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As we became consumers (from citizens), we now drink an economic commodity called “water,” fetched from drains. What future can we expect for ourselves and our children when we are hell-bent on killing the golden goose?
Today’s Economic Times piece on the Indus River—an economically vital yet ecologically degraded river—tells a familiar story. The author speaks of treating rivers as commodities rather than living ecosystems.
This reminded me of how we treat the Cauvery—carved up by tribunals between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu as if it were a piece of meat. And then there are our urban rivers—Arkavathi, Vrishabhavathi, Dakshina Pinakini—reduced to open sewers, free for all to dump. Then we have the once-roaring Sharavathi and Kali rivers, now silenced and cut up for energy.
Man has ensured that nature has abandoned them (to borrow the author’s words). What of the rivers, when nature is forced to give them up? Can we even call them rivers?
It has dawned on me that the era of natural rivers—rivers backed by nature—ended long ago, even before I was born. What I saw—and continue to see—are over-engineered rivers, and I seemed to have been tricked into believing they were in some way natural. The reality is, we now live in the era of engineered rivers—channels that can honestly be called drains.
As we became consumers (from citizens), we now drink an economic commodity called “water,” fetched from drains. What future can we expect for ourselves and our children when we are hell-bent on killing the golden goose?
