Most people think we "suspended" the IWT coz of our policy of terror & water can't flow together. However that was merely a pretext to undo what is essentially a deeply unequal treaty whose continuation would have jeopardized Northern India .
North India is one of the most water stressed regions on the planet apart from pockets in other parts of the country especially in peninsular India or the Deccan. Paxtan is too , primarily because of their critical dependence on the Indus Water System .
25 Countries, Housing One-Quarter of the Population, Face Extremely High Water Stress
New data on WRI's Aqueduct platform ranks the world's most water-stressed countries. One-quarter of the global population regularly use up their entire water supply.www.wri.org
We need to implement mandatory rain water harvesting , water recycling in all our Tier 1,2 , 3 & 4 cities on yesterday's basis. All coastal cities ought to go in for de salinated sea water treatment plants to make up for at least 50% if not more of their consumption in as short a time period as possible.
Equally drip irrigation must be made mandatory for crops with water guzzling crops banned in areas of high water stress like paddy cultivation in Punjab & sugar cane cultivation in Maharashtra. However there are considerable political risks to it , hence these moves ought to be graduated over the course of time.
Another reason we aren't going in for EV adoption on a war footing is coz like the rest of the world we don't wish to trade one dependency for another as far as energy goes. However this will have unintended consequences on our energy & water policies.
The original plan of breeding Thorium as a fuel for Thorium fired N reactors was to have taken care of running such massive de salination plants whose power requirements would be equally massive as envisaged by our planners in newly independent India led by Dr Bhabha onwards.
However given the slow progress we're making in this realm , it's anyone's guess when can we expect them . That power requirement can be offset by renewable energy like solar & wind to an extent. Unfortunately coal will also feature considerably in those plans.
The BSR & SMR couldn't have come at a better time for in addition to massive power requirements for the aforementioned activity we've also to cater to other power guzzling new ventures like Data Centers , new industrial set ups , massive urbanization etc. The key here is quick approvals followed by massive implementation.
Just to give you an idea of what the rest of the world is facing & how climate change along with water scarcity can trigger off events with deep political ramifications enough to upend the world order as we see it today , I'm linking a few documentaries on what the situation is in our immediate & extended neighborhood
& the solutions at hand .
Apart from political problems plaguing various parts of Asia which as I've pointed out before will see resolution one way or another by the end of next decade this one problem has the potential to have even more devastating consequences which wars being predicted in our part of the world will be unable to solve on a permanent basis.
Unfortunately there are simply far too many humans dependent on ever decreasing resources like potable water which will devastate many other parts of the world especially our part .
If we don't do what we're doing to Paxtan , we risk facing a civil war. Better fatalities on their side than ours. However this isn't going to end well especially when both countries are N powers .
Even assuming we along with like minded partners de fang them of N Weapons, we'd still be faced with a massive highly radicalised population with no productive work or resources to sustain themselves . All these issues will manifest itself in sectarian conflicts , religious conflicts , etc .
It's high time we start thinking in terms of the final solution for the other side is doing so in any case & since partition. And I'm not just referring to Paxtan here . BD is turning out to be a smaller yet more deadlier version of Paxtan.
More deadlier coz they've already anywhere between 30-60 million of their people settled here since independence across the country who've now intermingled with the local muslim population here. And that's not all , as BD keeps unravelling we'd be faced with unprecedented numbers trying to come across.
We'd be unable to prevent all of them & those that make it across will serve as footsoldiers to an ever growing 5th column of which what we saw in Delhi recently was only a small trailer.
We're in for massive conflicts for the rest of this century & it's coming at a time of a precipitous drop in our TFR making this an existential war . Make no mistake about that.
Just my 2 cent weekend rant.
Chalo , at least somebody is noticing what I've been trying to highlight for some time even if the conclusion seems hopelessly idealistic.
