Tamilnadu boasts of having the second longest coastline among all states in the country. There is a large population of people depending on the sea for their livelihood. The entire state in alternate years is facing a natural calamity of one or the other. In one year there is an excess rain leading to water flooding everywhere and the fear of the slums on the river banks in the state capital Chennai going under water. In another year the people of the state have to walk miles like in the deserts of Rajasthan to fetch water for drinking. There is a fight in every street corner to get a pot of water from the water tanker. The water tanker makes the appearance once every week in some places and it is the tanker driver who determines which area and which street in that area to be given water. The main river in the state Kavery from being a seasonal river has become permanently dry. To add to the woes of the people along the river banks, there is indiscriminate sand mining going on in the river beds from Erode in the west to Kallanai in the east and even further eastwards. This has resulted in the ground water going down in many areas in the river banks. Where water was available in about 50 feet, now the people have to dig borewells to the depth of 150 feet to get water supply. The river bed resembles a bush country in some African state.
The government is not serious about solving the water problem. The politicians are busy vying with each other to make money and trying to upstage the other. The government can think about sending a team of experts and bureaucrats to Israel to study the water management in that country. In 1945 when Israel became a nation in the promised land carved out by the British from Jordan along the Mediterranean Sea, the nomadic Arab population of that area sold the Jews, who migrated from Europe to that area, the lands that no one else would buy. All swamp lands and water starved lands were sold to them by the Arab. Today with their ingenuity Israelis have converted the semi-arid region into a greenery and produce all fruits, vegetables, grains that the population require. They are surrounded by enemies on all sides. Their efforts do not go only to protect themselves and producing war machinery; they also spend their effort to produce what they require for their sustenance locally without depending on imports.
If no serious efforts are taken to address the water problem in a few decades from now, the state will be like a sub-Saharan country. Presently the state is begging for water from other neighboring states. The political class and ordinary citizens are raising their voice if a neighboring state builds a check dam or even raise the height of an existing dam within their state across a river which feeds the river flowing through the state of TN. To what end. The neighboring states work to alleviate the problems faced by the people those states. Except filing a case in the SC or orgetting the final decree of the SC published in the gazette of the GOI, or making demands for setting up of a Kavery Water Tribunal what constructive work had been in the last four to five decades by successive governments for a long-lasting solution to the water problem in the state. Why not follow the model of Israel which is almost half of the state in terms of size and having a coastline on the sea? Why not set up Desalination plants along the coast every 50 odd kilometers and pump the water inland to use in agriculture and for drinking? Why not switch over to drip irrigation and less water intensive crops? When the state is reeling under water crisis almost every alternate year why permit MNC cola companies to draw water from semi perennial rivers for their cola plants thereby denying the due water supply for drinking and irrigation purposes? Is it not high time to shut down the water intensive leather tanning industry?
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