As India celebrates her 63rd Independence Day on Saturday, the country, which boasts of one billion head count, still lacks the basic needs for people like Water, Power, Food etc. Since Water plays a major role in linking most of the basic amenities a man needs, due to short-sightedness of our successive governments, political unsteadiness, lack of political will to nationalize all major rivers and excessive usage of underground water many states are reeling under acute water shortage.
The words of famous Tamil patriotic poet Subramanya Bharati who once said, "Irrigate central land with rain water getting wasted in Bay of Bangal" are still relevant in the present day context. But who bothers? We conveniently forgot Bharati and his golden words too.
On one side, some states have faced flood situation in the months of May and June while other states cry for a drop of rain water. The funny side of the story is that while one part of Gujarat and Maharashtra had witnessed worst flood in the month of July, people from the respective states had to stand in queues for hours for a bucket-full of water.
The situation is not all the very different in states like Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Punjab and Haryana.
While the Centre has decided to declare the 2009-10 seasonal year as drought-hit year, the question which comes to the mind of a common man is, what has happened to the excessive water which made people suffer in states like Maharashtra, Assam, Gujarat, et al and why these water had not been used to irrigate the fields and quench the thirst of people in the respective states?
When Chief Ministers are busy in opening up statues, they hardly find time to think about the problems of the common man. Take for example Uttar Pradesh. Chief Minister Mahawati has decided to declare more than half of the districts of UP as drought hit and asked the centre a draught relief millions of rupees. Now many states will follow the suit and centre too will dutifully dispatch the relief funds from its central pool, which is of course tax payers’ money.
Instead of finding a long lasting solution to the perennial problems like floods and drought, the governments give relief materials and money to the affected people year after year. All most every year parts of Tamil Nadu, face flood situation during the months of November and December. Every time the government provides essential commodities to the poor and also money to the worst hit families. Once the water recedes people would start colonizing the same area. No arrangements had been made to displace them or take measures to prevent flooding in a particular area year after year.
Had they spent the money to strengthen the infrastructure like construction of storage dams, diverting water which was going waste to the sea to the irrigating fields and generate more hydro-electric power plants near the dam sites etc, life wouldn’t have been difficult for the people.
Still the time is not lost. We shall make this happen in five years time provided the government amend rules to interconnect all major rivers in the country, speedy disposal of all water-related disputes pending in the designated courts across the country, make an expert panel comprising of intellectuals of respective fields to over see the equal water distribution to various terrains from North to South and West to East part of the country. Am I expecting too much folks?
No comments:
Post a Comment