A Fast Depleting Nectar of Life

BUSINESS IS ALL ABOUT optimisation of resources, and when we are talking about a resource that is essential for sustaining life it’s management becomes infinitely more important.

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Add to it the fact that it is a resource that is fast depleting and of which the whole world is facing a shortage. So, water management becomes a subject of paramount concern. I am aware that BW Businessworld readers are an enlightened lot, aware of the acute water stress. I am taking the liberty of adding my two bit on the subject only to gently remind everyone that the problem needs attention on priority.

My little knowledge of the complex subject comes from (a) being a trustee of the Climate Project Foundation, India since 2010 and (b) my company having worked on a simple hand pump that helped in making good clean potable water available to perhaps half a million villages in India and Africa from the late 1970s till the turn of the century-long before that. During this long innings, in 1981, a routine business visit took me to a village and what transpired there made a huge impact on my thinking about water and made me a self-appointed conservationist. Let me first share that nostalgic story.

“Hum iski Pooja kartein hain”

On my first visit to a pump installation in a village near Bhopal, as our jeep started climbing uphill it seemed that someone had noticed the familiar white Unicef vehicle and by the time we reached, there were 200 to 300 people gathered around the shining galvanised steel structure – our pump – on which they had put a garland, an aum and a swastika insignia, with vermillion and also lit an agarbatti. As we got close, my escort told an elderly gentleman standing next to the pump “Baba, in sahb ki company yeh pump banati hai