Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Water Crisis - Would Donations Help for Long Term

As I was sitting in one of my meetings, an email pop up attracted my attention for it had a subject "Give Water to Support Life at our Rural Hospitals".  I opened the email that drew my attention and behold, it was from an NGO - "Save The Children" that runs hospitals and that needs water in its hospitals for certain / obvious reasons.  

I was moved by the way the appeal was made in that email, but then my mind was not aligning to sympathize with the request and the scarcity of water that has caused the crisis that the GOI actually supplied water through water train.  What actually happened is that a few questions came up in my mind and I was made to try and find a solution.  Not sure whether the NGO people would actually read my email or not and if anyone there reads it, would they actually respond or not?  Still, I sent my question to them to understand if their cause would end with just getting enough donations to ensure supply of water or they would actually look at sustainable model to ensure that they do not fall in this situation again.  

The email that I sent out is as below.  I decided to put it in the public domain as I feel, every one of us who would donate, has the right to know whether the donation is being used for one time use or are they going to ensure that the donations are put to the right use for long term solution.

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The email reply to Mitali from Save the Children

Hi Mitali et al,

I really appreciate the initiative and would do my bit as I can.  However, I have a few small question - 

  1. Would donations for ensuring water supply work?
  2. Isn’t this a short term solution?
  3. Shouldn’t NGOs like your should ensure that better crop rotation aided with Rain Water Harvesting is promoted?
  4. Don’t you guys actually feel that the degradation of Water Levels in parts of Maharashtra and specifically Marathwada is due to the only crop “Sugarcane” cultivation?
  5. Don’t you guys feel responsible to create that awareness?
Actually Speaking, if your NGO would answer my questions, it would help me in ensuring that I look at doing more than just my bit.
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If anyone of you out there feel that there should be additional questions or if you fee that you have the answers to the above questions, please do let me know through your inputs in form of comments...