Letters: Harnessing water

"Water, water everywhere/Nor any drop to drink." So said Samuel Coleridge in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I write it in response to the editorial, "Water: Missing the real point" (September 28). All the measures thought of are either implemented halfheartedly or not at all.

At the individual level, only a financial cost might prevent wastage. If people can pay for bottled drinking water, then it is time to charge them for state-supplied water, too, say, at the rate of Rs 1 per 100 litres.

Next, we need to address the lack of storage capacity. Considering that floods take place in some part of the country or the other during any year, there should really be no shortage of water if all of it could be stored somewhere. The problem is funding the projects. Levy a water cess on sugar mills so that it costs Rs 200 a kg. Remove sugar from the Public Distribution System. Two kilos of sugar consume 3,000 litres of water - an individual's monthly water requirement. Let him choose: water or sugar.

Even people's health will improve. Just as steam was the source of power in the 19th century and oil in the 20th, water will take that position in the 21st century.

It is time we formulated a water strategy on a war footing. We need a director general of water and food security - drawn from the armed forces - with retired armed forces personnel mobilised to create and augment water storage capacities and implement wastage prevention methods. Most of our water resources are in inhospitable terrain; only armed forces personnel will know how to operate there.

T R Ramaswami, Mumbai

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