R-oh-I

There's an ongoing debate about the need for recharge wells that we're trying to sink in our apartment complex. During this, someone threw in, "I would like to know what the ROI on this is."

This is a question thats brought into many debates - including some at my earlier jobs - as a red herring. Its often done without homework, or imagination, or creative, proactive thought. 

For instance, to continue with the case for water itself :

How valuable is water ? 10/- a litre ? How much would you be willing to pay if there weren't any ? Thats starting to happen to Bangalore! How do you calculate a number for this ? Intuitively, and with some homework about Bangalore's water situation, the answer is reasonably clear - we all need to turn producers, not just consumers of this dwindling resource, and recharge from stormwater drains is a major strategy thats part of this. It also counters a lot of the runoff losses caused by the concretization of surfaces, and its proven to be faster than shallow, surface level water recharging as is done through lakes etc. 

There's also the question of priorities. Whats the ROI on your car ? The fuel it uses ? The LED TV you've bought ? Sure, the answer is likely that its what I choose for myself and the satisfaction and happiness it provides me. But very similar to the same sentiment is the set of choices we make collectively, and the satisfaction those will provide to us collectively. There's also the responsibility that we have collectively that we should not, and increasingly, cannot shirk just because there's a Government. 

Think a little, and you'll see that the ROI question is moot.

I'd opined earlier why I thought apartment living might be unsustainable in the medium term, and now I add one more reason to it - the hardening of the consumer attitudes of our society as a whole. It's unfair to blame individuals for it, for we've moved in this direction as a whole. Our sense of entitlement, and resistance to having to do things ourselves has trounced all other attributes. We live together as a community, locality, city, state, but see ourselves more or less independently, only banding together reactively for certain causes. Go to store-pick from shelf-checkout is our sum total of actions towards living, society and the world around us. Anything else must forst prove its ROI in hard numbers.

Posted via email from bangalorekaapi

The coming water disaster

Water and a City : Saw this film yesterday. Its full of facts and insights of this everyday need that make you sit up and think hard.

Update: Water And A City's blog is here

Scary how we behave like mere consumers with a sense of entitlement towards "Cauvery Water" - like its unlimited, and meant purely for our own consumption. The notion of responsibility, sharing and controlled usage does not enter our heads. We've been gifted with numerous lakes, which we've killed. We've managed to lose a complete river with our greed and short sightedness. And yet we do not learn. Its a problem that needs a demand side fix as much as it needs a supply side one.

The Catskill Mountains near New York are the primary catchment area for its water supply. New York has consciously taken to acquiring large tracts of land up there for natural preservation of the region, and in turn its water needs! Recently, they've demonstrated that even financially, the long terms benefits of this move have outweighed the costs they would have paid for the water related issues they would've faced without this. Can we do this in Coorg and Wayanad before we clamour for a larger share of the Cauvery ? Can we first ensure the health of what we've been gifted with, and demonstrate that we actually deserve these ?

If you see the movie, it explains in great detail how those who use water the most pay the least for it. Those without access to BWSSB water end up paying nearly 300 per kilolitre! Even tanker water is at 50/- pe kl and BWSSB supply starts at 6/-, ridiculously lower than the 35/- per kl that it costs to pump it up from 100 kms away, with almost a 500m ascent up to Bangalore! Unless we pay more for it, and more equitably, there's little likelihood of us learning to conserve it, recycle it, and make the best use of rainwater etc.

Groundwater, which Bangalore uses at a ferocious rate to meet more than half its demand, is under even more strain. Its a 'historic' resource, since the deeper you go, the 'older' the water thats percolated in. Its critical that we not only appreciate these differences, but pay much much more for more historical water, and make as hard an attempt as we can to replenish it as we draw water from the shallower aquifers themselves.

We may soon get real broadband at affordable rates. We're already benefiting from the telecom revolution. But basic stuff like water - thats in our own hands. Its a hard hitting movie - try getting a copy and watching it. Really scary.

Posted via email from bangalorekaapi

You're Grounded!

There was a recent mail on our apartment mailing list which informed us that about 1/2 of the 2000 borewells in our area have run dry, because of which the water tanker supply was likely to get erratic. We were requested to brace ourselves for water shortages, at least intermittent ones.

At least a couple of weeks a year, BESCOM, anyhow struggling to keep pace with the ever increasing need of a burgeoning city, fails to supply power for hours together. Our apartment's diesel gensets have been known to run overnight. These run at a maximum of 35-40% efficiency, and the entire dependence on huge amounts of fossil fuel directly to keep the lifts etc working is definitely not a very ecologically conscious act.

Vertical living just needs more natural resources and energy. The lack of these is starting to cause minor inconveniences and may give us a taste of major failures in not too distant a future. It'll take very little time for these tall edifices to our conceit and imagined prowess and mastery of the elements to be uninhabitable. Sure, sounds like a doomsday movie, but I'd almost bet that 24 hours of no water supply will be a real, quick trailer in not too distant a future.


Are apartments, as they're designed and built today, sustainable in the long run ? An 'independent' home on the ground level can live off human effort and power, harness enough solar energy, harvest enough rainwater, and redo stuff like plumbing etc more easily as newer, smarter, more efficient solutions are found to reduce our individual footprints. The pressure an individual home exerts on the earth is lower, and can be reduced quite dramatically. Can apartments do it ? Will real estate values start getting tied in to these fundmentals ?

Should I really start thinking about that house ?

Its Staring in Your Face

Mid July, and the monsoon is still not really here. Great weather in Bangalore, sure. But precious little rain. They're saying it'll pick up soon, but its a month and a half late!

And its much much worse elsewhere. Imagine getting 30 minutes of water once every 7 days in a major city! Or killing people who steal it unfairly.

I still hear arguments about there being no conclusive evidence of human impact causing global warming and the associated changes. Does it matter ? What's scary is our state od denial, as a species. We continue to worry about property rates, and iPhone releases, and stock market swings.

It sounds like a doomsday scenario, but these troubles could arrive faster than we can live with. Our decades long focus on overspecialization may be our undoing. Shouldn't we all be learning - at a ferocious pace - how to utilize every last bit of freshwater that comes our way from any source ? Isn't it time to not worry about our inconveniences, discomfort, etc and fight whats rapidly becoming a raging inferno threatening to engulf us all ? Why are we so myopic ? Why are we so focused on the here and now that nothing matters beyond the next couple of quarters.

India's population - that had migrated from Africa - had supposedly been decimated about 75000 years ago. And we wallow in the shallowness of our "long cultural history" and what not. Do we even have a sense of how fragile we are, and how wantonly we could be screwing it up, and at the same time losing the skills that'll help us cope when things change ?

To me, its no longer a question of how much, or tokenism. The severe effects of climate change are here, now, and we better figure out both how to reduce our impact as catalysts (even if it is a natural process, the amount of carbon we're helping release cannot be without impact) and how to use whatever little we have as best as possible. We need to let go of our collective greed, look beyond our noses and egos, and not shy away from making dramatic changes. As individuals, as societies and as countries. The developed vs non-developed standoff on who needs to cut emissions by how much seems utterly puerile - you're hurtling towards a cliff in the same bus and debating about who needs to put the brakes on ? Perhaps we the crazy homo sapiens have it coming deservedly.

Admittedly, I'm not feeling too optimistic this morning. I only hope I'm not right either.

Shooting, but in the dark ?

Beijing has set goals for being more public transport dependent by 2015.

This goal-setting is what I think needs a serious rethink in urban plans. Delhi's trying to improve infrastructure so more and more cars can drive longer distances. Bangalore is - well - executing fast and nicely on a tonne of bandaids without any apparent set of goals and directions - at least not the right ones.

What would I love to see Bangalore shoot for ? Let's say, by 2015....
(These aren't calculated numbers, but more to emphasize the kind of goals we need to shoot for)

• 25% lesser distance travelled in private cars
• 30% increase in trips on cycles
• 50% more commutes by public transport. Integrated ticketing for trains/buses
  
• >50% people need to travel <10>
• Traffic free city core - except for public EVs, cycles, train
  
• 25% reduction is landfill-waste (70% is organic, we can try segregating)
• Revival/addition of raja kaluves for interconnecting lakes that formed a natural drainage chain
• 30% water needs met through rainwater harvesting
• 40% reduction in number of borewells
• At least 10 recharge wells per sq km for reviving the water table
• Revival of 15 lakes
  
• 25% increase in tree cover, addition of at least 10 "mini forests" inside city limits
• 10% electricity through solar/wind sources

There are ways to achieve each of those (and more such goals). Government initiative, legislation, citizen participation, activism, corporate CSR and incentives - there are many tools. But they will yield results if there is first a consensus on a set of goals that is persisted with, and against which "development" is frequently measured. At the moment, its the actions themselves that are considered good enough for a government showcasing itself as a development friendly one. The thrust and direction of the development is immaterial, and often harmful in the medium or long term without any goals driving the activity.

Edit: @sids says "Without such goals, development is self perpetuating". Well put!

The Flush, Redux

Shubha filled up a one litre plastic bottle and plonked it inside the cistern this morning. The flush works as good as it did earlier - and each full flush needs a full litre lesser!

Now assuming just 5 full flushes everyday, for each of the 152 homes at Redwoods....

Thats 5x152 = 760 litres a day
or 22800 litres a month!
i.e. 22800/6000 = 3.8 tankers a month!
or 277400 litres a day
i.e. 46+ tankers a year!
At 400 a tanker, thats nearly 18.5k saved

And it probably more than just 5 flushes a day per home. Plus, there's the overall awareness about water usage. other "tricks" - smaller buckets, shorter showers (as someone put it - shower for less time than it takes to fill your bucket up!), reusing the "waste" from the Reverse Osmosis water purifiers most have installed.

Vir Sanghvi on Bottling Water

Vir Sanghvi writes in LiveMint about the idiocy of bottled water. Fortunately, Bangalore seems to be an exception inasmuch that most restaurants do have water filters and I've seen most people trust these and ask for "regular, not bottled".

The shipping part is very irksome - for water more so.

Reva (H)2.O ?

Thats a Reva shell - if Maini has any connection with this - its good news for emissions in Bangalore, but perhaps not-so-good news for water ?