Fact as fact is

On August 23, 2002, a huge crowd gathered on the bridges of Ahmedabad to witness the swirling waters of Narmada soaking up the bone dry Sabarmati river bed in its embrace. The dry, dead and decomposing Sabarmati was only a monsoon river, a convinient sewage line at the most. As an expensive system of dams and canals guzzled 3000 cubic ft. of water per second into the ailing Sabarmati, Ahmedabad suddenly had a perennial river. As ground water recharged and the river swelled, Ahmedabad now had more water than it could drink. And that is how we forgot.

We forgot that the original intention of the Narmada canal was to irrigate and feed areas as far as Northern Gujarat and Kutch. Kutch, Mehasana, Banaskantha, Patan, Surendranagar continue to face acute water shortage and aridity. Standing at the fag end of the Narmada canal distribution system, they are deprived of water that was brought down keeping these very regions in mind.

Seats of urban power like Vadodra, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Jamnagar continue to quench their infinite thirst. Today, the capital hardly feels the misery of living in an arid state as maintaining the illusion of abundance is essential to keep the real estate boom going. ‘Scarcity’ and ‘Want’ do not feature well in a state striving to be the pinup-girl of developing India. It is ironical that the supreme court gave the Narmada project a clearance on the desperate plea that Gujarat is a dry and arid desert.

It was only in 1999-2000, that Gujarat suffered a severe drought where 25 million people were affected; that figure is close to 50% of the states’ population. Severe confrontations on rural vs. urban dwellers broke out in parts of Rajkot and Jamnagar. But post Narmada, those horrors have been forgotten or brushed under the carpet. The AMC continues to permit more and more real estate to develop, even as the state can barely cater to the existing demands for water. The citizens in an amazing feat of collective amnesia help live this myth.

In rural areas, drinking water is still being supplied via tankers and trucks. For irrigation, over exploitation of groundwater has seen the water table in these regions falling at the rate 6 meters per year. Small farmers cannot afford to dig bore-wells as deep as 250 feet when they started out with a 40 feet well. Not ones to give up, well drillers are now using oil drilling technology to go as far down as 1 Km. for groundwater. As the groundwater is sucked dry, the soil becomes more and more saline and therefore unfit for agriculture.

The government plans to spend 8500 crores to help 8215 villages get water. You and I could relieve the government exchequer of this immense load by saving a little water ourselves.

In Ahmedabad, as in the rest of India, gray water (bathing, cooking etc.) is not recovered. Mixed with black water (sewage from toilets), it is dumped into Sabarmati. Water is heavy. Lifting it up deep from bore-wells, uses up a sizeable amount of electricity. Wasting this water in Holi, car washing, garden run-off is a gross wastage of electricity.

Today the state is fighting a tough battle to get the height of Sardar Sarovar Dam increased to 138 metres. If fully constructed, so water can finally reach Kutch and North Gujarat, the SSP will submerge 37,000 hectares of forest and agricultural land as well as the homes of at least 250,000 people. Today as you waste that one drop of water, remember, this water has reached you after displacing the lives of nameless, faceless men. The least you can do is, not throw it in each others faces.