I wonder how many of you while reading the newspaper today gave the small print ‘37.2 mm of rainfall yesterday in Bangalore’ a second thought! Just to give you an idea of scale, just look at the sheer volume of fresh clean potable water and ready for consumption, nature has given us in the short two hours of rainfall: Since it rained all over the city pretty uniformly, we can presume that an area square of 30 KM would have been covered and I am being conservative out here. The total volume of water Mother Nature showered on us works out to a staggering volume of 33,480,000,000 liters (33.5 billion liters).
A typical urban Indian uses on an average 175 liters of water each day. Mother Nature’s bountiful supply of freshwater in less than 2 hours could then support 190 million individuals for a day. With the population of Bangalore at 6.5 million today, this volume of rainwater could support all the people in Bangalore for 29 days – a month, almost!!
Mind blowing, isn’t it? Try computing the figures and the number of days the entire city would have survived in case we had some ways of capturing the entire rainfall during the Year 2005 floods in Bangalore. It is said that the next World War would be fought over water. Mother Nature knows no boundaries and rivers flow in countries small or big, rich or poor and so long as they do not place a barrier in its path, there is plenty for all. In the name of risk mitigation & better utilization and presuming that Mother Nature will behave irrationally, the smarter and mightier nations create artificial barriers in the name of dams and stop the flow to the countries downstream. Like the three primary colors that create a million other hues, water, air and sunlight is the essence for sustaining life on earth and no single individual or a country should lay exclusive claim over this common nectar that supports life of any form.
In case you get a chance to read the chronology of conflicts throughout the world over water, you will note that in almost all the earlier wars fought, military used water as a strategic tool to end a conflict. The Goths gained supremacy in Rome in 6th century AD by cutting all aqueducts leading to the city of Rome. The strategy known as the ‘Dutch Water Line’ and as the name suggests, Dutch used it successfully by flooding the land to break the siege of Spanish troops in the 80 years war in 16th century AD. Tension between India and the erstwhile East Pakistan started developing when India started constructing Farakka Barrage across the river Ganges at the border town between two countries. A thirty years treaty was signed finally in 1996 after three short term treaties were signed between India and the liberated nation of Bangladesh post the 1971 war between India and Pakistan. Dispute between India and Pakistan on the sharing of Indus river water irrigation continues to be a sore thumb even today. While a world Bank led negotiation concluded in 1960 after 12 long years of protracted discussion, each country is quick to blame each other for the vagaries of nature no individual human has a control over but collectively mankind has caused a permanent damage to the environment.
Closer home, the twin states in south who enjoy the waters of river Cauvery during peace times of healthy monsoon activity, are quick to whip-up emotions of hate during a failed monsoon. Come to think of it, ‘hate’ is the strongest of all emotions known and felt. It takes years to build ‘trust’ but a moment to hit the frenzied emotional state of ‘hate’ and this emotion could make a person kill without rationale or even commit suicide. I am sure between two human beings even the end stage of divorce may in all likelihood have begun with ‘love’ at first. As the story of togetherness slowly unfolds, simple acts of jealousy leads to minor skirmishes in a clash of ego, later with fights and then a war of nerves as to who will blink first before reaching the point of ‘no-return’ after a brief period of mayhem. What acts as a tonic in this saga of estranged relationship is the emotion called ‘hate’ and if uncontrolled and allowed to fester, an end to the relationship is the only logical solution.
Our Machiavellian and manipulative politicians know it very well and are quick to exploit the benefits that this four letter word can do to their selfish career to amass a mass following and gainfully horde material wealth that would perhaps last 3 generations beyond theirs. If only they could be a bit magnanimous and work the math on what Mother Nature bountifully gives without having to ask, and work for the betterment of society at large, the world would have been a much better place. It is ridiculous to find politicians fighting over something that is rightfully not theirs. Knowing that we have merely borrowed this planet from our children may hopefully bring a sense of much needed responsibility.
Cheers!!
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Dear Sir,
ReplyDeleteHope you are doing fine,Great article,it provokes to wear one's thinking cap, i have tried to put my thoughts below, i will not be surprised if i have not put them together, hence my apologies in advance.
Earth is almost five billion years old, although life (resembling life as we know it) has only existed on the planet for the last 150 million to 200 million years. This means that life has only been present on Earth for only 5%-10% of its lifetime.
Starting with civilization till the early 19th century there was not much difference in which humans lived on earth, in the last 100 to 150 years humans have abused, manipulated, polluted in the name of industrialization, advance of technology and so on. This is beautifully depicted in the movie, god’s must be crazy starting sequence, humans were never content with what mother nature gave, man did not adopt to the nature around him instead he tried to make his surroundings to adopt to his needs, in the process he made thinks so complex and did not to where to stop.
I strongly feel due to few million people, several hundred million across the world are deprived of sharing of things what Mother Nature has to offer.
If we glance at the history, it not no surprise how the British, Dutch, Portuguese, Spaniards so called today’s developed world are so rich, Spaniards literally erased the native Americans, looted their wealth, I don’t have to tell what British did to us(still continued by our own Politicians)
Some of the bitter facts remain, it is always the fittest and mightiest which has survived and will survive.
I remember this conversation in one of the interview on BBC when Nano was introduced, someone in the audience asked don’t you think considering India’s population getting everyone a car will add fuel to global warming, the answer was simple, we are just joining the party what the west was doing for the last 100 years we have just started, how right he was, the statistics shows in US out of every 2 person one has a car, in Germany it is for every 1.8, where as India has 1 in 1000.
The point what I am emphasizing here is it quite natural for a person to carve for something which he doesn’t possess. How nice the world would be if the wealth is equally distributed, where there is one religion, one race, well I know for sure, even the creator who created us cannot achieve this, how many great lives have been lost (Starting from Christ to our own Gandhi).
Sir, you hit the nail on the head If only each one of us could be a bit magnanimous and work the math on what Mother Nature bountifully gives without having to ask, and work for the betterment of society at large, the world would have been a much better place.
As a common man all I can do is that try to make sure that I educate my kid to use resources be it a food, water sensibly by reminding her about the millions of unfortunate ones across the world who don’t have even that.
After all, because we dream, because we do.
Regards,
Satish Kumar M.K