet that there is evidence of water in Earth!

Precisely we are running out of water as well as time!