Watery tales...Do we deserve even this?

Is it a curse that we are born as Indians? Excuse me if I unnecessarily hurt anyone’s sentiments here…I could not stop myself but to write this. The issue is serious. It’s about water. So next time when anyone says “Water, water everywhere, not a drop to drink”…think again and take a note what the person is trying to tell. India has one of the biggest coastlines but still our country does not have enough potable drinking water. What makes me write this is a step from the Commonwealth Games organizing committee…they are ensuring water of the highest quality for the foreign athletes participating in Commonwealth Games. If only we citizens could have had access to it…I would have loved to drink water free of coliforms, iron, fluoride and arsenic. Who wouldn’t have for that matter?

I resort to aquaguard water filter for the supply of pure drinking water. A lot of my friends resort to packaged drinking water. This not only hurts the pocket of my friends but also expose them to lot of health hazards. Mind you when I say that the packaged drinking water exposes them to health hazards, I mean it. The spuriousness of packaged drinking water makes them so dangerous. Our country cannot provide us with safe and clean drinking water. We at least get our hands to packaged drinking water or filtered water. The poor folks, out there in the rural India, don’t even have access to potable drinking water. I pity them…they do not have electricity to filter water and our infrastructural constraints ensure that they do not have access to packaged drinking water.

We in urban India exploit the ground water. The water tables are at all time low these days. The rural India, which is about 65% of India, uses ground water for irrigation. But should it have really happened to India? The country which can boast of one of the longest coastlines receives considerable rainfall every year and is a leader in information technology can’t provide drinking water or it doesn’t want to provide? The question needs to be answered. Abu Dhabi, one of the driest places on the planet and still it has very less problems with water. It can’t boast of a long coastline, but has one of the largest water desalination units in the world. Hence even with so little rain it ensures clean drinking water for its citizens. Think of countries like the United States or France where people just take water in a glass from the tap in the kitchen and drink the same. The packaged water is actually very costly in most of the developed countries. In Japan a packaged drinking water bottle is actually so costly that people think twice before they buy one.

Let’s face it…we have to live with it…Can I call it apathy towards the citizens? Shouldn’t it be our right to get clean and safe drinking water to say the least…