Make villages self-sufficient: Experts

Bengaluru: The Gram Seva Sangh on Sunday organised a meet of environmentalists, activists and thinkers, raising fundamental questions on Bengaluru's excessive growth and its ever-increasing thirst for water, which has led to near destruction of Cauvery and Hemavathi rivers.

At the seminar titled 'Bengaluru, A Thirsting Monstrous City' six resolutions were passed, which include the reverse migration of villagers by ensuring the development of rural areas.

Theatre activist Prasanna said, “The villages have to be fixed so that the village folks become self reliant and do not look up to the city as a source of livelihood. We have a wrong idea of development. Village should be the responsibility of urban areas.”

The rampant urbanisation in the city has led to massive devastation and severe water crisis. The environmentalists opine that the chase of economic model which only sees Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the sign of growth is one of the fault lines which should be rectified.

“Watershed management is the way to go. The government is not working for the people, but for the corporates.

The economy is going the wrong way across the world. The crisis is not in 2019 but things will go worse next year. There will be water wars across the city,” said Maj Gen (Retd) S.G. Vombatkere, an environmentalist.

As part of the solution he asked the government to come up with a water policy in the state as the last one was designed in 2002.

“We should have a standing committee for climate change and food security in the Lok Sabha,” Vombatkere added.

The success model of ‘Million Wells Recharge Campaign’ was suggested as a measure to fight the water scarcity looming over the city.

Shubha Ramachandran, water team lead, Biome said that recharge of ground water is a must for the rivers to flow.