WATER

http://southasianmedia.net/articles/search.cfm

The Pioneer

Water is a life sustaining commodity freely and abundantly gifted by mother nature for all living beings. However, acute scarcity of drinking water is keenly felt particularly in the metropolitan cities of India, where the supply of potable water falls short of it's ever-rising demand.The irony will be apparent if we view the above scenario in the backdrop of the report of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, according to which human beings currently use only about half of the 12,500 cubic kl of freshwater, that is readily available from groundwater, rivers and lakes. Hence, globally neither is there a water shortage nor will there be one in the future. In fact, nature has been extremely generous in providing us far more freshwater than we require. India is still more fortunate. It receives more than 350 million hectare metres of rainfall every year. In addition, it is blessed with a vast network of rivers, not to mention of lakes and other water bodies. Why then this scarcity amidst plenty? Obviously, the culprit is bad water management coupled with corruption. The demand for the water in the metropolitan cities can be curtailed only by putting an effective check on population growth. Besides causing the scarcity of water, both overcrowding and senseless urbanisation of cities have created other serious and complex social problems, which inhibit solutions. Consequently, the cities are bursting at their seams. The governments embark upon unplanned development in pursuance of their populist measures throwing all caution to winds. However, the fiduciary responsibility of the government to protect and keep the water bodies and resources in excellent condition all the time is not waived. Underground water should also not be confused with other underground resources such as metals, rocks, fuel in liquid and gaseous forms, etc. In the case of the former, a life-sustaining commodity as freely given by nature as air and sunshine, the ownership indisputably vests with the people and, as such, the service-providing government bodies should not legally or morally be able to levy consumptive charge on the consumers for the simple reason that they cannot charge the owners for the consumption of their own commodity. The ideal thing would be to subsidise this essential service, not to levy the consumptive charge. It is unfortunate that few local city governments retain water ownership rights out of greed and caprice, and have lately started levying both consumptive and service charges based on presumed or measured quantum water consumption. This practice, though unethical and against all canons of natural justice, has gone unchallenged and fraud goes on unabated. If metering the domestic supply of water is essential to curbing misuse, the responsibility of installation, maintenance and replacement of water meters must lay on the service providers - in this case the civic bodies of local governments. Arm-twisting the consumers by levying penal charges for arbitrarily fixed consumption would, therefore, be highly unethical and against all the canons of justice. It would be tantamount to penalising the consumers for the governments' own lapses, shortcomings and dereliction of duty.Any move for the privatisation of this service, as some local governments are reportedly contemplating, would face grave legal and ethical implications. The essential point remains: How can governments, which do not even own the commodity, usurp authority in order to privatise it?