This year’s monsoon has dealt a double blow by delayed arrival and considerably less rainfall than normal, which is determined on the basis of an 80-year average. While the prospect of both cities and villages facing waterless days during the months ahead before next year’s monsoon arrives has all signs of becoming a grave reality, the accusing finger is pointed towards successive Governments for creating the crisis situation by not regulating many all-too-familiar acts such as over-mining river-beds for sand, chopping full-grown trees that had stood as sentinels inviting rain-bearing clouds to pour copiously, unabated tapping of sub-soil water by constructing borewells and last and most importantly presiding over the disappearance of all types of water-bodies namely lakes, tanks, ponds and open well in their thousands. The law-makers, lost most of the time in their people-unfriendly pursuits, which don’t need elaboration, have brazenly sidelined the urgent actions not to let the crisis on water front to worsen further.
Elder citizens of Mysuru, then Mysore, may recollect the episode of the then Minister for Agriculture ordering release of water from Krishna Raja Sagar Reservoir in 1950 to the extent of leaving the dam-site bone dry in the wake of failed monsoon. However, the Rain God ultimately smiled to the delight of the region’s people. But, the lesson that episode revealed in no uncertain terms, namely sensible and pragmatic management of water resources, was never learnt.
