Water rights are being discussed today as a possibility. This will lead to civil war in this country. Rights are meaningless without paying attention to duties. It is our constitutional duty to preserve and heal our environment.
If we pay attention to freeing our waters:
- By protecting forests in catchment areas for water for our population, and not giving them up to mines to make cars and televisions;
- By penalizing encroachments on wetlands and water-bodies;
- By imposing penalties on pollution;
- By seriously increasing tariffs on water to non-essential industry, like Coca-Cola to start with;
- By drastically decreasing large damming projects,
- By increasing and making mandatory absolutely miniature check dams, grass root irrigation projects, rain water harvesting projects;
- By design and development of fish-ladders relevent to Indian Species and incorporate them into mini dams which need to be re-designed for fish movements upstream.
- Sand in rivers, apart from trees in the landscape, helps to absorb, retain, slow down and cool flowing water. Sand also encourages ecological balance in water bodies by serving as the breeding ground for a huge variety of water-freshening bio-diversity.
- Mining mafia should be put down. This is possible only by restricting sand usage in construction industry to bare essentials - which means paying attention to green building technologies, and implementing them mandatorily.
- The government needs to levy taxes on sand based on consumption rates.
If all these and other constructive measures are implemented together, only then will fresh water be free to flow and freely available for people to drink.
