Today's topic is how India's water is slowly becoming poisoned, or how the water we are drinking is gradually becoming very contaminated. Since childhood, we've heard that life is impossible without water or that people fall ill from drinking contaminated water. But today, the opposite is true. Nowadays, we get sick whether we drink water or not. This is because our groundwater and freshwater reserves are slowly being depleted. Rivers have been considered sacred, wells and ponds have been considered holy, and rain has been considered a divine blessing. But today, all of this has completely changed, and the water in India is slowly turning into poison. This is not an exaggeration but a ground reality that millions of people experience every day, and people are falling seriously ill because of it.
First, there's Jesus, who can also be called the greatest. Then there's the issue of water pollution, which involves various types of plastic and industrial waste. We are bathing in this water, and rivers like the Ganges and Yamuna, which are considered sacred, are becoming polluted. Untreated sewage from cities is flowing into the Ganges, and chemical waste from factories is also being released into the rivers without proper treatment. As a result, the water is becoming undrinkable, and it's teeming with diseases like typhoid and malaria. Many people are experiencing problems such as stomach pain from drinking this water, and all of this is slowly and silently affecting their health.
Groundwater contamination is another silent killer, and in India, the majority of people drink water from borewells and hand pumps, believing it to be safe. But the reality is quite the opposite, and it's extremely dangerous because many harmful elements and chemicals have seeped into the groundwater. In states like West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan, many people are still suffering from the serious consequences of this contamination. This doesn't have an immediate effect, but in the long term, it affects our bones, damages our kidneys, and can even cause cancer. The water that comes from hand pumps is not filtered, and it can contain all sorts of chemicals and pesticides that have traveled from far away. It can also contain human waste. Therefore, drinking this water is absolutely not safe for us.
Agriculture is a major part of this problem. Farmers, in their pursuit of higher yields, use excessive fertilizers and pesticides. These chemicals then seep into the soil and mix with groundwater and surface water. This contaminated water, with its high nitrate content, is a major source of pollution. The effects are directly and dangerously harmful to babies and pregnant women, yet awareness is almost zero. Even today, people in rural areas don't know that if they're drinking groundwater, they should at least boil it before using it. But if someone tells them this, they think they're being mocked, and they believe that groundwater is still as clean and resource-rich as it used to be. But that's no longer the case; the situation has become much worse.
Urbanization has had the biggest impact because where cities are being built, there used to be trees and plants. There used to be natural resources, including water that was naturally very clean. But now, lakes and ponds are being filled in to build buildings, and where there used to be plants, there are now houses and cities. So, the groundwater level will inevitably drop, and the little water that remains will be polluted. Less water, more cities. Plastic waste also contributes significantly to this problem. We use single-use plastics and then throw them into rivers, lakes, and oceans. Do you know what the consequences are? It's bad for our bodies, but it's also bad for the animals and aquatic life. They ingest microplastics, which can kill them because they're very toxic to their bodies.
The government isn't paying much attention to this issue because they don't see it as a major problem yet, as it's only starting in a few places. But it could gradually spread everywhere, as we recently saw in Kanpur, where the Ganges River turned completely black due to the amount of polluted water flowing into it. Even tap water is getting mixed with it. That's why we think the government should address this issue and allocate a budget every year for water purification or some other measure to clean the water. They should pass a budget for this, but the implementation at the ground level is lacking. Pipelines keep leaking, and if someone gets thirsty outside, they have no option but to buy bottled water because the water available along the roads is completely undrinkable. Therefore, poor people are forced to drink groundwater, and people like us are forced to buy a ₹10 bottle of water. This is the reality today.
