Waste water is produced in almost every home and industry, which somehow has been finding its way into our fresh water bodies, thus adding another concern to our long list of things that ail the planet. Our constant development has come at the cost of generation of large quantities of wastewater.
This certainly raises questions about what the country still needs to work on. We have been misusing or overusing water resources, and hence creating a lot of wastewater that is ultimately haunting our rivers and oceans.
According to ‘UN Fact Sheet on Water day 2017’, it was reported that over 80 per cent of wastewater flows back into the system without being treated or reused, on a global scale. This combined with 1.8 billion people using a source of drinking water that is highly contaminated, puts a large chunk of life on the planet at risk from a multitude of diseases. Around 842,000 deaths occur each year due to inability to access potable water, poor sanitation and hygiene.
With so much pollution in our rivers and other water bodies, the situation is set to deteriorate as the population expands within the country. In addition, rapid urbanisation and lack of proper waste water disposal and treatment will worsen the water crisis in the future.
Waste water is generated at all levels- at homes, at workplaces, and at industrial levels. This wastewater is also responsible at times for contamination of fresh water, thus increasingly adding to the woes of people. I
A lot of Indian cities lack proper sewerage system. In certain places like Moradabad, most of the household and industrial effluents are passed into the water, without any treatment. Certain stretches of Ganga, like one between Kanpur to Kolkata, are very polluted.
The reason behind this is that Ganga’s tributaries, Ramganga and Kali Ganga bring in a lot of wastewater and toxic effluents, damaging the aquatic life, and disrupting potable water supply. With a lack of proper channels of access to safe drinking water, people have to make do with this polluted water, leading to diseases such as typhoid and cholera.
Even though the government has now been focusing on the issue, a solution for a this vast and deeply rooted problem will not be possible without help from the citizens. Learning how to process wastewater can certainly take us a long way and help conserve water. Learning the 3R’s – reduce, reuse, recycle is thus important.
Learning about water conservation techniques and the heritage of water management systems is important in understanding what can be done to improve the situation. Waste water can be curbed at a personal level by some simple steps like reusing the water used to wash vegetable and fruits in washrooms or to wash cars etc; water that is used to wash hands can be used in flushes that otherwise use up a lot of water.
Regularly checking for leaks is also important to ensure no wastage of clean water. For industrial waste effluents, it should be mandatory to treat them especially in the case of poisonous heavy metals and thermal discharge so they are not longer a concern for the local aquatic population as well.
By ensuring active awareness and making simple steps, we can prevent a lot of water wastage and hence help keep the ecosystem healthy!
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.