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Wednesday December 31, 1969

Water and intellectual scarcity in India

By Chinna Karuppan

The water that comes from the Indian sky every year is

enough for use by Indian population for 20 years. This 20 years of worth of rain water is

wasted every year in India for the last 50 years. The result is when the rains fail for a

single year, all hell break loose.

The reason is unbridled and fast urbanization had

destroyed the water resources of India.

For example, there were around 10000 lakes in Tamil Nadu at the time of Independence.

These small ponds and lakes were built by the kings, regional chieftains and communities.

During the rapid urbanization, these lakes are ponds were the first victims. Corruption

reigned supreme. These lakes and ponds were sold to the private real estate builders and

the people who migrate to the cities. Properly speaking they were usurped by the

politicians and their active supporters who had a symbiotic life. For example many people

in the suburb of Porur in Chennai knew the former minister who had occupied the lands

around porur lake. Once the rain water comes inside the built houses, these people destroy

the lake and let the water flow out. Next year. The water problem looms large thanks to

the earlier political patronage.

From Sivakasi to Chennai, from Kanyakumari to Eerode, the number of lakes destroyed

thus is innumerable. This destruction reached its peak during the MGR Jayalalitha period.

Every TamilNadu journalist knows this. But never you see a word about it in Tamil or

English papers which are published from Chennai.

Thinking that they are saving something, the journalists had destroyed more precious

one.

The Hindu had sent people to Switzerland and Sweden to investigate the Bofors

Corruption. It never bothered about what happened in the backyard. As Cho once said, The

Hindu is still more bothered about the death of a mosquito in Germany.

Still there is no discussion regarding this in Tamil Newspapers and Magazines.

Tamilnadu govt. never instituted an inquiry into this massive corruption that strikes the

root our survival. Is it true that the former ministers who did these are now friends of

the DMK?