
India prays for rain as water wars break out - chaostheory
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/12/india-water-supply-bhopal
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sridharvembu
This is a quote from the article: "India's vast farming economy is on the
verge of crisis. The lack of rain has hit northern areas most, but even in
Mumbai, which has experienced heavy rainfall and flooding, authorities were
forced to cut the water supply by 30% last week as levels in the lakes serving
the city ran perilously low."

Heavy rainfall and flooding followed by severe drought. This is a standard
pattern across India, not just in Mumbai. Indian villages always have had
water storage ponds - in fact most Hindu temples have a pond attached to them,
which serves to recharge the ground water level in the whole village.

What happened in the last 40+ years is a complete dismantling of traditional
village governance, initially replaced with State-government appointed
government bureaucrats (almost all of whom didn't reside in the village they
were supposed to administer and rarely even visited it) and then much later,
an elected village body that has few real powers, and still answers to a
State-appointed bureaucrat.

It was all done with the best of intentions. But it ended up centralizing
rural administration - destroying the village in order to save it. Simple
tasks as desilting the water storage ponds were neglected, and eventually many
of those ponds were encroached upon. This is true everywhere in India, in
major cities as well as small villages.

So it is not simply just nature that is the problem here.

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miked
The article's not being told something about the real failure here, whatever
that may be. India has monsoons, and anyplace with dependable monsoons and
enough land to build reservoirs should never run out of water.

BTW, if you've never experienced a monsoon, I can't recommend it enough. Most
westerners try to travel in the dry season. That's understandable, but they're
missing out on one of the great wonders of the world. It's just unbelievable
how much water the atmosphere can hold and how fast it can get rid of it.

~~~
sridharvembu
India built a vast distributed system of small reservoirs - also known as
village ponds or temple ponds. The fact that the rural system of governance
was dismantled (and they realized the problem, and tried to reassemble it in a
pale imitation) led to the neglect of these ponds, among other issues.

~~~
miked
Thanks. I expected something like that. Local people have a strong incentive
to make sure a local pond works. The people who run a centralized government
have an incentive -- mostly their own thirst for power over others -- to make
sure they control it, and little incentive to make sure it works.

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sgoraya
Water is the very reason of the Kashmir issue between Pakistan and India and
why they will keep fighting over it - land has very little to do with it, its
all about the water and who controls the flow.

I visited the Himalayan region just about this time last year and the glaciers
have melted away at a very alarming rate. Our driver, who's been taking
tourists to the region for over 30 years told us that he has never seen the
snow pack and glaciers gone at such elevations. His taxi driver estimation was
50% less snow pack over the last 3-4 years.

~~~
ajju
Geopolitically, water may be important, but it is unlikely that a fair
resolution to the water issue will resolve the Kashmir issue. Starting in 1947
during partition/independence both India and Pakistan have claimed Kashmir.
Now it is a very emotional issue and one that is often seen has having
'national pride' attached to it.

~~~
sgoraya
I agree - Though during the partition era, one of the key issues of the region
was water and its control, thus both countries laying claim. (There are more
issues of course, but the strategic control of water was one of the main
factors.)

Indeed, 'national pride' blinds folks in both countries. I do not see any
resolution of the matter anytime soon as the water shortages become more acute
over time, as clearly illustrated by the story.

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prpon
I grew up in India and I half joke that I don't know how to swim because I
grew up in a place where drinking water is hard to come by, forget the swim
part.

At least where I grew up, water was always hard to come by. If you ever jumped
into our water well, you would die at half way to the bottom from heart
failure. It's probably half a mile deep :-)

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Andys
I'm not affiliated with this, but if you want to contribute, consider a
donation to this charity: <http://www.wateraid.org/>

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aagnihot
Fate of entire civilization is dependent on monsoon rains. In my opinion,
there is hardly any way to provision supplies in vast amount. Ground water
tables, dams are all dependent on monsoon. Only way is to keep in check the
transmission leakages.

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jacquesm
Man that's heavy stuff.

So many people and such a basic requirement for life being scarce, that's
going to be major trouble if there isn't relief in the immediate future.

Doesn't stuff like this fall under the red cross ?

~~~
cstejerean
I'm curious what relief will look like. When the population increases at
alarming rates I'm wondering if there is any sustainable solution other than
relocation places to areas with more water. Are there any clever ways to
permanently increase the water supply?

~~~
eggnet
If there is no water you have to pipe it in. The only other thing I can think
of is to suck it out of the air.

~~~
jacquesm
desalination plants & water trucks ?

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ars
Water shortages, and yet people still think paper bags are better than plastic
ones.

Paper is worse for the environment in every way. It uses far more water, land,
and energy. And it's not reusable and barely recyclable.

~~~
GeneralMaximus
How? Care to elaborate on that?

~~~
evgen
Processing wood to create paper uses water. Recycling paper uses water.
Growing the trees in the first place uses water. Paper bags are not reused
more than plastic ones so they end up in landfills, where they take forever
and a day to breakdown (paper decomposes very, very slowly in an anaerobic
environment -- you can date the layers of landfills by taking a core sample
and just looking for dates on the 20-50 year-old paper scraps that come up in
the sample.) Paper bags are heavier and bulkier than an equivalent capacity of
plastic bags so it takes much more energy to deliver them from the production
facility to the end-user.

The only downsides to plastic bags are the fact that they are mostly produced
from a small amount of fossil fuel (until bioplastic versions get cheaper) and
that they are lightweight and therefore tend to blow around and get captured
in unsightly places like trees when they are improperly disposed.

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tomerico
The problem is India is the heavy water pollution. The country receives plenty
of rainfall.

