Comment

It’s uncertain if the world would end as in Roland Emmerich’s 2012, but that water supply in Mumbai will come to naught if random pilferage isn’t stemmed, is a certainty.

To appreciate the enormity of the menace, let’s take the statistics head-on: the daily water supply to the city was previously 3,400 MLD. After BMC imposed a 15 % cut, it has now come down to 2,900 MLD, of which 22% is lost due to pilferage and leakage, which again is a staggering 635 MLD, an amount that the whole of Nagpur survives on a daily basis.

By simple arithmetic then, if pilferage and leakage were to be checked, there would be no need for a water cut. In fact, Mumbai could actually enjoy surplus of water supply, a far cry from the pall of scarcity that envelops the megapolis today.

Sorry, did I forget to mention that our rulers aren’t exactly blessed with foresight, even less, with will? With the BMC mandarins blaming the rain gods, people are nearing the end of patience and the time isn’t far they would take the law into their own hands. The key lies in the need for accountability. Water theft to the corporation is what Non-Performing Assets were to the public banks. Banks realised that the contagion was slowly going to eat the innards of the system and took corrective measures. Now even a public sector bank like Maharashtra Bank has created a separate department for the recovery of loans and advances. The official in-charge of recoveries will have to ensure that defaulters pay up.

On the same lines, why can’t our civic body think of checking water theft? We, the consumers, pay for every drop of water that we consume. But sitting on the pipeline itself, there is a huge community which robs water to make cheap liquor or for personal use and the BMC does nothing to stop it.

Presently, long stretches of water pipelines aresitting ducks, literally. There is no one to police them. The result is that it is a normal sight to see babies bathe through the fissures in them, bootleggers stealing some to make arrack and large slums poking pipes into them to filch water.

This was not the situation some years ago, sturdy metal fences surrounded the pipes and there were railway tracks around them where a team from the civic corporation would monitor and rectify any spillage. Today, like the Berlin Wall, the metal fences have disappeared, expect in some places. The practice of maintaining the squad for policing the perimeter has been discontinued. The prime reason is the vote bank politics, which is pleasing some at the cost of many.

The civic authorities are thinking big. They are talking of ways to covert the saline sea water into drinking water. But that is not going to happen for quite a few years, if at all. So, the only way is to clamp down heavily on the water thieves. Water is precious in Mumbai — more so now, as there is not enough water to last the city till it rains again. Curtailing the supply of water to the honest, tax-paying citizens can only be a temporary measure. Rationing too will soon go in vain if the thieves keep siphoning off water. They must be stopped, lest we rain tears till it rains again.