Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Water is my right!

The UN declares water a basic human right. You mean it wasn’t one till now?!

In a far-flung village in Africa, women wake-up every morning and walk for more than a kilometre to fetch the basic necessity of life – water. On some days they even get lucky and find clean water. Such is life for not only the people in Africa but about three billion people in the world, who have no access to running water within a kilometre of their homes. Alarmed by the scarcity of safe and clean water, which is responsible for claiming upto two million lives every year, the General Assembly of United Nations held a summit on the human right to water for the first time and declared that access to clean water is now a human right.

In the recent past, various attempts have been made to spread awareness of saving water and electricity, but with growing population and expansion of industries, it is estimated that by 2030 the gap between supply and demand of water will increase to more than 40% (according to a World Bank report). Let us take into consideration the Indian scenario. More than half of the population resides in rural areas, where let alone running water, even access to clean water is a luxury, and people dying of water-borne diseases is a common occurrence. The fluoride and arsenic content in groundwater endangers the life of more than 70 million people and 10 million people respectively. The so-called sacred water of the Ganges has now been contaminated to an extent that contact with it may lead to skin eczema, digestive and respiratory disorders. “In the last few years, I have seen that cases of water-borne diseases have risen to a great extent. And more people in the rural areas are being affected because they don’t have access to clean drinking water. We doctors are also helpless because we cannot provide them with this basic amenity,” laments Dr. Singhal, a medical practitioner in Delhi.


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