The fuss about drought and water

More than 90 lakh people in India have been affected by drought. Poor rainfall has been attributed to this condition. Of course, its easy to blame nature. The major effect it seems to be in one of the most prosperous states of India, Maharashtra. But the whole response to drought with long, meaning less notations of sympathy is suffocating. It almost makes you feel like puking listening to heroics of those who are pumping in crores of public money to ferry water to these regions. Here is why -

The media is all gung - ho about the drought and misery. It makes good story. It gives a nice PR opportunity for celebrities. In all this, the truth remains buried in plain sight.

In the year 2002, in an economic survey stated that 70,000 crore rupees were spent in Maharashtra in ten years. Shockingly however the irrigation potential of state rose only 0.1%. The people of Maharashtra it seems spent 70,000 crore plus on irrigation and still don't have a sound irrigation system to tide them over drought. Still they stood rock solid behind their government.

Even when a government employee came out to accuse the government of what was believed to be a 35000 crore irrigation scam, the people chose to disbelieve him. It was clear according to citizens, the money was all there and well spent.

And now they dont have any water. Lakhs of crores spent on irrigation development, they want brother taxpayer to pump more lakhs of crores as there is still no water. Point is till when.

Till when will middle class tax payers shell out money on projects which yield no results. If people of Maharashtra believe that there politicians and leaders are as clean as a whistle then should we go ahead and send tanker full of trains when there is no water in fields? Or our natural reaction be to pad lock cricket stadiums, call in helicopter full of politicians and increase tax burden of the middle class?

Or we can just chop down more trees and clear out more jungle for our so called dream projects. Water is only important for discussions and shenanigans.

Comments

Does India need communal parties?

I think, it was Tan's post on this blog itself, Republic Day Event, where this question was raised. My answer. YES. we need communal parties even in Independent, Secular India. Now let me take you, back to events before 1947. When India was a colony of the British Empire. The congress party, in its attempt to gain momentum for the independence movement, heavily used Hinduism, an example of which is the famous Ganesh Utsav held in Mumbai every year. Who complains? No one. But at that time, due to various policies of the congress, Muslims started feeling alienated. Jinnah, in these times, got stubborn over the need of Pakistan and he did find a lot of supporters. Congress, up till late 1940's never got bothered by it. And why should we? Who complains? No one. But there were repercussions. The way people were butchered and slaughtered during that brief time when India got partitioned, was even worse than a civil war scenario. All in the name of religion. And there indeed was cr...

Epitome of Equality

First of all This is not to demean any religion.. I am a Hindu by birth, but yes I respect all religions .I offer my daily prayers , fast on holy days , but there was something that was disturbing me . God as per me was a Friend, someone who was by my side always , someone who was a dear friend , but this is not what everyone else thought , for others he was the Judge who gives his verdict always and punishes anyone and everyone . Walk into any temple and you would see , if you have money , you will be treated in a way as if you are the ONLY disciple of the God . I have had too many experiences where I was treated as a second class citizen in the temple . Why? Well I could not afford giving thousands as donation. This is not how it should be , God looks at each one of us with the same divinity .As I mentioned God for me is a friend, so tell me, do we chose friends based on their bank balances? Do we give our verdict on them ? then how can God do it? I know many of us would ...

Some Information Related to Guest Blogging

Many of us don't know about guest blogging. So, what is guest blogging? When one blogger posts his content to another blogger's site it is termed as guest post/guest blog. This method can be used to increase traffic on our sites. Mainly new bloggers use this technique of blogging so that their blogs get promoted and they can build-up the relationship with the audience and this technique also helps them increase the traffic on their site. If you have started a new blog, your blog might have trouble in reaching up with a wide range of audience, even if you have strong content to post. So, you can publish that content to someone else’s blog whose blog is already reputed so that people can read out your content and if they like your post than bingo!!! You grab audience attention and this lead to increase the number of audiences on your site. But make sure that the concept is simple, and you are writing the content according to the blogger’s requirement. The...

Tushar Mangl

Search This Blog