Water water everywhere?

(Image actually of an oil truck, but just modified it to show you the sort of trucks that lug water about in Mumbai and its suburbs)

As I said, there has been an acute water problem in the city that has been grossly neglected by the newspapers here!! Amazing journalism... I mean, what the heck...

Any case, most of suburbs depends on water tankers as a matter of rule.. There is so much potential for racketing and mismanagement here that this itself requires scrutiny.. Investigative journalists, where are u:)

Some interesting aspects about this:

• If water tankers can provide water, why cannot the civic department.
  
• Where is this water coming from? Some sort of licensing has to be in place, otherwise anybody could buy a couple of tankers and fill up water from public water spots?
  
• Is this coming from inside the city or outside?
  
• Which deparment gives out licences?
  
• Does this have anything to do with water cuts? I mean, if I was running a water tanker `company' would I tell someone who matters to cut water so that I could mint money through artificial scarcity? Could that be done? In this country, anything...
  
• And if licences are being issued, is there any monitoring of water quality. Some of the water we get from tankers are deep brown in colour and dangerous for anything, including even washing clothes.
  
• Often tanker water gets mixed with civic water even in posh complexes due to shortage of water storage spaces. This means even good water is ruined!!
  
• Often the water tankers enter complexes at nights -- the ones who keep track of how much water/tanker enters the complex are usually two departments -- security and the plumbing. Imagine the scope of funds mismanagement here: because residents do not know how many tankers come in (more can be shown on paper by either or both deparments ) or if the tankers are fully emptying their load (this could happen if the tanker driver and plumbers collude).

Oh, for your information, in certain parts of Kandivli and Borivli even tanker water (anywhere from Rs 800 to Rs 1200 depending on quality etc) are not available. The tanker water suppliers say that they must first favor their regular customers and after that, nothing remains.

So, while we are all reeling and suffering some people are doing well for themselves.
And nobody who could care, cares:(

Salman talks sense

Salman Khan, beleauguered at the box office, spoke some sense last week. He spoke of unity and then urged against corruption, praised the sadly paid cops for their courage. But what I liked of what he said was that it is important to look at who is selling arms to actually track global terrorism. Because the arms manufacturers are the ones fostering terrorism actively.

In this context it is intriguing to note a small, buried report in a daily. It has anon quotes from city intelligence agencies which said how when western/global intelligence agencies land up after such terrorist attack ostensibly here to help with the probe, they actually pick local brains, do not share anything in return and go back without having been of any help whatsover!

The interesting thing here is the media fanfare that accompanies such visits which projects the arrival of such foreign intelligence groups as a warm, concerned attempt by that country to aid investigation. But this tiny report, buried under mounds of other reports and stashed away in an inside page, says that these agencies use local intelligence and do not really share anything. In fact, in earlier such events, though specific requests were placed with such agencies which had information about tracking arms back to the country of origin/manufacture, either the arms disappeared or there was no response!!

Imagine, I always thought that these countries were so concerned, in the James Bondesque fashion, to save the world. Obviously I, like the media which creates such an image, is just being naive:)