The Hindu : Call for effective methods to augment water resources

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 23, 2003

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Call for effective methods to augment water resources

By Our Special Correspondent

Eminent agricultural scientist M.S. Swaminathan (extreme right) releasing the India Book of the Year 2004 brought out by The Hindu and the Encyclopaedia Britannica (India) Private Limited. The Indian Newspaper Society president, M.P. Veerendrakumar, receives the first copy of the book as N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, looks on. — Photo: N. Sridharan.

CHENNAI DEC. 22. Water will be the key constraint in the future, not only at the national level, but also for human survival, eminent agricultural scientist, M.S. Swaminathan, said here today.

The need of the hour was augmentation of the water resources and the methods that needed serious consideration included the inter-basin transfer of water and working out "a fairly cost effective method of desalination of sea water." But the inter-basin transfer required political consensus — agreement among parties across the spectrum — he said in his keynote address after handing over the first copy of `India Book of the Year 2004,' brought out by The Hindu and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The Press Trust of India chairman and Indian Newspaper Society president, M.P.Veerendra Kumar, received the first copy.

It was also important to think about curtailing water demand. "We only talk about augmentation," he said and added that techniques such as bio-remediation, to remove arsenic poisoning in water, were equally important.

Dr. Swaminathan, who is also the president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, said it was appropriate that the year book had a special focus on issues relating to water security and its availability. He pointed out that India had 30 per cent of the world's farm animal population; 17 per cent of humans, four per cent land and about two per cent water. "How long can you go on exceeding the carrying capacity of the ecosystem," he asked and said that all these had been highlighted in the publication. The partnership between The Hindu and the Encyclopaedia Britannica was "very powerful" and should grow, he said.

Mr.Veerendra Kumar said people should get water as a matter of right and it should not be marketed as a commodity. One of the conditions laid down by the multilateral lending institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank, before lending, was that water should be treated as a commodity and priced and sold. State Governments were following these diktats, he said and cited Kerala, Chhattisgarh and New Delhi as examples. In the case of Kerala, he said a civil servant had placed an advertisement in the Washington Post, paying Rs. 21 lakhs. The advertisement was for selling the waters of Malampuzha, the major drinking water source in Palakkad district. When he confronted the administration, officials merely said that they were not aware of this privatisation move at all. Similarly, again in Palakkad district, the two cola multinationals were extracting about half a million litres of water a day for their operations. Kerala had very little ground water reserves (14 TMC) and it could not afford this type of exploitation in the name of development. "In the name of globalisation we cannot allow anything and everything," he added.

Valuable addition

The Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, N. Ram, said that a compendium of this nature sought to be as broad in its sweep and coverage as possible without claiming to be all encompassing. It was a valuable addition to the existing literature and had fact-based review articles, data sets on India and the world, national and international events, photographs and an interesting feature, `news-in-context.'

"The year book is qualitatively different from some other comparable publications. As we have moved from the first to the third edition, I can claim without being excessively modest that there has been a steady improvement in the editorial content in the Year Book and its production values. The first is largely the work of The Hindu and the second, that of the Encyclopaedia Britannica," he said. The Executive Editor, The Hindu Businessline, K.Venugopal, thanked Dr.Swaminathan, Mr.Veerendra Kumar and the teams from The Hindu and the Encyclopaedia Britannica for their efforts.

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