Water / n. 1. a colourless transparent odourless tasteless liquid compound of oxygen and hydrogen — dictionary
Water: H2O. Liquid comprising two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen — chemistry
Water: Seventy per cent of the earth’s surface — geography
Water: FONS ET ORIGO, the fount and origin of all forms of life — biology
Water: Cradle of human civilisation — history
Water: Creator, nourisher and destroyer of life — philosophy
Water: When it rains in Gujarat, killing 70 people, closing down industrial units across the state, and sinking Rs 2,000 crore worth of economic activity in four days — climatology
Water: When the Sutlej floods in Himachal, submerging apple orchards along its banks, drowning property worth Rs 1,000 crore, rendering 3,600 homeless — natural calamity
Water: When Delhi and Chennai go dry in summer, forcing residents to queue up with plastic buckets for rationed water from municipal tankers — civics
Water: When Karnataka and Tamil Nadu get into a prolonged conflict and litigation over sharing Cauvery water, and Punjab and Haryana spoil over Sutlej water, vital to their economic growth and sustainable development, resulting in withering crops, public protests, and violent deaths — politics
Water: When Medha Patkar mobilises global opinion against the construction of large dams on the Narmada river and its impact on millions of people living in the river valley, making it one of the most important social issues in contemporary India — sociology
Water: When the International Water Management Institute says 25% of India’s harvest is threatened by unsustainable use of groundwater because water tables in northern India are dropping 0.6 to 0.7 metres a year in parts of Haryana and half a metre a year across large areas of Punjab — hydrology
Water: When millions in India and Bangladesh — some 5 million in West Bengal alone — get exposed to groundwater contaminated with high levels of a highly toxic and dangerous pollutant, leading to arsenic poisoning — public health engineering
Water: When countless Indians die every year from waterborne diseases such as typhoid, polio, hepatitis A & E, leptospirosis and diarrhoea — epidemiology
Water: When 62,000 habitations across the country go without any source of water and 3.78 lakh habitations make do only with partial water sources — development economics
Water: When rains elude Rajasthan for seven successive years leading to high levels of chronic malnourishment, with a large proportion of women and children suffering from micronutrient deficiencies. When repeated droughts and intermittent food insecurity renders the population vulnerable — grassroots economics
Water: When nearly 60% of India’s arable land depends on seasonal rains for irrigation — agricultural economics
Water: When Time magazine poster boy and Bihar bureaucrat Gautam Goswami gets caught in a Rs 17 crore flood scam for pocketing relief funds — kleptocracy
Water: When the government sinks Rs 1,700 crore of public money to clean up India’s civilisational lifeline and that money goes down the drain in name of the Ganga Action Plan — fiscal deficit
Water: When unsafe drinking water spawns an Rs 800 crore bottled drinking water business — commerce
Water: When the UPA government shelves its NDA predecessor’s river inter-linking plan — vote-bank politics
Water: When India and Pakistan hold 10 rounds of inconclusive talks over 17 years to sort out differences over a dam on the Jhelum because Pakistan fears its plains downstream in Punjab will dry up, leading to incalculable economic loss — diplomacy
Water: When India and US sign a 10-year treaty to dominate the Indian Ocean with their navies — global geopolitics
Water: When Amitav Ghosh churns out bestseller The Hungry Tides on life in Sunderbans in the shadows of monster waves — literature
Water: When a killer wave across the Indian Ocean leaves 178,000 people dead across littoral states, resulting in an economic cost conservatively estimated at $10 billion — disaster management
Do I need to add more? What are we doing with our water, guys? It’s time to wake up.
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