Water crisis prompts Chennaiites to conserve rainwater

People learn it hard way, goes the old adage. And it took an unprecedented water crisis in June, never witnessed in at least a decade, for residents of this metropolis to wake up to the need of harvesting rainwater.

After having stood in long queues for hours together waiting for the water tankers for over a month this Summer, Chennaiites are now looking at ways to save rainwater and conserve the nature’s elixir to keep themselves away from the mercy of the tanker lorries that fleece them in times of crisis.

As the Rain God showed little mercy on this city of 70 million people in July, people not just took efforts to save every drop of water but also documented them and shared the photographs and videos on the social media to create awareness among others.

Twitter handles that disseminate weather forecast are flooded with photographs and videos from people who have conserved rainwater – the users tag these handles, which in turn retweet or like them that reaches thousands of users on the social media.

Though the then J Jayalalithaa government made it mandatory to create an infrastructure to harvest rainwater in 2003, people did it just for the sake of doing as it was “shoved down their throat”, water conservation experts and weather bloggers say.

“Now people are doing it on their own because they suffered themselves and realise what drought means. I get 10 to 15 calls every day for the past two months seeking suggestions on methods to harvest rainwater,” Shekhar Raghavan, a water conservation expert, told DH.

The unprecedented water crisis has brought about a “positive change” in the minds of the people as they voluntarily queue up before experts seeking to find out ways to install the required infrastructure to conserve water, he said, adding that he is busy every weekend visiting apartment complexes advising them on the infrastructure needed to conserve rainwater.

Bharathi Rajagopal, who lives in an apartment complex in Padur on the IT corridor which suffered the most in June when the water crisis hit the city, said most apartment complexes in the city have now realised the need to conserve water.

“Though we had a well in our complex, we suffered during the water crisis. We had restrictions on using water during afternoons but after we desilted the well and conserved rainwater, we have water round the clock,” she said.

K Srikanth, weather blogger and one of the prime movers behind Chennai Rains Twitter handle which has more than 1 lakh followers, concurred with Raghavan and said there is greater awareness among the young generation on the need to conserve water so that it can be used when we need the nature’s elixir.

“We used social media to create awareness and now we even visit schools to spread the importance of rainwater harvesting among children. If you take children into confidence and convince them, half of your job is done. People have learnt on their own and they will continue to harvest rainwater because they have suffered without water,” Srikanth said.