By IANS
New Delhi : Underlining the need to address the water crisis issue urgently and with a warning about the danger of water scarcity due to retreat of glaciers, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday urged all Panchayat and municipal bodies to come forward with their water conservation strategies.
“Any strategy for water conservation, management and utilization cannot be imposed on the country from here in New Delhi. We need a community based, region specific strategy that is owned by the people who have to implement it,” Manmohan Singh said here.
“I sincerely believe that our Panchayati Raj institutions and our municipalities and local bodies, along with civil society organizations, have a critical and vital role to play in this regard,” he said at the National Congress on Ground Water 2007.
“I want each and every panchayat and municipality to come forward with a water conservation strategy.
“We have the impressive example of Chennai city that had a city-based, neighbourhood-based strategy. Every village, every locality, every neighbourhood, every town should have a rainwater harvesting scheme. Panchayats must be actively engaged in ground water recharge and the renovation and maintenance of water bodies,” the prime minister clarified.
He stressed the need to “adopt measures both individually and collectively, as a family, as a community, as a village and locality”.
“I appeal to each and every citizen of our country to make genuine and wholehearted effort to conserve water, prevent its over exploitation and pollution of ground water.
“The challenge of water scarcity can only be addressed in an interdisciplinary manner, in a holistic manner, in a consensual manner.
“Water is life. Yet, humankind has not done enough to replenish, conserve and safeguard our sources of water supply. On the contrary, given the threat of climate change and global warming, we face the real prospect of reduced supply of water.
“This threat is of particular concern to us in India since we have, since times immemorial, depended on glaciers for our water supply in this part of our subcontinent,” he said.
Underlining the danger of human conflict based on need for water, he said: “We must resolve together to ensure the equitable, efficient and environmentally friendly use of this life giving natural resource.
“It is now widely recognized that water, especially potable water is finite and a vulnerable resource. There is also a wide consensus that water development and management should be based on a participatory approach, involving all stakeholders,” he said adding that the Dublin Conference drew our attention to the central role of women in water management.
“I believe today there is even greater need to address the challenge of water scarcity with a much greater sense of urgency.”
The prime minister also urged the Advisory Council on Artificial Recharge of Ground Water to create widespread national awareness and a genuine national consensus on “an equitable, efficient and environmentally sustainable water policy for our vast country”.
Juxtaposing the excess of water in the form of floods and acute scarcity of water during a drought, Manmohan Singh said: “Our country faces the ironical challenge of managing every year both an embarrassment of riches and scarcity of water.
“The Government deals, at the same time, with the challenge of both floods and the challenge of drought. We cannot address these two problems in isolation.”
“Indeed the challenge of floods is increasingly linked to poor soil conservation, lack of afforestation and inadequate infrastructure for water conservation. Similarly, the problem of drought is also a manifestation, at least in pockets, of inadequate investment in repair, renovation and maintenance of water bodies, recharge and rainwater harvesting.”
Elaborating on government initiatives, the prime minister said: “We are in the process of formulating a scheme for dug well recharge in hard rock regions of the country covering seven states”.