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Lalitha Sridhar

Rainwater harvesting (RWH) is one area where awareness could bring about better advancements. And the involvement of CII in RWH campaigns is a welcome move. Lalitha Sridhar reports.

"It has always been clear to me that urban rainwater harvesting will require a strategy that has different components. We have to recognise that just passing a law is not enough. It has to be supported with a massive campaign for public awareness and with hard policy actions, which provide incentives and disincentives for its effective implementation. In this case the incentives will have to come in the form of fiscal measures which support households to capture their rain, and the disincentives in the from of pricing of water and supportive urban taxation policies."

- Noted journalist

Anil Agarwal.

The Confederation of Indian Industry's (CII) ad campaign exhorting businesses to come forward and harvest rainfall is another step in moving away from the `social service' mode, which motivates most public interest initiatives. Instead, CII's proactive participation is ensuring that rain water harvesting (RWH) is not just a solution to the vexed water scarcity issue, which hounds many metropolitan enterprises; it makes great financial sense too. Particularly in an arena where bottom lines decide top recall, CII's promotion of RWH is especially timely, apt and credible.

The Executive Director, Ashok Leyland, T. Anantha Narayanan, initiated the campaign during his tenure at CII's helm. Spearheading a two-day international conference last year, in association with Water and Sanitation Programme - South Asia (WSP - SA), World Bank Institute (WBI), Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) and Change Management Forum (CMF), CII focussed on the need to allocate and conserve scarce water resources between competing uses such as irrigation, rapidly expanding domestic and industrial needs, hydroelectricity and environmental requirements. Methods such as ground water recharge, creation of surface water storages, prevention of evaporation losses in reservoirs, renovation of tanks, desalination of saline water and rain water harvesting were the focus of attention. Of these, RWH is clearly the one area where awareness alone can bring about enormous advances.

Says Anantha Narayanan, "I chose RWH as CII's social objective during my tenure because it is a cause I have been closely associated with since I was very young. My father would harvest rainfall by the same methods long before it was recognised and given this scientific nomenclature. What are ancient temple tanks but aquifers, which recharge the ground table? Most dry or drought-prone regions have their own indigenous innovations — they often combined a long-term RWH purpose into their architecture. We are only rediscovering how to `save for the non-rainy day'".

It was important to instil confidence and inspire a community movement. This became CII's sustained endeavour during and subsequent to Anantha Narayanan's chairmanship. Says he, "The best way to convince people is to demonstrate the results. Our company, Ashok Leyland, has been investing in RWH infrastructure in all its facilities. At the huge Ennore operations, RWH has ensured that we pump great quantities of water without buying any of it. The giant wells at Ennore are protected by fresh water walls, which prevent the incursion of saline water. Other notable CII members who have invested in considerable RWH infrastructure include Hyundai and Ford. At Ashok Leyland, 10,000 employees harvest rainwater in their homes — we would like to become 100 per cent compliant eventually. Ultimately, we hope every employee will. This is no great science. The benefits are so obvious that it catches on like fire."

`Rain is decentralised. So is the demand for water. Why can't we decentralise supply? The basis for RWH: catch water where it falls.' Posters such as these call attention to RWH in the midst of scale models and working apparatus at the Rain Centre in Chennai's Santhome suburb. The country's first such `practical museum' has among its patrons Ram Krishnan, a Minnesota-based NRI who believes, "Chennai, fortunately, has a very active movement spreading awareness about RWH. Awareness is everything, which is why the Rain Centre is a point from which more information can be shared in a visible `see for yourself' way. It is good to see organisations like CII taking interest — that can lend credibility which will go a very long way in popularising RWH."

CII routes those who call in response to their campaign on RWH to activist and founder-member of the Akash Ganga Trust, Sekhar Raghavan, who, in turn, provides all necessary inputs/advice on how to go about applying RWH. A veteran in the field, Raghavan says, "Unlike the general public, the corporate sector cannot be approached, even to create awareness — unless they themselves want to get RWH done, they cannot be approached. Convincing the corporate sector, therefore, has to be taken up by organisations such as CII, FICCI etc. Thanks to the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board, through a directive issued to all the industries, RWH has been made mandatory to get consent under the Air and Water Act. Having become aware of the importance of RWH, the industries will have to be convinced about the economics — cost benefit, buy back etc. But if the response is to be measured by the number of calls I have received so far (in view of CII's campaign), it has not been very good. From the small-scale industries, it is almost nil, from the medium scale very few and from the large, it is not bad. To my knowledge, only a handful of industries, realising the usefulness of RWH had got into it a few years back itself, on their own. To name a few, Ashok Leyland, some of the TVS group industries — TVS Suzuki, Brakes India, Sundaram Industries in Madurai and some Kothari group industries. Some have responded recently to the TNPCB directive."

Continues Raghavan, "In housing complexes, due to shortage of fresh water, awareness levels about RWH has gone up strongly. There is involvement from the residents. On the other hand, there is a lack of involvement in the corporate sector and it is invariably a corporate decision. Secondly, with municipal supply available, there is no motivation for the corporate sector to go in for RWH. Lastly, the benefits of RWH are not immediate — in their language `within the financial year' and hence not given the importance it deserves. There should not be so much emphasis on immediate economics — RWH has to be seen as a long-term benefit. The attitude of the corporate sector is greatly influenced by the balance sheet. Cost-benefit analysis, buyback etc. are some of the terms which are used to evaluate every activity and RWH is no exception. Their attitude boils down to that of one or more individuals and in that sense, resembles that of the individual residents. This is the reason why the involvement of organisations such as CII cannot be stressed enough — their support has to be sustained, across all major towns and metros."

The visionary Anil Agarwal did famously describe water as everybody's business.

Picture by G.R.N. Somashekar

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