The South African town should be a wakeup call to India on water management wherein people are educated about their water usage patterns, penalties entailing violations and water management skills.
T
he worst Indian water crisis of history is here and today we all stand on the brink of disease, death and devastation. As per the latest NITI Ayog report titled Composite Water Management Index, 70% of India’s water supply is already contaminated and in two years’ time 21 cities including Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai will run out of ground water. Furthermore, currently 600 million Indians face high-to-extreme water stress, and about two lakh people die every year due to inadequate access to safe water as per the report. Day after day, report after report we are being forewarned of an impending environmental crisis; yet, just like any other paper document, this report also seems to be failing in its ability to instil a sense of fear or responsibility amongst the citizens. So the question is: Does India need a Day Zero scare?
The concept of Day Zero has been of prime significance or rather a prime tool of scare during the ongoing water crisis in Cape Town. Cape Town, one of the major cities of South Africa, is today suffering from a severe water crisis so much so that the consumption of water has been curtailed to 50 litres per person per day and the same is being monitored and strictly rationed by the government. The government has come up with strict guidelines to ban water from being used for wasteful/luxury purposes like car washing, swimming pools and has initiated several social media campaigns including what had been going on for the past few months: ‘Countdown to Day Zero’.
So what is a Day Zero? Day Zero is the day when the Government of South Africa intends to cut down water supply for all taps of the city andlimit it to 25 litres per person. This means that people should stand in queues at various water collection points to get their share of water.The underlying idea behind the same is to prepare the public for the ultimate Day Zero(an estimate of when taps could run dry).This initiative has now been postponed to 2019; however, it is this constant water shortage scare that has enabled Cape Town to reduce the water consumption from 1.2 billion litres per day in 2015 to 516 million litres per day in the past week and avert the disaster to 2019.
While the example of Cape Town provides a window into the impending world water crisis, countries like India surely do not have much time left to contemplate and make cursory pleas to the masses. What is required is a proactive policing role by the government. While the attempt of this government think-tank (NITI Ayog) to come up with an index encompassing aspects of ‘water management’ is commendable, experts feel that the same shall remain futile until management is carried out on ground level. India at present is placed at 120th among 122 countries in the water quality index. Hence, it is time we start taking climate change and environment degradation as high-priority governance matters.
What we need is a model akin to South Africa wherein even a drop wasted is penalized and a zero tolerance approach towards wasteful use of water is followed till the requisite water quality and quantity levels are restored.
While we have in the past been focusing on conservation, the focus now needs to shift to water management wherein people are educated about their water usage patterns, limits, penalties entailing violations and water management techniques. In this regard much can be learnt from Cape Town which came out with a detailed plan to ensure adequacy of 50 litres per person per day consumption. Much inspiration can also be drawn from Cape Town’s creative initiatives like ‘Two minute shower songs’ and ‘Water 4 Cape Town’. It is this approach and perspective towards water pollution, conservation and management that has been a major lesson to the world at large and needs to be emulated by countries like ours to deal with this major crisis.
Be it the water crisis at Shimla or the degrading levels of water in Bengaluru, the citizens have shown a shallow understanding of their responsibility towards environment. Now, only the government can step in and prevent the situation from aggravating by seeking the requisite support of think-tanks and the civil society. It’s time for the government to adopt a stringent policy and give the much-required jolt to its citizens before India faces its own Day Zero!
