A drought of ideas, not water

It is only mid-May, but we will soon be getting regular releases from the BMC and state irrigation department on the levels in various reservoirs and dams. Each report showing the levels plummeting will paint a grimmer picture of the ongoing drought so that tanker contracts, tenders for new projects and raising the height of existing dams are passed in a jiffy.

Surprisingly so, never have low water levels inspired our neta-babu brigade to go in for desilting. Apart from being low-cost when the water levels are low, this will augment water storage and supply without having to submerge more and more forests and displacing increasingly more number of people, like it is the case with both Raigad and Thane, which Mumbai treats like colonies for its water.

One the one hand, there can be no end to the increasing demand for water in a city that still uses chlorinated drinking water to flush its toilets, on the other, most locals in areas like Shahpur in Thane (home to most reservoirs that feed Mumbai) have to depend on tankers or rely on the mucky water holes for their own water.

While this pitching of one people against the other makes for good electoral politics (the NCP-Congress alliance has, in fact, elevated such sparring to an art form), the contractor (Considering a whopping 127 are being built by the same one, one thinks the reference in singular is right) laughs all the way to the bank. As far as the bureaucrats are concerned, they can have more boring meetings, pass more boring orders and pretend all is well with the world.

Look at a report this newspaper carried just this week. Soon after chief secretary Ratnakar Gaikwad ordered on October 20, 2011, that construction of the Kalu dam in the eco-sensitive belt of Murbad tehsil in Thane district be stopped till all requisite permissions are in place, not only was work accelerated, but the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority, which was told not to fund such ‘illegal’ work, also promptly released Rs112 crore!

The chief secretary can put up his hands and say an order was given. The MMRDA, which wrote a letter to the executive director, Konkan Irrigation Development Corporation, saying it will not release funds for ‘illegal’ work three months before Gaikwad can do the same, even if it later went on to release money to the contractor. Classically even if the contradictions could be obvious to a three-year-old, our babus can keep burying their heads in sand and go on with what they are doing.

In fact, this brings to mind a livid Rahul Asthana being taken on by 20-odd activists who had led a morcha of over 1,000 Kalu project affected people to the MMRDA’s Bandra office. “You are mistaken in bringing the morcha here. We are only funding the project and not planning or developing it,” Asthana had offered.

Pat came the reply from an adivasi villager: “Why don’t you then change the name of your body to Mumbai Metropolitan Region Finance Authority instead?”