Better late than never

This year’s monsoon has dealt a double blow by delayed arrival and considerably less rainfall than normal, which is determined on the basis of an 80-year average. While the prospect of both cities and villages facing waterless days during the months ahead before next year’s monsoon arrives has all signs of becoming a grave reality, the accusing finger is pointed towards successive Governments for creating the crisis situation by not regulating many all-too-familiar acts such as over-mining river-beds for sand, chopping full-grown trees that had stood as sentinels inviting rain-bearing clouds to pour copiously, unabated tapping of sub-soil water by constructing borewells and last and most importantly presiding over the disappearance of all types of water-bodies namely lakes, tanks, ponds and open well in their thousands. The law-makers, lost most of the time in their people-unfriendly pursuits, which don’t need elaboration, have brazenly sidelined the urgent actions not to let the crisis on water front to worsen further.

Elder citizens of Mysuru, then Mysore, may recollect the episode of the then Minister for Agriculture ordering release of water from Krishna Raja Sagar Reservoir in 1950 to the extent of leaving the dam-site bone dry in the wake of failed monsoon. However, the Rain God ultimately smiled to the delight of the region’s people. But, the lesson that episode revealed in no uncertain terms, namely sensible and pragmatic management of water resources, was never learnt.

Many rallies are taking place in Mysuru and Bengaluru by various outfits calling upon people to be aware of the imperative in consuming water for meeting only essential needs in times of deficient availability of the nature’s gift. Sections of the population for whom frugal use of water is a habit from birth don’t need to be freshly made aware of the importance of conserving water. But, their presence in the population is a dismal fraction in the total headcount. The voluntary outfits may be in for a shock of their lifetime as even residents in urban space are for exceeding the norm of per person daily requirement of water for drinking, cooking, bathing and washing, not to forget flushing the commodes fixed at 160 litres, may be much less.

In the backdrop of the grim prospect of waterless days for people in more than half the area of the State, the many measures announced by the authorities to address the crisis, particularly restoring the sub-soil stock of water by rejuvenating the lakes, are being taken too late. However, it is better late than never, as the idiom goes. Remorse or regret doesn’t meet the bill.