Grabbing Water From Future Generations
Suresh Ponnusami sat back on his porch by the road south of the Indian textile town
of Tirupur. He was not rich, but for the owner of a two-acre farm in the backwoods of
a developing country he was doing rather well. He had a TV, a car, and a maid to bring
him drinks and ensure his traditional white Indian robes were freshly laundered every
morning.
The source of his wealth, he said, was a large water reservoir beside his house. And
as we chatted, a tanker drew up on the road. The driver dropped a large pipe from his
vehicle into the reservoir and began sucking up the contents.
Ponnusami explained: “I no longer grow crops, I farm water. The tankers come about
ten times a day. I don’t have to do anything except keep my reservoir full.” To do that,
he had drilled boreholes deep into the rocks beneath his fi elds, and inserted pumps that
brought water to the surface 24 hours a day. He sold every tanker load for about four
dollars. “It’s a good living, and it’s risk-free,” he said. “While the water lasts.”. . .
We are emptying these giant natural reservoirs far faster than the rains can refi ll
them. The water tables are falling, the wells have to be dug ever deeper, and the pumps
must be ever bigger. We are mining water now that should be the birthright of future
generations.
In India, the water is being taken for industry, for cities, and especially for agriculture.
Once a country of widespread famine, India has seen an agricultural revolution in the
past half century. India now produces enough food to feed all its people; the fact that
many Indians still go hungry today is an economic and political puzzle, because the
country exports rice.
But that may not last. Researchers estimate that a quarter of India’s food is irrigated
with underground water that nature is not replacing. The revolution is living on borrowed
water and borrowed time. Who will feed India when the water runs out?
Nobody knows how much water is buried beneath our feet. But we do know that the
reserves are being emptied. The crisis is global and growing, but remains largely out of
sight and out of mind. . . .
central idea of this text written like a 8th grader and left short