The Watershed Moment goes beyond the superficial to assertively provide the reader a historic perspective a tour de force of the contemporary state of the crisis and a cautious look at the future.
That the book is Aniket Ghanashyam’s debut as a published author is all the more remarkable. In the process, he gets himself a place in the sun as ‘the new kid on the block’ of a youthful generation of writers that delve into environmental matters — in this case water and its growing scarcity of water — demolishing the shibboleths of earlier generations over a crisis that has now become an existential threat.
The book is suitably annotated over 161 pages: serious enough for dour scholars, and fascinating to those like me hoping to keep up with the planet’s greatest challenge – the alarming surge in the deterioration of the environment.
It provides at the onset a historical sweep of the origins of civilisations near major rivers, flows smoothly into modern problems of scarcity of the resource, and concludes with possible solutions to prevent it becoming an integral part of the already dire consequences of climate change on the environment.
Its credible assessment of threats to the well-being of dwellers of this planet is presented in stark reality, without punches pulled. As to his suggested solutions, ranging from the probable to the possible, we must leave it to the future (if there is one) to determine a final outcome.
What is certain is the arrival on the literary scene of a young author who makes serious topics understood for laypersons by employing skilled simplicity in explaining complex situations. At the same time, he validates it in serious scholarship that is interesting enough for specialists, because of his scholarship on the subject.
His treatise on water security is premised on need to enhance efficiency of usage, recycling, the need for innovative initiatives to resolve a crisis that is already upon us, and so forth.
At the very start, he clearly states his approach as being a curator of researched work that is in turn based presumably on prime data. He builds around it a highly readable perspective on the critical necessity of water for human civilisations to survive.
As a generation that has grown up adept in employing data from various sources — and not just primary — Aniket’s presentation is comprehensive.
However, he is, like many of his generation, on less certain ground when dealing with the metaphysical, in drawing parallels with Hinduism and its deities. They appear a trifle forced.
His summation of the civilisations that grew around the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Nile, the Indus and the Yellow river points out the hugely significant role the great waterways played in the development of human societies.
Further, the author reminds us of an overriding human element in the evolution of civilisations.
Vignettes such as on the Dujiangyan irrigation system make for a fascinating read. The breathtaking use of fire and water to cut through a mountain took place even before the invention of explosives. Completed after eight years, it stopped the flooding in Sichuan, making it China’s most agriculturally productive. It remains till today in use, the epitome of innovative, environmental sustainability. He proceeds to modern day preoccupations with water in the building of dams. He brings out the good and the evil that has resulted from the building of dams, from aiding irrigation to helping generate hydroelectric power.
Ghanashyam has struck a balanced assessment of the positive and negative outcomes of building these mostly mega modern dams. He accepts the crucial role dams play in providing relatively low cost, clean sources of energy.
But he balances this with its negative aspects: the causing of floods, while affecting river flows, and harming fish life.
His concluding chapters are a mix of dire warnings and hopeful solutions.
He dwells lucidly on tensions rising from the sharing of water involving nations across the world; on India’s borders and within it, as well as between its states.
These examples serve to draw sharp attention on the growing importance of a dwindling, life sustaining resource. Examples of innovative means to preserve the world water reserves are all grist to the mill of our intrepid author, as he laces descriptions of successful initiatives such as water harvesting with helpful observations. Interestingly, Aniket chooses to look to the past rather than the present or the future for solutions to water security.
He holds out hope in his narratives on individual efforts to rejuvenate arid lands, such as Rajendra Singh’s heroic restoration of not just agricultural land, but also forest cover, earning him the title the ‘Water Man’ of Rajasthan. Though this triumph is well known, Aniket succeeds in seamlessly weaving this uplifting tale into a series of setbacks to water conservation and wastage elsewhere.
Observing water crises around the world, he takes us on a riveting journey from down under, in Australia, through Syria to war torn Yemen, culminating in a personalised account of its consequences in South Africa.
In all this, a leitmotif runs through the book with scary consistency — there is no alternative to water and without it, life will die.
To his credit, he does tackle the sensitive cleansing of India’s sacred, but polluted Ganges river. In this he treads a middle road, wondering if India can replicate accomplishments of other governments, particularly in the cleaning of the Rhine and the Thames. He clinically dissects the challenges that were faced and overcome in the cleaning of the two rivers.
On the Ganges, he boldly enters an arena where science meets faith. He accepts that forms of worship hinder efforts to clean the river. In the end, however, Aniket retreats to a prudent final view, saying: “it’s a tall task, but it is not impossible”.
In a culminating overview he quotes Goldman Sachs as describing water as the petroleum of the next century. And If anyone knows where money is to be made, it’s probably Goldman Sachs. Of course others with a nose for money making — such as the likes of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg — will counter with the view that it is data that is the real oil. In any case, we can all agree that oil and its fossil fuel family is on the way out in the concerted global bid to curb climate change.
Hopefully, the economics of pricing of this scarce commodity, the importance of attracting investment to finance initiatives that can be effectively deployed to secure water as an adequately and the ensuring of annual equitable distribution of resource emerge soon enough.
Aniket has made an impressive debut as a published author of books with this useful contribution towards understanding the urgency in securing this valuable resource. That all of us, as well as the public and private sectors across the world must work together in pursuit of water security is the bottom line for Aniket.
Quite frankly, it should be for all of us.
Moses Manoharan is a veteran journalist.