Rain Water Harvesting - A green solution to the water crisis

Water has always been one of Kalimpong's most precious resources and has always been in shortage in spite of abundant sources. The town area has always been affected the most with serious shortage of drinking water. With the increase in population, the problem seems to be aggravating faster than a solution can be thought of. There have been plans to address this issue but these plans have been more reactive than proactive. Ideally the water planning should be done along with the town planning but is there such a thing as town planning in Kalimpong? Well till the time we do have a planning team, something has to be done by the people themselves.

In the past five years, the district of Darjeeling has received an average rainfall of 3234 mm with 2012 receiving the least (2970 mm). For the sake of our discussion, even if we assume that Kalimpong receives 65% of the average rainfall in the whole district, it till comes to a very decent amount of 2100 mm. Let us try and understand what exactly this means and why this is good news for us.

Rainfall Distribution chart

Rainfall Distribution for the last five years in Darjeeling District

We are interested in knowing how much rain water we can collect in an year. Let us for the sake of easy calculation assume that the area of the roof of a house is 100 square meters. Now, if the average rainfall is 2100 mm which is nothing but 2.1 meters of rain per year,

the total volume of rain = total surface area of roof  X average rainfall.

This comes to 2.1 x 100 = 210 cubic meters of rain. Do you recall how many liters of water is equal to 1 cubic meter? Yes! It's a whopping 1000 liters! So, in a year a single house can collect 2,10,000 liters of water.

Let us not get ahead of ourselves and let us for the time being assume that we can harvest 60% of the water. (This could be higher given the fact that the hills have a much less polluted environment and hence we would waste lesser amount of water in clearing the whole system before we start collecting the water.) That would mean we would be able to collect approximately 1,26,000 liters of water. That comes to around 345 liters of water per day. Don't you think for an average household, 345 liters of water is enough for the basic needs?

However, this rainfall does not fall evenly throughout the year but is concentrated mostly during the months between May to September, while the rest of the year receives low or very less rainfall. The dry summer seasons are the most difficult times when many of the smaller streams dry up too.

The idea would be to utilize as much rain water as required during the rainy season and store the rest for the rest of the year. But that is where the difficulty arises. One of the best ways of doing this is ground water recharging, which is basically making an arrangement by which the rain water is allowed to seep into the ground rather than flow along the surface in to the streams.

In the plains, ground water charging helps in increasing the underground water level which can then be extracted during the summers from wells. In the mountains, the ground water usually comes out as springs or "jhora". So if the ground water level is maintained, these jhoras will not dry up in the dry seasons. A number of water reservoirs could be built along the mountain all interconnected such that once the reservoir is full, it's overflowing water would be directed to those below. In populated areas water towers could be built which would automatically fill up without the need of pumps, just by the force of gravity. The only requirement would be to collect the water at a higher area and then transfer it to the towers.

The aim would be to minimize water losses through surface runaway and evaporation. This would also help in decreasing landslides, as one of the reasons for landslides is the removal of the top soil due to flowing water.

Rain water harvesting is a very viable and possible option for the people to solve their water problems and if we move forward in a planned way this is not difficult to achieve. Even now many houses use rain water for daily needs, we just need to make these systems more optimized and efficient.

Join us in our wiki to discuss and analyze optimum ways to harvest rain water in our Water Infrastructure section.

Don't deny the Right to Work. Don't Strike

One of the most important factors for growth is work. Not just work, but hard and smart work. You cannot expect to get any results if you do not put in any effort. Japan has improved leaps and bounds in spite of the fact that during the second world war, it faced defeat against the Americans. Their economy was in shambles but their spirit wasn't. A disaster like Hiroshima-Nagasaki could not destroy them. They rose up and took control. If you look at any successful economy, you will notice the element of hard work always present in it.

You don't need to go so far to see the effects of hard work. Look at Indian cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad. People work very hard in these cities and they are rewarded with growth and success. Why is it that people from different parts of the country come to these cities in the hope of growth? How is it that these people who come to the cities suddenly begin to work so hard? Is it that there is some tonic that is administered to them as soon as they enter the city? The spirit of work is an essential part of the human nature. Not working is basically suppressing this basic human nature. And it only results in stunted human growth and an economic slowdown.

Strikes lead to a lot of losses and is a supposed weapon against injustice. But before you strike, sit for a while and think about what the strike is all about. Who would it affect the most, specially in the long run? Look at what it has done to the state. Look at what it has done to Kolkata. No one wants to invest in a state that spends half the days in a year striking. The worst part is that the people are irreversibly damaged. After years and years of not working, hard work becomes just a myth. Why would you want to repeat the same story in the hills?

In the past one month, there has been less than a week of work. Think of all the losses that the businesses have incurred. Think of all the common people who have not been paid, who have no food left in the house. Fortunately it's not a tourist season during the rains and as a result the losses may have been lesser. People are affected the most when their primary earnings are restricted to a few months of the year. Any strike at this point not only affects them then but through the rest of the year. The leaders must understand this.

At this point, one may want to consider the fact that what if half the population has no work and this is used as a tool to propagate other issues through the medium of strikes. Firstly, what about the remaining percentage of people who do have work? Secondly, isn't it very important that steps be taken to ensure that everyone has work? I understand that the government is not doing much but one of the questions I have is are we fully utilizing what we have currently? Is there a way of non-cooperation without affecting work?

Work is a must and not just by a few but by everyone. Dedicate a part of your daily life to community work, help it grow and make it part of who you are. Make work a part of your identity.

It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.
- Benjamin Franklin

WUTH and Gorkhaland

WUTH is basically about the development of the hills within the existing governing body with the help of local people and volunteers. The demand for Gorkhaland is not a topic that WUTH would be involving itself in. We will continue to focus on the growth of the people and the region with a holistic view. We would like WUTH to be a sort of a consultancy which is interested in the people, rather than the political state of the region. Our focus would be to interface with the governing body and the people, so that no matter what, the development plans continue without any hindrance.

In India today, political parties are all transient and keep changing and with them changes the policies and plans. People are generally tired of corruption, mud-slinging, poverty, and denial of basic rights. The WUTH team believes that every human should have their basic rights and necessities, a stable source of earning, freedom to contribute to the growth of the society and at the same time save the environment, go green.

Demand for Gorkhaland is more of a fight for identity and WUTH is not involved in it. WUTH however may from time to time suggest ideas that could be a part of the identity of the people from the hills, if they choose to accept it. The country may start to look at the hills if they can become a role model for the rest of the country. But all of that depends on the people and the people alone.

We at WUTH believe that nothing is more convincing than success stories. Look at the successful countries, the successful states. Everyone wants to be like them, everyone knows them. The hills could be that success story. The hills could be the black horse that wins the race and sets new benchmarks. Educate India that the people from the hills are very much a part of India and that they should come visit the hills to learn what a good life should be like.

An introduction to the wake up call

There has been an urgency for a change in the hills. People are tired of waiting for someone to come and save them and they have decided to take matters in their own hands. They have been fighting for an identity, for growth and for prosperity but either too little action has been taken or in some cases none at all. The state center has been too involved in its own problems to pay any attention to those in the hills.

Could West Bengal have averted this situation? Did the state learn nothing from 1988? So what if it was a different party in power back then? Everyone knew what had happened. The demands, the desperation, the reasons, the losses, the deaths. So what happened to the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council? Has anything improved since its formation? Were all the resources and funds under the DGHC utilized efficiently? Could something else have been done? Or did everything get distributed among a selected few and the rest that trickled down to the common was too less, too late?

The Gorkha Territorial Administration (GTA) recently formed doesn't seem to be functioning too well either. May be it is so because it hasn't had enough time to start something concrete or maybe those in the administration didn't really know where to start from given the mammoth task that lay ahead. Would the formation of a state be anything different? Would it suddenly solve all the problems? Until and unless, every person is involved in the growth story, the task will continue to be daunting, no matter how much fund is available. It however may increase some corruption here and there.

What I would love to understand is how would it help if a new state was to be formed? I have heard about the identity crisis and I feel that it is true that people from the West Bengal hills are usually put under the category "Nepali" owing to the spoken language. But truth be told, having lived in many cities in India, I have come to the conclusion that people are usually unaware of what's happening beyond their day to day vicinity. Just forming a state may not give the people an identity. They would probably still be called Nepali and not Gorkhali. Instead an identity must be formed first. People must know how Gorkhali is different from others and what makes them who they are.

I would like to emphasize on the fact that development and change must come from within. There has to be a plan of development which each and every one must be aware of and must be accountable for. They must be responsible for attaining it. If the base of the building has not been made strong, no matter how much money you put in to make a fancy house or how hard you try to make it stable, it will always fall eventually. And that is what I ask the people of the hills to do. Make your base stronger.

I put forth the idea of RAIFOR to make a growth story out of  the hills. A model that not only creates the Gorkha identity but becomes a benchmark for the rest of India to follow. RAIFOR stands for Recognize, Analyze, Improvise, Finalize, Organize and Realize. We recognize what the problems are and then analyze them. We prioritize them according to their importance and how they fit into our plan 3 years from now. We list down what are the things that we already have and whether there are anyways to make them more efficient. We improvise with the available resources and figure out all the options that we have and what are the extra resources we may require. Next we finalize on the option that is the most suitable under the given circumstances and also in the long run. Once we have the plan all we need to do is organize the man power and resources. If we are short of something, we ask the government. If they don't help us then we ask from the rest of India. Either way we get the job done. And if the state government doesn't help us then they will have no part in our success and that will make the demand for a new state stronger and more reasonable. If they do, then we grow and continue to have our autonomy. With proper planning and organization, no one can deny our right to grow and realize our dreams. It's a win-win situation. All we must do now is focus our energy in a more constructive direction, one that has a future.