Dr Bhamy Shenoy has mailed the following note on Catalyst magazine, an NRI initiative, that devotes its current issue to Water.
Four years ago, some residents of Chennai were leaving town due to water shortage. The Hindu, in an article 4 months ago, said Chennai had too much water now. If you open the city corporation tap, water actually comes out, instead of plain hot air four years ago.
A contributing factor in Chennai’s transformation is Rain Water Harvesting. We still (in Chennai) have a long way to go in order to ‘mainstream’ rainwater harvesting in our daily life. Other southern states have followed the lead taken by Tamil Nadu.
Water for life and water for livelihoods’ is the maxim expressed in the 2006 United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Report (HDR). Water insecurity violates the basic principles of social justice. Access to water is a basic human need and fundamental human right, yet more than one billion people worldwide are denied the right to clean water. Water pervades all aspects of human development; when people do not have access to clean water their choices and freedoms are constrained by ill health, poverty and vulnerability. Thus, water gives life to everything, including human development.(“Jal hai, to kal hai” in Hindi means “If you have water, you have a tomorrow”)
Catalyst for Human Development’s latest Water issue has articles ranging from sustainable rural water management to rainwater harvesting. You can DOWNLOAD the full PDF file (5.9 Meg) at www.afhd.org . If you need printed copies, details are given in the magazine. You may contact editor at editor@afhd.org with any questions or comments
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