PACHU MENON
The news that the scorching heat in many parts of the country has forced villagers to resort to primitive methods to tap water for their sustenance should put to shame the grand ‘revival schemes’ that our highly respected leaders cannot stop envisaging for the country.
Closer to home; the sad revelations that as always Canaconkars find all their hopes of water supply evaporating with the blistering summer drying up water bodies in the taluka needs to be treated as a wake-up call by the district administration perennially at its wits end to provide this basic amenity to the locals.
With many parts of Canacona reeling under severe water crisis and the situation tuning from bad to worse with every passing year, it is shocking to hear that many of these areas have limited availability of public tap water facilities. The very fact that these taps are connected to lines drawn out of locally available water bodies or from bore-wells which invariably begin to dry up in the beginning of April has however failed to stir the local authorities off the languor they are accustomed to displaying. Imagine a whole month going by with people pining for water!
Photographs in a section of the press of women in Canacona drawing portable water from holes excavated in dried river basins, or whatever is available of it, is definitely not one’s idea of development!
In fact, it is surprising to note that the tall claims to progress and development made by our great leaders have often been restricted to the urban sector with the rural belt in the country still reeling under the effects of total neglect and the ennui of successive governments.
Clearly overlooking the necessity to provide water, electricity and good roads as basic needs, people in remote hamlets continue to be victims of administrative apathy. Villages hitherto existing in total anonymity featuring all of a sudden in the tour-itinerary of politicians during elections is one of the greatest wonders of modern India!
Christian missionaries ‘adopting’ remote adivasi colonies and transforming them in to model-villages through their ingenious efforts should come as a slap on the face of the government authorities who are better-equipped to carry out similar works considering the vast resources available. It is not that these villages are not represented by elected members in state assemblies and Parliament - they are more than adequately!
But the representatives have been conspicuous by the total disregard for the problems of their constituents.
Depleting natural resources have already been having a telling effect on the populace without government indifference adding to its misery.
When it is being averred that more than a third of the country’s population lives in its villages, why are these rural settings used only to highlight the nation’s squalor and poverty! If a nation is seeking kudos for the expansion of its urban areas to showcase them as classic examples of growth, it needs to be warned for its lack of fortitude.
Deforestation and concretisation of entire areas as an off-shoot of the unplanned growth that has been witnessed over the past few decades and the follies leading up to global warming have come in for severe criticism by campaigners of the climate movement.
The need to have a perfect balance between man and nature has been emphasized upon time and again by environmentalists. Yet the maverick ways of mankind has assumed threatening proportions. Sustained growth and development of a region remain confined to research papers that keep scholars forever engaged debating on the depleting natural resources having a debilitating effect on earth.
The scarcity of water and the call to conserve it is just an offshoot of these deliberations. Such calamitous situations will be a regular feature if corrective measures are not taken immediately!
Nature has its own ways of demonstrating its fury which then manifests itself in dangerous forms. The ferociousness with which Cyclone Fani pounded Odisha before advancing to neighbouring West Bengal, is a grim reminder of nature’s wrath that the country has been experiencing in the recent past with a regularity that is alarming.
Although ravaged by similar calamities in the past, that Odisha not only dared look Cyclone Fani in the eye, but also came out successful after the ordeal, speaks a lot for the perseverance of the local administration which managed to keep the causalities to a miraculous minimum through meticulous and disciplined efforts.
The added assistance from other agencies and civil society organizations worked wonders as well! Challenges rising out of catastrophes of this magnitude can only be quelled by combined team work.
The ‘Kerala floods’ is an apt example!
Earlier, the flash-floods of 2010 which occurred across a large part of Ladakh in Jammu & Kashmir and the multi-day cloudburst centered on the North Indian state of Uttarakhand in 2013 which caused devastating floods and landslides, did warn humanity against the wrath of the nature.
But it is unfortunate to have lessons learnt after every calamity falling by the wayside as the intensity of the adversity subsides. While relief operations in the wake of such cataclysmic events do have their significance, it is the necessity to prevent them that should be gaining equal prominence.
Saving planet earth cannot be restricted to a few slogan-shouting campaigners who it appears have taken it upon themselves to do this onerous deed, if only to bring about awareness among mankind about its accelerated lifestyles that is not in keeping with natural diktats.
With nary a care for nature, the rapidity with which science and technology has made the thumb-impression, from being a shameful acknowledgement of a person’s illiterate status, to an important one that validates his identity; the modern generation is definitely chartering a doomsday course!
