TOGETHER WE CAN DO IT!

Today is World Environment Day. Today I wish to make an earnest request to all my friends. You all have an impulse habit of presenting floral bouquets to friends and relatives on all occasions - birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, promotions and other celebrations. Every conference, every function has bouquets which once the occasion passes, are of no use and lie scattered, unattended and unsung. Friends, flowers look best in trees and plants, not when bunched together and suffocated in cellophane. Let us in the next 5 years change this trend of presenting floral bouquets and replace them with saplings of green trees and flowering plants. This way we will all contribute towards making our planet green again. It will be the social responsibility of the conference organizers, the wedding planners, the host family to pass on these saplings to professional gardeners for their plantation and upkeep.

Can you imagine what would be the scale of this movement if you personally agree and make others see the true value of re-greening our planet? You will post yourself in the forefront of battle against Climate change and not remain a complaining spectator any more. Let us start this movement from our doorsteps. Merely passing on this message will not help. Your active cooperation and untiring efforts are needed to change a useless habit into a useful game changer. I welcome you all to the Climate change army! Together we can do it!!               

JOBS NEVER RETURN – THEY CHANGE

Will the horse and the buggy ever return to our roads? Riding on a tanga was a great fun in childhood, but they all faded away with our childhood. The manual rickshaw is getting replaced by the E-rickshaw and the three wheelers. Now if the tanga-walas and the rickshaw-walas complain that automation is killing us and starving our children to death, is it a fair criticism? When the world was changing, those who were intelligent enough saw it as an opportunity to progress in life and took to the change as fish takes to water, but those who chose to stay as complaining bystanders then are marginalized and poor today! Who is at fault for their plight? Surely not development! And those obsolete jobs are never going to come back. People have to modify their skills to learn to do new things that are in demand in the job market or they have to learn a whole new set of skills.

So when the Left and Left of Centre Thinkdom (LLCT) laments that the government of the day is not creating new jobs and across seven seas Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders sing the same tune and shout from every available rooftop that they will bring back the jobs to America, they are missing the big picture. Those jobs are never going to come back………..simply because they are of no use.   

In economics, productivity—the amount of economic value created for a given unit of input, such as an hour of labor—is a crucial indicator of growth and wealth creation. When productivity and employment are plotted on a graph the two lines historically closely tracked each other, with increases in jobs corresponding to increases in productivity. The pattern was clear: as businesses generated more value from their workers, the country as a whole became richer, which fueled more economic activity and created even more jobs. Then, beginning in 2000, the lines diverged; productivity continued to rise robustly, but employment suddenly wilted. By 2011, a significant gap appears between the two lines, showing economic growth with no parallel increase in job creation. Brynjolfsson and McAfee of the U.S. call it the “great decoupling.” And Brynjolfsson says he is confident that technology is behind both the healthy growth in productivity and the weak growth in jobs.

So has rapid technological change been destroying jobs faster than it is creating them, contributing to the stagnation of median income and the growth of inequality in the world today? If the answer to this is yes  then what do we do? Do we stop technological advances for the sake of retaining jobs? Surely not. We need to learn newer skills, which will be in demand in the new world.

People are falling behind because technology is advancing so fast that our skills and our organizations aren’t keeping up. While in India we do not find robots replacing factory workers regularly, but changes are happening all around us. A less dramatic change, but one with a potentially far larger impact on employment, is taking place in clerical work and professional services. Technologies like the Web, artificial intelligence, big data, and improved analytics—all made possible by the ever increasing availability of cheap computing power and storage capacity—are automating many routine tasks. Countless traditional white-collar jobs, such as many in the post office and in customer service, have disappeared.

Globalization – the process by which ideas, people, money, goods and services cross borders at unprecedented speed, has fired the second salvo. It has allowed industries in the developed world to shift their manufacturing units to the developing countries where labour is comparatively cheaper. This has resulted in drying out of the blue collared factory jobs of the ‘drone class’ in the industrialized west and given a shot in the arm of developing economies whose workers today enjoy a better standard of living. But what is palpably missing is any attempt by the so called developed world to re-train their now idle work force to learn newer and useful skills. Environment is the biggest challenge to the very existence of our being today, and the industrialized nations have the largest carbon footprints. When automobile, textile and pharmaceautical factories were shutting down and the economy was staring down the crater of yet another depression then instead of exploiting this environmental challenge and becoming world leaders in Sun and Wind and Water energy by high quality research, Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Sander’s predecessors chose to sell bogus home loans to the those who would never be able to repay and allow fat bonuses for the corrupt bank honchos. What did the U.P.A do in India? They sold national assets – coal, land, spectrum etc for peanuts and pocketed huge kickbacks!

The fact is that unimaginative governments are hollowing out the middle class. Computers have increasingly taken over such tasks as bookkeeping, clerical work, and repetitive production jobs in manufacturing—all of which typically provided middle-class pay. At the same time, higher-paying jobs requiring creativity and problem-solving skills, often aided by computers, have proliferated. So have low-skill jobs: demand has increased for restaurant workers, janitors, home health aides, and others doing service work that is nearly impossible to automate. Even if today’s digital technologies are holding down job creation, history suggests that it is most likely a temporary, albeit painful, shock; as workers adjust their skills. Good and responsive governments are expected to aid, assist and nurture this process and also help entrepreneurs create opportunities based on the new technologies. Only then will the number of jobs rebound.

The silver lining is that higher productivity will eventually deliver cheaper goods and higher disposable incomes, as it did during the Industrial Revolution. Automation will allow for new technologies to develop and allow workers to utilise their inborn human skills, their computing skills and their newly acquired job skills to advantages in ways that are currently unimaginable. Just as we could not imagine what jobs would emerge when the cars replaced the horses, or when computers replaced office workers, so too are we blind to the jobs that will come into existence thanks to 3D printing or artificial intelligence. The global warming will have to be met with a host of all new skills and all these are jobs in the making.

If we remove our bias-tinted glasses and try to see the facts technology has actually been a great job creating machine. Your lone neighbourhood barber shop employing two has been replaced by a hair styling salon, with perhaps a spa and a sauna employing eight people in two shifts!  Hard, dangerous and dull jobs are on decline like in agriculture but and manufacturing but they are being more than offset by rapid growth in the caring, creative, technology and business services sectors. But then again…..these skills have to be learnt.  Weavers, knitters, typists, secretaries have fewer options today but teachers, domestic helpers, welfare, housing, youth and community workers – electricians, plumbers, furnishers are all in high demand!

Our educational system is not adequately preparing us for work of the future, and our political and economic institutions were, till recently, poorly equipped to handle these hard choices. This needs urgent attention. Driven by revolutions in education and in technology, the very nature of work will have changed radically—but only in economies that have chosen to invest in education, technology, and related infrastructure. Hence the success of ‘Skill India’ is non negotiable.

We need a holistic action plan that covers every base — one that includes a skilling and re-skilling programme to increase employability and productivity, incentives for smaller enterprises that absorb a greater number of workers, and the embedding of job generation in the massive infrastructure upgrade that India requires. Jobs must be the pivot for social and economic policy and key to the promised ‘Acche Din’!

SOCIAL MEDIA – NOT EVERYTHING IS HUNKY DORY

There are only a few technology-loving, mind-stimulating and idea-generating individuals out there who are still unplugged from social media. I am sure those too will join soon as well since social media is not just a platform for easy online marketing and aimless gossips, it is also the stand alone revolution of our century!

But is it actually ‘sugar and spice and everything nice’? One of my colleagues exclaimed the other day that she feels totally exhausted and drained out and is going for a month long break. I thought she is contemplating a vacation but when I inquired where she intended to go she said “nowhere, just unplugging myself from the social media”!

 The social media has completely changed our way of life from what it was only twenty years ago. Now, there is a dramatic decrease in face-to-face communication, which reduces our generation’s ability to interact with others on a speaking level. The youngsters, in particular, enjoy the cloak of anonymity provided by the social media and the not so young, instead of putting their mind and their experience to a problem in hand, they take the short-cut refuge of the social media. During our childhood when our parents read the Ramayana or the Mahabharata to us, each one of us had an imaginary Ajodhya and a Hastinapur in our mind. We could vividly dream of Gulliver in the land of Lilliputs and experience the thrills of Sinbad as sailed the unknown seas. It is this imagination which became the first victim of television, the forefather of social media.

Multiple social networks, from Twitter and Google+ to Orkut and MySpace create an information overload that is difficult to manage. People juggling between these sites have trouble processing all the information making the whole exercise excessively taxing. A 2009 study by three Stanford University professors on cognitive control concluded that chronic media multi-taskers are more susceptible to distraction.

True, I will be the first to admit that had it not been for Facebook and WhatsApp we would have perhaps never known where our long lost school mates and college pals are in life. These virtual reunions have rekindled our friendships and stimulated us towards real life reunions, this time with our spouses and children and this has added the long lost colours to our tapestry of life. But this joy has come with a price tag that cannot be denied. 

Over the years I have noticed that social media can easily reach out and touch people’s emotions. That is why it is important that it provokes the correct type of emotions. Posts that invoke amazement, joy, surprise and positive vibes are great but those which provoke anger, hate and anxiety are certainly not so. Anger is a unique emotion and needs to be handled with care. Well managed it can lead to the Arab Spring and ‘Abki baar Modi Sarkar’ but poorly managed it can precipitate violent riots, communal disharmony and threat to nationhood. Bloggers may, by their blogs and posts grab attention to evoke anger or capitalize on the anger their audience is already experiencing about a certain topic. These can often go hand in hand with social movements and protest of issues directly impacting society at large. But again, this can go out of hand and cause disaster. The conglomeration of hundreds of mourners at the burial of convicted terrorist and traitors is also courtesy social media!

Naturally when a far reaching medium such as the internet brings us social networking sites that spice up our lives a little, it also attracts the fractious few of society. Disasters are for individuals, for companies and for nations.

Individuals:

1.       Hacking: Incidents of profiles and accounts being hacked into are commonplace. While this could be restricted to simply playing a practical joke on a friend, it sometimes leads to the more serious misdemeanor of identity theft.

2.       Likes that do not mean anything: Social networking often can help create something which does not exist or may not be as good as it is presented. Thus a hundred ‘likes’ can be manufactured for products of sub-optimal quality and doubtful use. The same illusion is created for personal lives of people. Just posting happy and party pictures do not mean one is actually happy!

3.       Lack of emotional connect: The quality of a conversation using social media is awful because one cannot sense the emotion or enthusiasm from the other person. It makes one wonder if they actually mean what they say.

4.       Gives license to be hurtful: Some comments are offensive to the point of getting hurtful when the writers forget that there are real people at the receiving end. Suicides have resulted from such hurtful comments!

5.       Conveys inauthentic expressions and feelings: ‘Hah-hah’ and ‘LOL’ are feelings which are no match to a bear hug, an embrace or a full throttle laugh.

6.       Face to face interaction suffers: When I see my friends on their phones and I am around them, I feel disconnected even though we are only two feet apart….. In fact English language has a new word for ignoring the person in front of you in favour of one’s smart phone…..fubbing! The world is more connected but we as individuals are getting disconnected!

7.       Facilitates laziness: Social media is a fantastic way of doing nothing. It causes laziness because instead of running to your friends you can message them. Or instead of walking upstairs to notify the family of dinner you can WhatsApp them as they all are online!

8.       Creates a skewed self image: We all develop this perfect image of ourselves and some of us actually try to rely on this imaginative thought we have of ourselves instead of staying true to who we are.

9.       Distraction is maximum: Smart phones distract you from every other thing - watching television doing homework and even spending time with friends and family. The number of accidents that have occurred on the roads and at work because of smart phones is mind boggling.

10.   Pictures and videos posted can be morphed photo-shopped and doctored and used for blackmailing, defamation and cyber bullying.

11.   Defense personnel, national project engineers and scientist face an added disadvantage of hackers misusing any leaked classified information. Any unintended slip of information could have serious ramifications and jeopardize national security if it falls into the wrong hands.

12.   Imposters: Social media provides anonymity to many imposters. There have been so many cases in developing countries where people fall in love over social media website and end up being cheated financially, emotionally and physically.

13.   There is an extensive range of mental and health problems known to be associated with spending too much time on social media. In addition to reducing productivity, creating distractions and increasing burnouts, they can cause some serious medical issues like to stroke, blood pressure, colds, dementia and cognitive problems.

Companies:  Viruses and malware also pose a serious threat to the safety of the IT systems. Numerous applications available through Facebook are potential sources for these Social networking at workplace can also cause confidentiality issues. An angry employee can use these sites to leak sensitive information to public causing financial and credibility loss for a company. Employee infighting, dissent against the management can come out in the open. Employees posting bad comments about the company out of momentary indiscretion can create a negative image (even if false) can hurt business prospects.

Nations: Social networking websites have, at times, been used for the purpose of furthering political agendas. This has proved to be significant disadvantage of social networking at many places. China’s blocking of Twitter and YouTube before the 20th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square massacre, or the use of Facebook as a medium for instigating and spreading the message that led to riots in London, have been questioned. Criticizing the Union of India, it’s President and its Supreme Court by a bunch from the Left and Left of Centre thinkdom (LLCT) following the hanging of convicted terrorists is still fresh in our mind and was certainly not the best use of social media! 

Social media has brought to the world a common medium for thoughts, words and expression. However its correct and efficient usage is completely dependent on how it is managed. Being aware of the risks and vulnerabilities that we are exposed to through these media only empowers us further to use them in a positive way. It is up to us to make sure that social networking does not turn into social dysfunction.

MARIO MIRANDA – FONDLY REMEMBERING A GENIUS

Google today reminded us all of this genius who could bring a smile in every face, every day when we opened the Times of India or The Illustrated Weekly of India or the Economic Times or even the Femina. By honouring Mario Miranda on his 90^th birthday with a special doodle featuring naturally a rainy Mumbai tableau, drawn by artist Aaron Renier, who like Miranda is also known for portraying crowded cityscapes, Google reminded us of this great genius. Mario’s slice-of-life style represented the layered view that people saw every day. His portraits were always bustling and teeming with characters, each of whom seemed to have a mind of their own. His creations, such as Miss Nimbupani and Miss Fonseca were all so well known to us that we could pick them up in any crowd anywhere!

Mário João Carlos do Rosário de Brito Miranda (2 May 1926–11 December 2011), popularly known as Mario Miranda or Mario de Miranda, was a cartoonist and painter par excellence. He was based in Loutolim in Goa from where he created history. It all started in Daman, then in Portuguese India, where he was born to Goan Catholic parents. At an early age when his mother saw him drawing on the walls of his home she brought him a blank book, which he called his "Diary". He got into trouble for sketching the caricature of Catholic priests in school. Mario Miranda's early cartoons presented vignettes of Goan village life, a theme he is best known for even today.

He studied at St. Joseph's Boys' High School, Bangalore and then did a B.A. in History at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai and tried studying architecture but soon lost interest. He started his career in an advertising studio, where he worked for four years, before taking up cartooning full-time. Illustrated Weekly of India was his first stop, then Current magazine and soon after was a regular with the Times of India.

Miranda's big break came in 1974, when, at the invitation of the United States Information Services, he travelled to the U.S, which enabled him to promote his art and interact with other cartoonists there. He got a chance to work with Charles M. Schulz, the creator of Peanuts and interacted with Herblock, the editorial cartoonist of the Washington Post. He held solo exhibitions in over 22 countries, including the United States, Japan, Brazil, Australia, Singapore, France, Yugoslavia, and Portugal.

The Nation awarded him the Padma Shri in 1988, the Padma Bhushan in 2002. The All India Cartoonists's Association, Bangalore, honoured him with a lifetime achievement award. The King of Spain, Juan Carlos, conferred on Mario the highest civilian honour of "Cross of the Order of Isabel the Catholic" which was presented to him on 11 November 2009 at his family home in Loutulim by Don Miguel Nieto Sandoval and on 29 December 2009 Portugal, under the President of the Republic Aníbal António Cavaco Silva, made him "Commander of the Order of Prince Henry", a Portuguese National Order of knighthood. Mario Miranda was posthumously awarded the Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award in the Republic of India, by the President on 4 April 2012.

Immortalized even after his death Mario’s cartoons grace the walls of one of South Mumbai's most famous hotspots, Cafe Mondegar, in Colaba and his caricatures are also seen in the municipal market of Panjim, Goa. Besides cartooning, Miranda's murals are present on various buildings in Goa and other parts of India. As if that was not enough, he took to painting later in life and excelled once again!

He had published several books - Laugh it Off, Goa with Love, and Germany in Winter time and he illustrated books by Dom Moraes (A Journey to Goa), Manohar Malgaonkar (Inside Goa) and Mario Cabral e Sá's (Legends of Goa). He also illustrated many children's books of Uma Anand including Dul-Dul, The Magic Clay Horse (1968), The Adventures of Pilla the Pup (1969), and Lumbdoom and The Long-Tailed Langoor (1968).

Mario Miranda's sly sense of humour was evident in all of his illustrations which spoke so much about the society, in fact much more than words could ever do justice! On his death Vijay Seth, a fellow cartoonist, who considered Mario as his mentor, paid a fitting tribute: “With pen & ink that were at his command to churn out lines that every nib would be jealous of, he brushed aside the old school of cartooning using the brush, and set a new norm to use the nib pen and to master it for this branch of art. Mario created characters that gave his daily audience their quota of a smile without malice. His trips around the globe produced subtle close observations of the local musings – a fitting example of how far can one stretch the parameters of this branch of neglected art.”

An outstanding Indian, whom I remember fondly seeing in the morning news paper every day sang ‘Mile Sur Mera Tumhara’ on behalf of all of us. Indeed I miss his ‘sur’ today!

MADRASA EDUCATION IN INDIA

Madrasa is an institution of learning, where Islamic sciences including literary and philosophical ones are taught. Their aim is to inculcate the belief and practice of Islam among its followers and guide them to follow Quran and traditions of the Prophet.  The foundation of Madrasa education is therefore, basically standing on two pillars of Quran (Collection of God's revelations to Prophet Mohammad) and Sunna (Tradition of Prophet Mohammad). Now how can that be inappropriate and why is this method of education in the eye of the storm today?

We do not need a Rajendra Sachar Committee to tell us that education is the only mechanism that enhances the process of social, economic, and cultural development of communities and along all these three parameters Muslims in India are faring worst. There are several reasons for their backwardness such as large family size, economic poverty, negative attitude towards girl’s education, high school dropout rates among Muslim students, lack of adult education among them, but along with all these reasons a major reason remains the lack of link between madrasa education and modern education which involves proficiency in English language and learning of new skills and technology relevant to the needs of changing world.                                                                                                                                                                                               

Madrasas and Maktabs were built across the country during two centuries of Mogul rule and there are more than 40,000 of them today. Initially their principal function was to train personnel for government service and accordingly curriculum was formulated to cater the administrative needs of Muslim rulers. Times have changed since then but Madrasas have failed to keep pace with the changing times. That is the reason why post Muslim rule these educational institutions have been at best objects of curiosity and at worst suspicious sleeper cells of orthodoxy, religious conservatism, obsession with medieval identity and now anti-national terror. They are today blamed for playing a prominent role in keeping the movement of Muslim separatism alive in this country. The question one needs to ask is that is it Muslim separatism or Muslim identity that they are trying to uphold.

When modern education was introduced during the British Raj Madrasa teachers became restive and developed a more rigid attitude towards religion-centric education for Muslims. The historic participation of madrasa leaders in 1857 revolt against British regime proved that the main objective of traditional Islamic education was to attune the Indian Muslims with aspiration for regaining of political power.  With Ulema playing significant role in the revolt, the British started suspecting madrasas as possible centres of disaffection. 

The British introduced modern education was a threat to the Persho-Arab legacy, which was being propagated only through the madrasas. Rattled by the British system, the Muslims launched a renewed madrasa movement by establishing an Islamic seminary known as Darul Uloom at Deoband in 1866 and by the close of nineteenth century madrasas like Farangi Mahal (Lucknow), and Nadwat-al-Ulama (Lucknow) emerged as vibrant symbols for Muslim separatist movement in India. 

But all Muslims did not think along the same lines. Contrary to Deoband movement Sir Syed Ahmad a British loyalist launched Aligarh movement and established Madrastul Ulum at Aligarh in 1873 for imparting education in modern branches of learning, which later became Mohammadan Anglo Oriental College and then Aligarh Muslim University. So when today we talk of modernizing the mardasas, this is a no new political bogey, the eminent educationist Sir Syed Ahmed knew even then the gross inadequacies of madrasa education! He criticized them for encouraging memorizing rather than real understanding and felt that by organically relating all forms of knowledge and gearing these to dogmatic theology the very sources of intellectual fecundity were blighted and possibility of original thinking stifled.

While Sir Syed Ahmed’s basic aim was to fashion the education policy for Indian Muslims and encourage them towards the mainstream of western education there was a major offshoot. An attitude of social exclusivism developed among the Muslims and it worked as catalyst in fostering Muslim communal consciousness causing major damage to Hindu-Muslim unity in the Indian sub-continent. Later it gave birth to the All India Muslim League and its two-nation theory, which ultimately resulted in the partition of India.

So the future of madrasa education in Hindu dominated secular and democratic Indian polity became an issue of primary concern for both the Nation as well as the madrasas. The Nation could not forget the pain of partition and remained always suspicious about what was cooking inside the madrasas. The madrasas in post-colonial India were plagued with the wrong impression about alleged Hindu-biased education.  Instead of joining hands with Hindus in national reconstruction programmes, Indian Muslims took up the problem of their separate identity as primary concern and failed to avail the equal opportunity provided to all the Indian citizens under constitution. Instead of being Indian first and Muslims next, they chose to become Muslims first and Indians next, insisted on an education system which will foster their religious identity rather than their national identity!

Even Islamic institutions like Deoband and Nadwa, which had maintained strategic opposition to partition of the country hardly, made any change in their courses of study and method of teaching even after Independence. They have, along with very many lesser known madrasas produced thousands of graduates, religiously and theologically strong and inflexible but practically unskilled and unemployable. They are therefore, equally responsible for the material plight of the Indian Muslims and for their economic, social and educational backwardness as we see today. Even the contemporary rationalist Muslim thinkers, who talk about Islamic modernism, have hardly overcome their medieval attitude of intellectual subjugation. They have in fact ignored the real problem that how far madrasa education would be relevant in contemporary social advancement of the country. If they still enjoy remaining under the subjugation of radical Islamists no one can stop them from slipping rapidly down the educational and economic scale. With fewer madrasas for girls and strict segregation of sexes the education of the girl child is worse hit and so automatically 50% of the future work force is remaining uneducated and obviously unemployable.

Memorization of Islamic scriptures without any rational understanding befitting to the contemporary cultural and social environment will surely not serve the real purpose of education. In view of the ongoing changes in the social, cultural, economic, and political environment drastic changes are required in madrasa system of education so that Indian Muslims could come to terms with the changing needs of contemporary Indian society. Computer science, Mathematics, foreign languages, vocational training, skill development, all need to go into this education system to make it socially relevant and make the students employable.

Without any concern for the material progress of Indian Muslims madrasas are only producing Alims and Fazils who are Islamic zealots so that they could remain loyal to Islam and to the political interest of Muslim community.  Emphasis on Islamic education at the cost of secular education is detrimental to national interest. There is no harm in having Quran in one hand if they have computer in the other and have a world view instead of a tubular vision, a medieval mindset and a rigid and sclerotic outlook.

THE CASE OF DISAPPEARING WATER

Ancient civilization invariably grew on the banks of rivers may it be the Ganga and Yamuna in India, Tigris and Euphrates in West Asia or Yangtze and Yellow river in China. This is no coincidence because water is essential for life on planet earth not only for humans but for almost all species of plants and animals. It is this water which faces a global crisis today. The crisis is both of fresh water availability as well as portability. Is there enough water available and is it clean enough so that when we drink it we don’t get sick? This is a million dollar question today!

As all these years water was available in plenty, we have not attached a value to it, something which it always deserved. We have used less, wasted more and polluted most of our water sources. In much of the world, existing water supplies are insufficient to meet all of the urban, industrial, agricultural, and environmental demands.

The primary condition determining whether a region has a water surplus or experiences water scarcity is whether precipitation exceeds potential evaporation. In regions where potential evaporation exceeds precipitation, there is minimal runoff available to be intercepted and stored for later use, leading to a critical dependence on the timing and amount of rainfall.

The crisis is multi-dimensional:

1.       A crisis of management: are we managing the water resources efficiently, or, is there a government commitment to even deliver water to its people?

2.       A crisis of economics: does a country have the wealth to build and maintain the infrastructure to treat and distribute water?

3.       A crisis of understanding:  does the public and do our elected officials really understand what’s happening with water, nationally and globally? 

Groundwater depletion is a global phenomenon.  At least 2 billion people rely on groundwater as their primary water source, and most of their water comes from these aquifers that are at risk of running dry in the coming decades. As it is more than 1 billion people world over lack access to a reliable supply of potable freshwater and as days go by their numbers will be on the rise. As of today there is no law in as to how much ground water we can pump out and we are getting greedier and greedier!

For an agricultural country like India this is where most water is used and we need to urgently work on improved water conservation and efficiency. We can do so much more with so much less.  We need more efficient irrigation, better crop selection, more saline and drought tolerant crops, more greenhouse agriculture, and yes, better pricing. We need to incorporate technology in a very big way to conserve our most precious resource. Economic growth and environmental preservation are not mutually exclusive.  A green economy can be a very, very strong economy, and the water sector can be a big part of that. And remember, without water, we don’t even have an economy.

So what are the answers for our acute water shortage? The most basic is a change in our attitude. At first we really didn't understand how the water cycle worked so we did things like dump toxic materials right on the ground or directly into rivers; and a more recent phase in which we actually know better, but choose to do it anyway, because it’s easy and cheap. This cannot continue, we can’t continue with a bad habit because it is easy and cheap.

Then there are some technological advances and some lifestyle changes which we need to adopt:

1. Cloud seeding, practiced in China releases additional "nuclei" in the sky around which water condenses. These nuclei can be salts, calcium chloride, dry ice or silver iodide, which the Chinese use. Silver iodide is effective because its form is similar to ice crystals. We have to plan ahead with aircraft, locations, met help and chemicals needed so that we can execute it during the draught season over Marathwada, Telengana, Bundelkhand and other notoriously arid regions.

2. The parliament should start functioning for a change and pass a bill that demands water harvesting both for new and for existing homes, offices, factories, schools, colleges, everyone. Failure to comply should result in imprisonment and punitive fines. If politicians can’t do it, the Supreme Court should.

3. Changes in agriculture:

A. Order change of crop patterns and revert to low water demanding crops. Meet the vested interests objecting to genetically modified crops head on and evolve new paddy varieties that take lesser water to plant and harvest.

B. Shift from landscape flooding to drip irrigation method of watering crops. It is now scientifically proven that the latter is targeted or precise watering, and yields better crops as we have seen in sugarcane farms lately.

C. WaterSense Labeled Irrigation Controllers are weather-based, a type of "smart" irrigation control technology that uses local weather data to determine when and how much to water. Thus both water and money are saved.

D. Soil Moisture Sensors senses the amount of moisture the soil has and helps in tailoring the irrigation schedule accordingly.

4. Ensure strict "no leaking plumbing" compliance regulations for taps, pipes, joints and bends manufacturing and practice. ITIs is should train high quality plumbers to repair water tanks, pipes, taps. If water is taxed by Jal Nigam they should be held responsible for leaking taps and burst pipes in public places.

5. Water meters like electricity meters should be made compulsory in both urban and rural set ups and wastage at home or fields should be heavily penalized. Volume of water allowed per family should be counted according to the number of household members and per square feet land area of occupancy.

6. All religious ceremonies from birth to death should aim at keeping water clean and not polluting it. If Ganga is our mother then how can our religion not teach us to protect all rivers and water bodies? Religious organizations, temples, churches, gurdwaras and mosques should sermonize the devotees against wasting and polluting water.

7. Educate children at schools, parents and teachers on water preservation and management. Make it a subject in all schools and colleges. Children are best teachers of ignorant parents.

8. The Army has a lesser known Ecological Battalions which comprise of ex military veterans who plant and maintain, water 300,000 saplings a year with 98 percent survivability. Promote them and encourage them to have more such troops to wage a holy war against drought and deforestation.

9. Open free nurseries for people to plant millions of trees this Monsoon and maintain them.

10. Stop gifting useless items in all functions. Gift only saplings, endemic to that area and assist in afforestation. Offer free services on maintaining trees, planting the right kind at the right time.

11. As Corporate Social Responsibility, each private agency, public agency, school, college must plant trees and maintain them - for shade, fruit, air conditioning (trees cool the area), aesthetics. Public – private partnership in afforestation should be encouraged.

12. Get serious with rain water harvesting. The local municipality should not pass a house map if it does not have provision for the same. At a larger scale town planning should drastically change and cemented sidewalks should become narrow strips with greenery in majority of places.

Only after we've done these easier and cheaper things should we significantly ramp up our recycling and desalination efforts. I like the water train and the plans of cleaning rivers and inter-connecting them but these are costly tokenism at present.

The nexus of water and energy and food will define our quality of life in this century. It already is doing so. Ultimately, water will be the limiting factor in all respects, unless we learn to do more with a lot less, and to reuse and reuse more and more, and to manage our way to a sustainable water future. The case of disappearing water is not yet water tight!

LETTER FROM A FATHER TO HIS SON WHO IS GETTING ENGAGED

My dear Ananya,

As the day of your engagement approaches, I am prompted to write a few words of advice to you, not because they are necessary but rather because I tend to the verbose. I have known your mother for 35 years now, and have been married to her for the last 31. Looking back partly because of my intelligent choice and mostly because of the grace of God, I am convinced that I could not have made a better choice!  All these years have been full of struggle and toil and sweat but because we had each other we enjoyed the journey and never endured it. So I, as a father who is perhaps otherwise none too wise, am immensely qualified to offer these tiny gems for what they may be worth to his fledgling prior to the momentous occasion.

In the last 31 years I have learned some things along the way – important things; vitally important things to maintain a relationship. I have learnt the need for trust, respect, honesty, equality and communication in a relationship. Your mother is not just my wife, she is my best friend and despite the presence of you and your younger brother, she remains the most important person in the world for me.

To trust the other person with yourself is vital in any relationship. To respect the dignity of another human being at all costs is non-negotiable. To seek the truth and be honest, always is of paramount importance. And to recognize your spouse as different, but equal is absolutely essential. Above all, to keep the communication channels open, even when you don’t feel like it is the only way to tide over the most difficult times.

 If you remember these things, almost any differences – and there will be plenty of those – can be resolved in a mutually beneficial way. Marriage is nice in the planning stage but is not easy in the execution stage. Sometimes it’s a challenge to remember those vows, even on a day-to-day basis. But it’s worth it. Human beings were made for companionship, to work in partnership, to experience love.

And remember that you can love someone but not always like them. Go easy on yourself; you’re only human. And so is Aditi. No one is perfect, and no one has all the answers. Everyone has good days and not-so-good days. But when the two of you work together, you’ll get through just about anything that life puts in front of you.

Remember, too, not to lose yourself in another person. There’s that wonderful part of the two of you that no one else can touch, but it’s so important to allow each other your own identities as well. You’ll be Aditi’s husband, our son, Aayush’s elder brother, Nani’s grandson, Mausi’s and Kaku's nephew …but you’ll also always be simply Ananya, with your own interests apart from those as a couple. The Ananya who never loses himself, yet becomes better because of his partner in life. That’s so important. Your and Aditi’s association should mutually enrich both of you.

What does one say about the joys and pitfalls? The joys are obvious, the pitfalls less so. While honestly I don’t remember when I had a difference of opinion with your mother that is not so because we did not have one but because she did not let me realize that there was one. We have always let the past rest in the past. Once you have resolved something, don’t keep bringing it up to re-hash it. That’s not fair. Once it’s done, it’s done. End of story. No name calling; don’t let the sun go down on your anger; no mind-reading; and what you say at home stays at home.

Remember, too: don’t keep score; marriage is a partnership and it is not a competition. It’s a partnership of equals. And don’t be afraid to ask for your own space…everyone needs to breathe, some times more than others. Also remember that your happiness is not Aditi’s responsibility – you are responsible for your own happiness and her as well. As for drama – well, keep that to a minimum. And don’t let friends or well wishers interfere – period.

I wish you happiness and joy, contentment and peace. But most of all, I wish you love. Always love!

We love you,

Baba