It's been a painful week in Hyderabad. First, chunks of black clouds hovered around in the sky all day long, while the ground below remained parched. And then, on two evenings that it actually rained, every single drop went down the drain, literally. The very next day after a heavily rainy night, every house in my lane was calling a private water tanker, coughing up hundreds of rupees and buying their daily use of water.
You know the reason: not a single house here has a system to harvest the gallons of water that just poured from the sky and could have saved them the cost of at least 2 tankers (each costing a minimum Rs 300). In fact nobody even has any visible inclination to build that system.
Now, amidst this painful scenario, I heard the news that Madhya Pradesh government is about to make rainwater harvesting mandatory for citizens in the capital city of Bhopal. The reason isn't hard to imagine: Bhopal has an alarmingly low level of groundwater and the administration is finding it almost impossible to meet the daily demand of water. So, now it's thought of making it a legal obligation for every new house builder to harvest the rainwater.
When I first heard the news, my reaction was "wow!" However, seconds later I realized that there was hardly anything wow factor to this. And here is why:
