A parched people
|
Cries of joy rent the air. The water lorry has been spotted ... GOUTAM GHOSH on life in Chennai.
|
GOUTAM GHOSH
THE proverbial blue moon may seem more tangible than pipeline water in Chennai now. With the water table receding exponentially (more residents are sinking bore wells now than ever before), a crisis is likely to cripple life in this city soon. Rains have failed. Had it not, the water table would still not have been recharged to the extent the Government had expected after making rainwater harvesting mandatory. Many had found ingenious ways to cover up their non-compliance of the directive.
Forget the future; forget the past; just focus on the present. Along an `S'-shaped service road in Anna Nagar, cries of joy rent the air as soon as the lorry carrying two huge PVC tanks is sighted. The information races from mouth to mouth: a promise of reinfusing life into desiccated human beings. Colourful pots, jerry cans and drums either form clusters at the gate or the boundary walls of each house. These represent the parched residents who have been waiting long for the tanker before turning in for a nap.
Tankers follow no schedule and are the masters of the situation.
The lorry lurches from one side of the road to the other, stops at each gate and allows people to take their fill. It suddenly reverses gear and goes out of sight. A murmur of disappointment ripples through the groups waiting at their gates. Everyone focusses on the edge of the wall and the cluster of trees that hide the huge PVC tanks riding piggyback on the truck.
After nearly half an hour, the lorry rolls out of hiding, belching charcoal-black smoke. At some other place some other time before some other group, the lorry would have been asked to switch off its engine to spare the air of its harmful fumes. But along the `S'-shaped service road, what everyone waits for is the tanker to make its way somehow at least up to their gate. Neither the other residents along the street nor the black smoke matters.
It is a curious sight as huge PVC drums appear from bungalows and take a commanding position among lesser mortals — the multicoloured buckets and pots from the same house. People from the bungalow join hands with live-in maids to form a chain to pass vessels of water from hand to hand — to fill up some chamber or sump, and to come back for more before the kind young men managing the distribution realise that there is more water going into the house than the number of pots can justify. Legal tenders silence the murmur of protest from the kind, young men.
Meanwhile the others wait patiently, watching the lorry eagerly, and hoping it would have enough water left for them when it parks at their house.
At the next stop, the residents of a complex rush to the two outlet pipes from the PVC tanks that have two-wheeler rubber tubes as extensions. Pots are shoved in to trap the water that is filling up a vessel below. None screech in protest. There may have been a subtle confidence that there is enough water for all in the complex. Women play a sterling role as they rush to their residence with pots or buckets of water, fill up some mysterious receptacle (probably an inflatable sump), and return for more.
The kind, young men who pinch the tubes are flustered by the situation where an enterprising few seem to toss all decorum to the winds and return for more and more and more. Some down the street return to shove their pots under the hose even after the tanker lorry has given them enough.
The limited capacity PVC tanks are unable to meet the insatiable demand of a few, and the stock runs out. Keeping track of the supply through the human chain shows that more than three houses had cornered more than 1,000 litres each, given the number of buckets and larger vessels pressed into "Operation H{-2}O", and the effective number that reaches the house.
There is at least one family that does not get water: the typical tail-end syndrome. The result of the unfortunate deprivation is composure. A woman of the house unwinds herself by seeking refuge in a volley of abuse aimed at the "mindless fools who distribute the water". One cannot imagine such crisp vituperation disgorging from the lips of a seemingly unflappable person. There are threats of "having the license cancelled" and more. The lucky lot are indifferent. They are too busy ferrying the precious fluid to their homes to placate the woman. Not a single bucket of water is offered by anyone to the hapless woman.
The woman's fury does not deter the kind, young men from insisting on payment from each family. They left only after each family pays them Rs.5 to Rs.10. They have already collected larger TIPS at their earlier stops.
The scene is repeated some hours later in Perambur, North Chennai, where an enthusiastic few corner more water than they need while some others unable to elbow their way in are left carrying empty pots home.
"The average need for water is about 80 litres per capita per day (lpcd) in India, excluding what is used for drinking and cooking. Many use jerry cans of mineral water for this. Since not every house has Western closets — the guzzlers of water — a family of five can at most need 400 litres per day or 800 litres for two days. So 1,000 litres probably includes an insurance cover in case potable water is not supplied after two days. If some residents do not get water because of the selfishness of a few, the system of distribution should be streamlined," said a Metrowater source.
One way to ensure a more equitable availability of potable water, no matter which city or town it might be, would be to issue a family card showing the names of family members. The amount of water supplied to a family should depend on this card. In almost all water-starved metropolises and large towns, there is internal migration of close relations and friends from water-starved zones to areas more blessed. This migration, however temporary, tends to upset the availability of water for genuine residents — a problem that can be solved by issuing family identity cards. The distribution may take some more time but it will guarantee that each family gets the water it is entitled to, instead of its share being spirited away by others.
The global prospect is frightening at best. "Although 6.3 billion people on Earth today use only about 54 per cent of the runoff ... each year, those figures are expected to rise to 7.8 billion and 70 per cent, respectively by 2025" (Jen Joynt and Marshall T. Poe, Water Conditioning and Purification, September 2003).
If the present trends are any indication, a superpower of the future will be defined by its command of the Earth's fresh water resources than the number of nuclear warheads in its arsenal. The fallacious "diamond-water paradox" which every undergraduate economics student learns today may need to be rewritten in the not-so-distant future as "water-diamond parity in value".
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
