The Mariner’s Country

MAY 2000 - I can just imagine Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, sailing through the Baluchistan wasteland on a makeshift camel-cart, moaning ‘Not a drop to drink,’ looking wretched and distraught. But were he to defy the odds and travel to that thirsty landscape, he will also discover that not only is there nothing to drink but there is no one to listen to him either. Baluchistan is now firmly in the death throes of yet another calamity we have successfully heaped upon ourselves. The other provinces should follow soon enough. Sindh is already wilting.

What is it about us that makes us slightly better than rocks when it comes to taking action ? We are a nation waiting for a disaster to happen or if you are in an uncharitable mood, a disaster waiting for a country to happen. We make Rip Van Winkle look like a hyper, high-strung frenzied individual were one to compare the two, and we are happy to wait till disaster strikes us square in the eye. Then, as we fall, we display utter surprise and shock as if the last thing we ever expected was this. Once it is established that the hour of reckoning is not upon us but has already passed us, we then proceed to exhibit the most amazing reactions as if this was wholly unexpected. No amount of warnings apparently have any effect on us and if the writing is on the wall, we pretend we can’t spot the wall.

The water crisis has been looming on the country’s horizons for many years now. It is no longer a threat having firmly planted itself in the country’s largest city where water sells for a little more than milk or aerated beverages. The tanker war has even claimed lives, there have been innumerable instances of mayhem and breakdown of law and order and pitched battles over water, yet the country and its ivory-tower dwelling rulers have remained passive and indifferent, looking instead for oversized carpets and oversized brooms with which such petty and irksome issues can be dealt with. No serious effort has been made to combat the problem and every crisis has been dealt with - or ignored as is generally the case, on a need to know basis. Mostly, as you can guess, there is no need to know. Any problem has a life span and any problem can usually be prevented, provided there are enough people awake at any given time to tackle the issue. If you are nodding your way through life, most problems will pose no serious threat but merely take on the appearance of a minor irritant, one that will soon dwindle away. It’s an admirable way to live, but sadly it is not long lasting. Those who live and survive in Karachi have come face to face with the water crisis but their turmoil has left large parts of the country quite untouched and unmoved. Wherever there has been no water shortage, the travails of the people of Karachi have remained a distant and hazy event that concerns somebody else. While Karachites have fought and argued for a bucket of water, happy drivers acting on the instructions of dim-witted owners have hosed down vehicles daily with thousands of gallons of perfectly good drinking water. Cars must be washed I guess.

Now, for some months, there have been rumblings about a water disaster hitting Baluchistan and Sindh. There have been speculative reports in the press - TV is not into such things being far too pre-occupied keeping itself out of the CE’s life, that Quetta will witness a 30-40% exodus due to water scarcity and that in a few years, Lahore will have no drinking water, but these have merited no serious response from the powers that be. Instead, more sweeping under the carpet, a vocation we seem to have perfected, has been the answer and those raising such concerns given the importance one reserves for brain-damaged coconuts. Pictures of a parched Rawal Lake and a sign in St. Joseph’s School courtyard have elicited no response, except that the CE is going to Quetta. Why must it require the CE to sound the alert ? What about the little-official kings running about ? Of course there are many aspects of the water crisis that most of us can do nothing about. We can’t ask the good Lord to give us England’s climate just as they can’t plead for a little hot sunshine to bask in. We have an awful lot of ice on an awful lot of mountains and every summer, come rain or shine, the snow melts and the rivers flood and all of it, more or less falls into the unwilling Arabian Sea where it becomes water vapour and drifts off hither and yon. We have a problem building dams and there are as many chances of building Kalabagh as there are of putting a mullah on the moon (and keeping him there). But there are many things we can do and are not prepared to. Wasting water is one of them, perhaps the one thing most easy to control but then how is it ever going to happen?

It is simply amazing how, perfectly educated and otherwise sensitive people, are so callous when it comes to leaving taps open or dripping. You may be educated at Harvard or in Bhai Pheru - makes no difference. Both species behave in the most despicable manner. Taps will run for hours, sometimes whole nights before someone will switch them off. Garden taps leak profusely and continue to do so. Instead of fixing it with a 5 rupee tap, the owner will let things be exactly as they are and the dripping tap becomes part of a galaxy of dripping taps. Soon enough, there is a shortage and so more water is pumped up till more dripping taps take care of the additional feed. We have engineers who are designing software that can tell a man when he will next itch but we can’t get one engineer to design and build a system that can recycle water so that the good water we collectively flush down the nation’s toilets at all hours of the day and night, can be saved. Perhaps a recycling water system is beyond this and the next generation of technocrats but what about a flush-system that can do the job - and you know what I mean, using half the amount that is consumed presently ? I am not a cusecs man, but it seems to me we have enough water in the WC tanks to irrigate a small garden patch. Instead it’s down the tubes carrying unmentionables and perfectly good water is literally down the drain. I wonder if Dr. A.Q.Khan can be persuaded to stop building weapons of mass destruction and instead give us the ultimate water closet. I can’t speak for the State, but I commit a gold medal for services rendered should the good doctor desist from his dream of nuking India. And while we all wait for the miracle man to come up trumps, can we and I mean all of us who have access to vehicles, cut down on washing them indefinitely ? It serves no purpose and simply magnifies an already serious problem.

The will of the people can move mountains, but the will has to be there. As a people, we do not have any faith in ourselves and in the power of the collective action. We are too self-absorbed, but the truth is, water shortage is no longer somebody else’s problem. It is ours. Make no mistake about that. Ask The Ancient Mariner.