Heyy!! Hope you all are doing fine. Enough of introduction, let's begin.
The main reason behind me writing this article is that recently I saw a news where a man from Madhya Pradesh is shown bathing on a big tub ( It must be noted that he was not taking a shower. He was bathing manually). The reason? He was saving that water for other uses.
Source
I then realised how in some places there is acute water scarcity. In some Indian villages the situation is even worse. There are cases where no rain is recorded for 10 years or more.
The problem is very deeply rooted. About 40 percent of the Earth's population is already affected by it. And unfortunately, by 2025 about 1.8 billion people may be living under absolute water scarcity.
But are we aware of that? Not actually. We live in areas where there is enough water to play with (and don't forget the water used to irrigate golf fields) while in some places of India, farmers are committing suicide as there is no water to irrigate their fields. We use a lot of water and we don't care about it. The amount of water we use just for bathing is almost equal to 65.1 litres (I am talking about showers). Just imagine how helpful this water could have been to those who have to walk about 10-16 kms just to fetch water which is not even potable(potable water is the water that is safe for drinking). And trust me, the water we use to flush our toilets is considered more pure than the water they use for drinking.
The humans are not only the ones to be blamed but they hold the 95% (according to me) share here. Clearing of vegetation, deforestation, building of dams all lead to water scarcity. Fights between states for the holding of water from inter-state rivers are common in India.
Source
Most of the rivers that irrigated the fields of farmers earlier are now either polluted or are dry. Though India has abundance of snow fed rivers and is a tropical country with monsoon type climate it may be shocking to hear that there may be water scarcity in such a place. But it is eye opening that if a tropical country like India is suffering from water scarcity, what can happen to others.
We as normal people can decrease the pace of water scarcity. Here are some ways-
- By Not wasting water(the easiest one, we all can do it)
- By Repairing leaking taps and pipes as millions of litres of water are lost every year due to leaking taps.
- By Limiting the use of water in commercial farming as excess of water is used for commercial farmin (which in most classes is very much more than required).
- We should also stop polluting water bodies like rivers, ponds etc. as they may be the only source of water to some people.
- And last but not the least, we being the educated ones can spread awareness about water conservation.
(A typical Social Science answer right?)
Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed it.😊✌