Money9 Edit | Water conservation: India can take a leaf out of UAE’s book

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Today is World Water Day and once again the call to conserve the most essential thing needed for a human being’s survival will assume huge significance, unfortunately for only 24 hours.

Stock markets work on ‘greed and fear’. Can’t the same emotions work for water conservation?

Greed: Can urban houses ‘buy’ water at a certain price from the government and ‘sell’ it back to the ‘distributer’ at a profit through a state ‘water exchange’ not unlike solar power? Well harvested societies will be richer ones too.

Fear: Can plumbing leaks invite hefty penalties like UAE? A randomised annual audit will instil fear, fix leaks.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today reiterated the importance of  conserving water by saying that the vision of self-reliant India can be realised only via water conservation at every level.

Prime Minister’s call to ‘catch rainwater’ will require public participation. That’s where challenges begin and usually end.

With depleted water levels no longer restricted to only a few regions, it is time the government takes some strong measures to inculcate the importance of conserving water.

Although it is impossible to ensure every citizen follows this practice, India can take a leaf out of UAE’s book, which has combined government intervention and technology to tackle water woes.

India has made rapid technological advancements in the past few years and it needs to be harnessed to guard against the vagaries of nature.

UAE is also a leader in rain seeding (or induced-rainfall) is set to test drones that will fly into clouds and produce a small electrical charge to help them produce rain.

The ‘Jal Shakti Abhiyan: Catch the Rain’ campaign, launched by PM Modi today, can only become successful if citizens display the required enthusiasm.

If we don’t smell the coffee now, it would be too late to regret our actions. We can then only curse our ignorance.