Letters: Artificial water scarcity

"Our sport, your honour" (April 16) is an apt commentary on the misplaced priorities of judicial activism in the country. The shouting pundits on television and the social activism of the judiciary continue to ignore the fundamentals. People cheer when a train reaches Latur with half a million litres of water after traversing over 350km.

But no one objects to the fact that Mumbai loses 900million litres of water every day because of leaky pipelines and a lack of planned asset management. If Mumbai improves its operating efficiency and saves 10 per cent of its losses, it would amount to 90 million litres per day, it would be equivalent to the capacity of 180 water trains.

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Improving operating efficiency means reduced costs for Mumbai customers and availability of water to the drought-affected Latur citizens. If all utilities ventured to control losses, imagine the volume of water that could be saved and available for those in need. As long as money leaks from public utility managements, water too will leak and we would continue to suffer from an artificially created scarcity. It is a national shame that even after seven decades of independence we our cities or towns lack 24x7 water availability.

Anand K Jalakam, Bengaluru

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