The agony of Indians is that an agenda is always setup by opportunist politicians without the grossest knowledge of the issues whatsoever. This soon transcends into a show of strength on streets with protests by people for and against the issues. Memes and jokes get circulated over whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter. The reach is completed. People start falling for perceptions. Media fuels it by brazen and repeated loud shouts. The objective of the issue is nowhere to be seen and it will sadly rest in peace. Tragedy strikes once again on those poor souls who otherwise could have earned their daily bread only by the end of a hard-toiled day unlike the white and day scholars who anyway get a pay check on the month ends. Thus, the hijack is complete.
Thankfully but shamelessly, BCCI is so powerful and rich that it hardly gives two hoots to such hyped up melodrama. At Godspeed it even managed to shift all CSK matches to Pune and clearly asserting BCCI is the Boss.
What then is the issue?
Answer - Setting up of a Central Board for sharing Kaveri River Water. A board the objectives of which even the protesters won't know about for sure. It is a board to amicably share river's water across the states she runs through and that too when enough committees are already munching tax payers money.
It has been a tragedy before, a tragedy now and continues to be so for nobody cares to ask where is the water to share?
What have the state governments done to conserve and sustain the river water?
Running up to Higher courts during a water crises is a big time fool thuggery practiced by either of the state governments. None of them cared for the river until then. The travesty of it all is such that they even engineered riots on their very own people on either side of the states. I just wish that karma serves them up the coldest.
And yet much can still be done before things span out of control and war of the waters descend upon the innocents. There are few practical approaches that can be adopted and realised.
First, the hard one, an unbiased data sharing of water resources to the tune of need and not greed. Meanwhile, all the states can take numerous river rejuvenation steps like afforestation along the river and rivulet catchment areas. Strict urbanisation controls along the river.
Second, the harder one, Interlinking of rivers, although scientifically well researched this one needs a boldest leaders across the states to implement. This too like many other shallow issues is hijacked by lobbying groups and agenda setting activists with their all "profitable" NGOs.
Third, the hardest one, Desalination units along the coastal lines. All southern states have lengthy coastlines. Desalination is yet the easiest of the earlier two solutions. All that each state can do is "give up" the money that that loot in one scan and seriously use it to set up these ambitious desalination units along the coastlines. The tech that comes up is no doubt alarmingly advanced but at the same time expensive plus the maintenance. But there is lot of money, much more money with states that they can definitely invest on one such good cause project.
Sooner the realisation better the future. Hope the good virtues will dawn on our politicians.
