Fwd: Parliamentary nostrils were offended, while poor people died......[United Nations Human Development Report 2006]

[Sundeep Jalan]

Social reformers, Physicians, Municipal leaders and industrialists formed powerful coalitions that elevated Water and Sanitation to the top of the political agenda.

 

"Parliament was all but compelled to legislate upon the great London nuisance by the force of sheer stench." Thus commented the London Times on an episode known as the "Great Stink", in the long hot summer of 1858.

 

Today, people in the cities of Europe and the United States live free from fear of water borne infectious diseases. At the turn of the 20 ^th Century the picture was very different. The vast expansion of wealth that followed industrialization increased incomes, but improvements in more fundamental indicators such as life expectancy, child survival and public health lagged far behind. The reason: cities exposed people to greater opportunities to amass wealth, but also exposed them to contaminated water.

 

Children in developed countries do not die for want of a glass of clean water. Young girls are not kept home from school to make long journeys to collect water from streams and rivers, and water borne infectious disease is a subject for history books, not for hospital wards and morgues.

 

"The sewer is the conscience of the city",wrote Victor Hugo in Les Miserables. He was describing 19^th Century Paris, but the state of Sanitation remains a powerful indicator of the state of human development in any community.

 

Throughout history human progress has depended on access to clean water and on the abilities of societies to harness the potential of water as a productive resource.

 

"By means of water", says the Koran, "we give life to everything". That simple teaching captures a deeper wisdom. People need water as surely as they need oxygen. People need clean water and sanitation to sustain their health and maintain their dignity.

 

The deprivation in access to clean water and adequate sanitation can be measured by statistics, but behind the numbers are the human faces of millions of people denied an opportunity to realize their potential.

 

The crisis in Water and Sanitation is, above all, a crisis for the poor.

The perverse principle that applies across much of the developing world is that the poorest people not only get access to less water, and to less clean water, but they also pay the highest prices.

 

Water, the stuff of life and the basic human right, is at the heart of the daily crisis faced by the countless millions of the world's most vulnerables, a crisis that threatens life and destroys livelihoods on a devastating scale.

 

Clean water and sanitation can make or break human development. They are fundamental to what people can do and what they can become, to their capabilities.

 

Far more than to the wealthy, water rights matter to the poor for an obvious reason: they lack the financial resources and political voice protect their interest.

 

With demand on water resources increasing, some reallocation among users and sectors is inevitable. In any process of competition for scarce resource, rival claims are mediated through economic and political structures and through systems of rights and entitlements. Outcomes for the poorest, most vulnerables in the society will be determined by the way institutions mediate and manage rival claims, and whether governments put equity concerns at the centre of national policies.

 

Underpricing has sustained overuse: if markets delivered Porsche cars at a give away price, they too would in short supply. Water pricing policies need to better reflect the scarcity value of water.

 

Water and Sanitation are among the most powerful preventive medicine available to governments to reduce infectious disease.

 

There is more than enough water in the world for domestic purposes, for agriculture and for industries. The problem is that some people, notably the poor, are systematically excluded from access by their poverty, by their limited legal rights or by public policies that limit access to the infrastructures that provide water for life and for livelihoods.

 

In the world of early 21^st Century national security concerns loom large on the National and International agenda. Violent conflicts, terrorist threats, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the growth of illicit trade in arms and drugs all pose acute challenges. Against this backdrop it is easy to lose sight of some basic security imperatives, including those linked to water.

 

In sanitation the taboo remains resolutely intact. This helps to explain why the subject does not receive high level political leadership and it seldom figures in election campaigns or public debate.

 

No act of terrorism generates economic devastation on the scale of the crisis in water and sanitation.

 

Clean water and Sanitation would save the lives of countless childrens, support progress in education and liberate people from the illness that keep them in poverty. The urgency in addressing the issue cannot be overstated.

 

The absence of toilets poses particularly severe public health and security problems for women and young girls.

 

The irony of humanity, spending billions of dollars in exploring the potential for life on other planets would be powerful and tragic, if at the same time we allow the destruction of life and human capabilities on planet earth for want of far less demanding technologies, the infrastructure to deliver clean water and sanitation to all. Providing a glass of clean water and a toilet may be challenging but it is not so with rocket science

 

Crisis in Water and Sanitation could be consigned to history. The World has the technology, the finance and the human capacity to remove the blight of water insecurity from millions of lives. Lacking are the political "Will and Vision" needed to apply these resources for the public good. National policy is the starting point, because without strong national policies progress cannot be sustained.

 

The vision is rooted in simple idea that extreme poverty and gross disparities of opportunities are not inescapable feature of the human condition but a curable affliction whose continuation diminishes us all and threatens our collective security and prosparity.

 

Whether viewed from the perspective of human rights, social justice or economic common sense, the damage inflicted by deprivation in water and sanitation is indefensible.

 

Like hunger, deprivation in access to water is a silent crisis, experienced by the poor and tolerated by those, having the resources, the technology and political power, to end it.

 

Water flows through all aspects of Human life. Put bluntly, the world is running down one of its most precious natural resources and running up an unsustainable ecological debt that will be inherited by our future generations. There are valid reasons to presume that the future generation will curse for our indifferent attitude towards equitable access to water and sanitation.

 

Improved Sanitation brings advantages for public health, livelihoods and dignity, advantages that extend beyond households to entire communities. Toilet may seem an unlikely catalyst for human progress, but evidence are overwhelming.

 

Water pervades all aspects of human development. "Not having access" to Water and sanitation is a polite euphemism, for a form of deprivation that threatens life, destroys opportunity and undermines human dignity.

 

A concern for poverty and human development will only dictate outcomes.

 

Sandeep,

Mumbai.

---

DELETE button is history. Unlimited mail storage is just a click away.

[BhanuPrakash Singh]

Dear all,
We are in a position to provide safe and adequate
drinking water and ensure desired level of sanittion
but the corrupt politicians and official will not let
it happen easily lest their source of income dry up.
And there is no piecemeal solution. Replace the
corrupt. bhanu

--- Sundeep Jalan <sndp...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Social reformers, Physicians, Municipal leaders and
> industrialists formed
> powerful coalitions that elevated Water and
> Sanitation to the top of the
> political agenda.
>
> "Parliament was all but compelled to legislate upon
> the great London
> nuisance by the force of sheer stench." Thus
> commented the London Times on
> an episode known as the "Great Stink", in the long
> hot summer of 1858.
>
> Today, people in the cities of Europe and the United
> States live free from
> fear of water borne infectious diseases. At the turn

> of the 20th Century the

=== message truncated ===

Bhanuprakash Singh, B.E.(Hons.),FIE(India)
Chief Mechanical Engineer(Retd.)
Indian Railways,
H 243,Bagmugalia Extension,Laharpur
Bhopal M.P.
Phone 0091755 2480886
mob 0091 9425600275

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com