Water

June 5th was World Environment day. We celeberated it on June 3rd at Philips. One Dr. Rajeev Gowda was invited as Chief Guest on that day to speak on Green Cities. He is a Prof at IIM Bangalore and a Ph.D from Wharton. He's also a budding politician - a congress party member.

He made a very interesting point during his speech. India certainly missed the industrial revolution. But when it happened in England, London went through exactly the same mess as Bangalore is goinf through today. Bangalore's the spear head of the IT revolution. This en-masse migration to the city, unscruplus expansion and rotten politics is killing the place defintely. But, there might be hope! London went through the same kind of mess - pollution, mass migration and poor infra-structure.

Very near home, Delhi's been doing pretty well. Thanks primarily to the supremem court. CNG buses and autos - half the pollutants are off. Bring in a mass rapid transit system, people start discovering each other! Hopefully, Bangalore may be saved before it drowns.

The real danger is in fact Water. We know the famous saying that the future wars will be fought over water. We know from the past the way Tamil Nadu and Karnataka fight over the Kaveri. The same story is repeated in Punjab and Haryana for the Yamuna waters. Across the border, Punjab and Sindh fight like dogs for the water of the Indus.

Traditionally, south Karnataka had a very good system of water conservation through keres. Whether it the good looking Ulsoor kere pretty much in the heart of the city, the Lalbagh kere - south karnataka has a system of channels where in the overflow from one tank goes into the next and thus also recharges the ground water. We don't have any major rivers in South Karnataka. The Kaveri is a good 100Km from Bangalore. This great river also is in the record books for being the most utilized river on earth.

With these keres slowly disappearing - some dried up, some lost to utter negligence and hyacinth, lots lost to so called development of layouts. Jayanagar T Block today stands on a former lake. So the Majestic bus stand. In my lifetime, I've seen the disappearance of a lake in Pondicherry. The lovely greenary on the way to school, suddenly became a VVP Nagar one day!!

What is the way ahead now? Compulsory rain water harvesting? As usual, the biggest problem is : how do you enforce it? The crazy floods that happen after every rain are a direct result of the blocking of the natural channels of water flow. Somehow, we need to restore the old dys of water conservation all over south karnataka. It was a sad state when I saw Arsikere completely dry on the way back from Kemmanagundi. So are numeruos lakes in Tumkur district.

Okay - that's the bleak picture. Some kind of time travel - we should see the glorious past. We love our glorious past don't we? All of us Indians .. Do we have that glorious a future? May be the pollution and public transport will be taken care. But, Water will be the most important decider!