TWater scarcity has been a problem, rather a challenge, in India over the years. Different states have experienced droughts or drought-like situations at different points in time. Climate change in general (and the El Niño effect in particular, at the time of writing) have been giving ‘silent’ and ‘loud’ warnings from time to time – both to decision-makers in local, provincial and national governments, as well as to society and industry. Patchwork solutions have been the rule more often than not, with some exceptions standing out here and there. The ‘patchwork’ solutions referred to, can be likened to an anodyne (read ‘painkiller’ if you will), applied to wounds to provide temporary relief. The wounds start festering again after sometime. This year, the state of Maharashtra in western India, has been adversely affected (with over 70% of the state suffering the pangs of water scarcity). Illnesses and deaths have been ringing alarm bells – noisy enough to attract the attention of at least the Bombay High Court.
Trigger….leading up
Even as I started writing this, the Indian Premier League (IPL) – an annual cricketing extravaganza lasting for over 6 weeks commenced on the 9th of April 2016 in Mumbai. As per the itinerary chalked out, Maharashtra houses three of the venues – Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur (the second city neighbouring Mumbai and the third one, located right in the heart of India, in eastern Maharashtra); in which, a total of 20 matches will be played. As reported in Holdingwilley.com, about 60,000 litres of water are needed daily to keep the pitches (the surfaces at the centre of the playfield, on which the actual action takes places) in a match-worthy condition in the hot summers that these cities experience in the months of April and May. This is sheer waste in a country like India, considering the population and the availability of freshwater resources. Most of what is ‘used’ in this fashion ends up eventually as evaporative losses. We have three playfields in the State in question, and the tournament is going to be played over a period of six weeks. The math is easy….
The reaction
The Mumbai High Court, responding to a PIL (public interest litigation) filed in early April, went on record thus, ‘How can you waste water like this? Are people more important than the IPL? How can you be so careless?’ It subsequently directed the IPL to pay tax on the usage of water during the tournament, to which the Maharashtra Cricket Association (MCA) responded saying that it purchases the water it needs and besides, the water is anyway non-potable. Well, non-potable, it may surely be, but are not there very many other more pressing uses for water than watering cricket pitches? The IPL Chairman, Mr. Rajeev Shukla went on record saying that the IPL is willing to support the farmers in the state (the worst-affected class of people, for evidently both their lives and livelihoods are so heavily dependent on water!) in ‘all possible ways.’ The focus in this proposal – we can call it a policy proposal – will be on those three words.
A policy proposal
Technology has advanced by leaps and bounds. Universities the world over, have been carrying out a lot of research in making the urban water cycle more energy-efficient in the first place, and also an energy resource on the other hand (especially on the downstream in the wastewater treatment plants). Well, for that matter, there are some who have already started harnessing the upstream for its energy generation potential – especially when raw water has to be channeled down by gravity to water treatment plants situated at lower altitudes, and can be made to pass through micro-turbines coupled to generators. At some point in time, one needs to realise that it is the application of knowledge that matters. Putting things into practice for the benefit of humankind is of paramount importance; more so now, in the 21st century, when most of us realise in one way or the other, that it is a ‘Now or Never’ situation. This realisation, to be honest, is not just the prerogative of the so-called ‘Radical Greens’ or the oft-misunderstood environmentalists…it has seeped into the psyche of the hoi polloi.
While yours sincerely has been working with issues related to water, energy and thereby also the water-energy nexus over the last decade, as an academic researcher, and is currently associated with the supervision of a Master’s thesis focusing on the differences in approaches to sewage sludge and biogas in the developing and developed worlds, I tend to tune in to real-life challenges and problems which need solutions (not patchwork though), urgently.
Adversities are rife, and each one cloaks an opportunity (or more) if one would care to think laterally and refuse to be thrown off balance by the adversities themselves. If these opportunities are spotted and made use of, watershed events can be masterminded. Researchers and academicians have it in themselves to be strong agents for meaningful and lasting change, if they would look for such opportunities, collaborate and detachedly strive to use them to bring about the change needed.
At the time of writing, we have a situation on our hands. This can be looked upon as a mundane one, which will pass away like a cloud hovering up there in the sky, or as an opportunity which must be used well to bring about a paradigm shift if possible, in the way, water, energy and wastewater are understood by the common man and the politician who is elected by the former. Indians – at least the ones who are educated in such matters – know that a significant proportion of the country’s energy needs are fulfilled by fossil fuels. This cannot go on. Business-as-usual is not an option. After the Paris talks held last year, at least there is some kind of an appreciation and acknowledgement of the responsibilities that all countries need to shoulder. It is high time that the developing world change its perception about the downstream of the urban water cycle – wastewater treatment and sludge handling plants are ‘multi-product resource factories’ and not simply ‘poop-handlers’, literally speaking.
Whither water?
Now, if water scarcity has plagued Maharashtra, how does one get water? Where from? Well, if conservation of water has reached its limits and is no longer possible, wastewater itself is a great source of water! Retreated wastewater can be reused in cascades. Perhaps not for drinking or cooking, but surely for many other applications? If wastewater treatment plants (decentralised ones) are set up, where none existed before – in and around the three cities named earlier, and also in smaller towns where the volumes of wastewater to be collected and treated are not very small – firstly, the environment will not be burdened by the careless discharge of untreated wastewater to water bodies (seas, lakes, rivers etc.) and more importantly, retreated wastewater will be available as a resource. Of course, one may not be able to churn out potable water like NeWater in Singapore does for instance, but most other applications can be catered to; including watering the cricket pitches. Even in Singapore, it has taken a long time to secure public support for looking upon NeWater’s supply as potable! Worries about what to do with the sewage sludge which would be left behind, can be dispensed with, when one considers the wastewater treatment plant as an energy-generator (renewable at that!). What is more, if the in-plant energy efficiency is significantly improved (by availing of technological and process advice and guidance from the western world), there would be surplus heat and electricity which can be sold; thereby improving the return on investments made in the treatment setups.
Fair enough, you would say. Who is going to foot the bill for the capital investment? Well, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is the richest in the world, and the IPL is a modern-day Croesus! Cricketers are bought by team-managements for staggering amounts of money. Corporate sponsorship drives the extravaganza. There is money all around…good mostly (and also bad at times, as was revealed last year).
I have always believed that films, sports and art should not exist just for their ‘entertainment’ or ‘aesthetic’ values. In addition to these, they must be looked upon as tools and instruments to bring about durable and holistic development on the social, economic and environmental fronts – in other words, the triple bottom line of sustainable development. The potential of these three pursuits (or professions) are immense. These may have entertainment value to a relatively smaller fraction of Indians (art more so vis-à-vis sports and sports more so vis-à-vis films). Here is a chance for cricket to posit itself as an enabler of true development, by associating itself with the water sector (of which it has thus far just been a consumer).
Donations and grants, and also investments (with expected returns) in partnership with the government or industry-sponsors, the BCCI could change the face of the State and benefit farmers and water-consumers in general. Cricket – the erstwhile gentleman’s game – has become maligned over the years, sometimes for the right reasons. Just as corporates which have been in similar situations have tried to revive their reputations by so-called Corporate Social (and Environmental) Responsibility (CSR) projects, the BCCI (and most certainly, some of the well-paid cricketers) can chip in and help out. Restaurants are fine indeed; perhaps some of them could think of being associated with wastewater treatment, solid waste management, etc.? As a colleague at Karlstad University (Sweden) said poignantly, while commenting on some other topic, ‘They say it is not reasonable, because they have never thought on those lines before…’
That ends the proposal. Refer to Figure 1 for the visual summary of what has been described thus far, in words. A sequel is conceivable with a more detailed blueprint…perhaps sometime in the near future. Before I close, I would like to present a short illustrated poem, plucked out of a published collection of poems on water-related issues. It dwells on the water-energy nexus, albeit in a very simplified way and harks at the need for water conservation wherever and whenever and however possible.
More than just water is lost
‘Water leaks out every day, from pipes below the ground.
Age-old conduits of iron and steel, rusted, damaged, unsound.’
‘Is not it true that water is never really lost?
Ground-to-sea-to-cloud-to-rain, is not that what we were taught?’
‘There is more to every drop, leaking out along the way.
Think of the treatment processes, and you’ll question what you say.
Aluminium sulphate and chlorine, calcium hydroxide and UV-radiation.
Electricity goes into making raw water suitable for consumption.
With every drop lost, you lose value.
The water comes back later as you say,
but chemicals and energy must be added again,
and isn’t it that for which we pay?’
