Thirst for Profit

Frontline has published a story in this week's issue on water privatisation. It is a well written article which educates reader on this issue and warns of dangers if privatisation does happen.

If the above paragraph doesn't interests you in reading the article, consider following. Also please try to remember, had you heard of these incidents before through our 24 hours news channels, English newspapers?

2001: THE old man shuffled his feet, acutely embarrassed. No matter which part of India you're in, the first thing you do is offer your guests a glass of water. And this was one part of Nallamada in Andhra Pradesh blessed with that element. Things had changed, though. "Please don't drink it," he said, finally. "See how it is?" he asked, showing us a tumbler. Tiny blobs of thingummy floated atop a liquid more brown than transparent. But then he brightened up. "Will you have Coca-Cola instead? That, this village has." And so it did. As in the Aamir Khan ad. The smaller bottle for Rs. 5.

It's also there in countless other villages where a glass of clean water is now hard to find. And Coca Cola's impact on both drinking and irrigation water sparks revolts across the country. From Plachimada in Kerala to Kaladera in Rajasthan. From Gangaikondan in Tamil Nadu to Mehdiganj in Uttar Pradesh. From Thane in Maharashtra to Khammam in Andhra Pradesh.

2002: M.P. Veerendrakumar, chairman of the Mathrubhumi group of publications, is startled to discover that the Malapuzha river and dam in his native Kerala are "for lease or sale to private parties. "I did not know you could sell and buy dams and rivers." He learns this from a tender he sees in an American daily while on a trip overseas. "This had not appeared in any of our local newspapers."

It had already begun in Andhra Pradesh There, two years earlier, farmers chased away the World Bank's James Wolfensohn. He had come to unveil the confederation of "Water Users Associations" in the state. "Water Users." Oh, what a lovely word! It denotes that special group of folks who use water. The rest of us are non-users, a type of dryland bacteria.

But non-users, being a touchy, irritable lot, showed up in large numbers at the Koelsagar dam in Mahbubnagar. Pitched battles were fought and hundreds arrested. The government shifted the plaque of the dam to a safe haven miles away so the Bank Boss could cut his ribbon in peace.

2003: Private theme and water parks in and around Mumbai are found to be using 50 billion litres of water daily. This, while countless women in the slums and chawls of the city wait hours in queues for 20 litres. Meanwhile, anti-Coke battles are hotting up again. Kerala's pollution control board confirms the toxic nature of the sludge spewed out by Coke's plant in Plachimada. The panchayat revokes the plant's licence.

2004: The polls to parliament -- and in some states -- see the rout of the biggest 'water reformers.' Of course, there are many reasons for their defeat. But water is on that list. Sadly for the World Bank, its puff job is already done. So its report "India's Water Economy: Bracing for a Turbulent Future" appears as it is -- a year later. It sings the praises of Digvijay Singh in Madhya Pradesh and N. Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra. And it claims they gained politically from the reforms. It says the water users associations were particularly good for Naidu. Because "farmers perceived this to be a reform which moved in the right direction." That is in 2005, a year after farmers in both states hand out some of the worst electoral defeats ever seen to the Bank's heroes.

2005: Bazargaon is a scarcity-hit Vidharbha village that has one sarkari well and gets tanker water once in ten days. It is also host to the giant 'Fun & Food Village.' An elite park which offers 18 kinds of water slides and uses millions of litres as a matter of course. All Bazargaon's water flows towards this 'village.' It's a story repeated in different ways in many places, across many states. Water as a commodity, flows from poor to rich areas.

I support this article and am against this privatisation. To provide safe and drinking water to everybody at an equal price is responsibility of State. The price should be as nominal as possible as the costs of processing water is shared by all. The ability of consuming drinking water should never be linked to the purchasing power of individual.

For Rainfed India

Last year in his Independence speech PM had hinted about institutional mechanism through which such a watershed development programme can be implemented. Now a technical committee set up by the Union Ministry for Rural Development to review watershed programmes has come up with a blueprint of a National Authority for Sustainable Development of Rainfed Areas (NASDORA). The report of the Parthasarathy Committee (named after its chairperson) has just been printed and is in the public domain.

In an editorial article in Hindu, Mihir Shah, who served as Honorary Adviser to the Parthasarathy Committee, writes about the structure of this proposed authority.

NASDORA is visualised as a quasi-independent authority to manage the national watershed programme. Its overarching goals would be to ensure access to safe drinking water to the local population, provide it sustainable livelihoods and secure freedom from drought for the vast rainfed regions by 2020. The Authority would address the challenge of bringing prosperity to these regions through sustainable development of their natural resource base. It is envisaged that NASDORA will identify, finance and monitor action programmes in a systematic and time-bound manner. To ensure freedom and flexibility in its functioning, the Authority should be registered as a society under the Societies Registration Act, 1860. Over time as it matures in functioning, a proposal for converting it into a statutory body could be considered. This was the institutional trajectory followed by the National Dairy Development Board.

A two-tier governance and management structure is envisaged to ensure broad policy support as well as operating oversight. NASDORA will be managed by an apex governing board consisting of a competitively selected professional as CEO, one representative each from the Union Ministries of Rural Development, Agriculture and Environment and Forests, three competitively selected whole-time professionals representing operations, finance, and human and institutional development, two eminent experts in watershed management, and two eminent members from civil society. An apex rainfed areas stakeholders council will provide overall policy support and guidance to the board and review NASDORA's performance. It will be chaired by the Prime Minister, with the Ministers for Rural Development, Agriculture and Environment and Forests as vice-chairpersons. The council will include the Chief Minister of each State covered by NASDORA, Secretaries of the Union Ministries of Agriculture, Rural Development and Environment and Forests, national experts on watershed management, representatives of facilitating agencies of high standing, and representatives of farmers. The State Governments will set up boards with a structure similar to the one at the apex level. Each State board will have a CEO and professionals appointed on the recommendations of search committees.

I think it is a nice thing to be done by the government. The effective working of the poposed mechanism should help government in alleviation of growing regional imbalance in India's development.