Monsoon will come and go and so will the water – much needed- it pours! There is no system in Ranchi to harvest the rain water. An estimated 90 per cent of buildings in Ranchi – including multi-storied apartments and homes – have no water harvesting system.
The efforts made by Ranchi Municipal Corporation in this direction seem to be inadequate. The RMC has decided to inspect buildings whose maps have been sanctioned by it, to see if they have constructed rain water system. “We have constituted a team of engineers headed by Chief Engineer,” said Dipankar Panda, RMC CEO.
The team will visit every ward. They will see if the apartments whose maps have been sanctioned by RMC have got rain water harvesting system constructed or not. If apartments and buildings will not have it (rain water harvesting system) the builders (or the owner) will be penalised. “The magnitude of penalty will be decided once the inspection report comes in a week or so,” Panda added.
But this exercise is arguably going to go in-vain and its contribution in tapping rain water will be almost negligibleIJ There are many reasons cited by experts. First, RMC will inspect only the buildings whose maps have been cleared by it but not the buildings whose maps have been cleared by Ranchi Region Development Authority (RRDA). Majority of buildings in Ranchi have been cleared by RRDA. Thus they will remain out of the inspection ambit.
The second reason cited by experts draw attention towards legal aspect of the entire exercise. There may be a case when a builder or an owner — whose building map has been cleared by RMC—gets penalised. But another building in its vicinity remains absolved of any penalty only because it had got its map sanctioned from RRDA. This might inspire the former to seek legal recourse. If this happens and the matter goes to the court the entire exercise might get stalled.
Ranchi has witnessed severe water crisis this season. There have been reports of failures of boring because of deepening of water table. “There are many buildings including Government buildings that have no water harvesting system. This results in huge loss of water. The water harvesting system should be the priority of the department,” said Shardendu Narayan, engineer-in-chief, drinking water and sanitation department.
As of RRDA, it has department has no plans at least as of now for conducting any kind of inspection of the buildings for knowing if they had got water harvesting system.
Cahndrashekhar Prasad, Secretary RRDA says he had no idea about any such plans. Though, the secretary is quite new to the department having joined the office on first day of this month.