Jul 2004

Power sector should look for bottom-up approaches to generation
The last six months
saw a historic

Is the ground slipping from under our feet? With India mining its groundwater reserves at a frenzy, red spots are beginning to show on satellite maps. In fact, warn experts, it could soon be time to ring the alarm bell.
Nobody knows the full scale of the problem; it just hasn’t been studied systematically. But thirsty Indians are guzzling groundwater reserves—85 per cent of rural supply and more than 50 per cent of India’s urban and industrial supply is mined.
In some areas, far too much water has been pumped out.
In others, contamination is reaching serious proportions.

It beggars belief that a revolutionary set of water reforms can come from a government agency like the BWSSB. What it has announced mid-June is far-reaching in the change that it will wreak on the very way we think of water and its use in Bangalore.
You have spent enough time reading the torrent of material that Crossover has—indeed all newspapers have—featured on water shortages, and on all things you should be doing to conserve and be use-conscious. You should now be weary of another turgid report on what you should be—or ought not to be—doing to harvest and conserve water.