Although food scarcity has attained attention, what our leaders often overlook is that it is high time India did something about its water scarcity
Hazira is a port city near Surat, Gujarat. located 84 km on the east of lucknow on the lucknow-Varanasi road, Jagdishpur is home to units of Bharat Electrical limited (BHEl), Steel Authority
of India and Indo Gulf Fertilisers limited Company. Due to the efforts of Rahul Gandhi, Jagdishpur is developing into an industrial town. The town falls in the Amethi constituency. It has an lPG bottling plant, which receives gas from Hazira through pipes. The lPG travels a distance of 1,750 km from Hazira to Jagdishpur.
Around 80 km east of Patna is a tiny industrial town called Barauni. The town has a huge Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) petroleum refinery. The refinery processes crude oil and produces everything that comes from crude oil — lPG, naphtha, petrol, Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF), kerosene, diesel, light diesel oil (used mainly by farmers, tractors, ships), farnese oil (industrial oil used in boilers, ships), bitumen, et al.
The IOC refinery in Barauni gets crude oil from Haldia, that is about 50 km from Kolkata. Haldia is at the mouth of multiple rivers and lacks depth. large ships can’t reach there and land at Paradip instead because it has enough depth. About 400 km from Haldia, Paradip falls in Orissa. From vessels, crude oil is offloaded and transported to Haldia through pipes.
From there, the same crude oil is transported by pipes to Barauni, 624 km away. After the crude oil is refined, products such as petrol, diesel and kerosene are transported to Kanpur, 700 km away, by pipes.
The IOC’s loni-based lPG bottling plant gets gas through pipes from Jamnagar. located at the border of Delhi, that falls in UP’s Ghaziabad, loni is 1,269 km from Jamnagar.
Since pipelines are the cheapest form of transportation, oil and gas companies such as IOC, ONGC, BPl, HPCl and GAIl have built a large network all over India. Crude oil is virtually mud and has a tendency to stick on the pipes’ inner walls. To deal with that kind of problem, companies set up booster pump stations so that crude oil keeps moving.
If oil and gas — which are highly inflammable — can be made available accident-free via a network of pipelines all over India, why can’t the Government of India create a network of pipelines that can transport water from surplus regions to the deficient onesIJ
Indian diplomats, scholars and students abroad face embarrassing moments primarily on two grounds — India’s discriminatory caste order and record on malnutrition. Reports keep appearing in foreign media that 42 per cent Indian children aged up to five are chronically malnourished.
India gives food aid to many African countries. No country has as many anti-malnutrition programmes running together as India. But the problem persists as malnutrition doesn’t decline. According to the WHO, “Clinically, malnutrition is characterised by inadequate or excess intake of protein, energy, and micronutrients.”
It further says, “Nutritional status is compromised where people are exposed to high levels of infection due to unsafe and insufficient water supply and inadequate sanitation.”
Going by the WHO’s definition of what causes malnutrition, Indian can never resolve this problem unless its citizens get enough and good quality water.
In north India in summers, rivers flow through the terai region or India bordering Nepal. You will find that the water is cold if not chilled at places. The entire water body finally gets wasted in the Bay of Bengal.
Why can’t this surplus water be tamed and diverted through a chain of pipelines to water-deficient regions of Bundelkhand, Rajasthan, parts of Gujarat, Maharashtra and KarnatakaIJ After all, the poor are hit the hardest. Dalits and tribals form a bulk of the poor. It is time India adopted the new slogan of ‘Water Prosperity’.