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Taking the story forward..

What are the three things India needs the most? I’m guessing there will be a lot of takers for wine wealth and women, but our three issues really are: Water, Wealth and Women.

I have written on many of these topics before but let me summarize:

Water

Really the key to solving water problem is waste management which is totally lacking today. 

Traditionally cities have come up along river banks and as per the current model, all sewage, effluents etc. are simply dumped into the rivers and the rivers carry it to the sea. Millions living along the banks depend on this water and water borne diseases are a common affair. Once polluted, there is just no way to treat that stuff.  

So, a drainage system or waste management system is required to take the cities’ filth and excreta outwards (away from rivers) and treat them somewhere on the outskirts and surround cities with orchards which can use the treated water.  

Wealth

Development continues to be concentrated around metros which are bursting at seams. Rural folks come to cities to seek jobs, live in slums and become a part of the underbelly of the society. Instead development can be spread out to remote areas while making industries a partner in environmental protection and ecosystem development.  

Second, industry would benefit greatly by a predictable environment. For instance, let us look at the 2G so called scam, which to my mind was just a wrong policy decision – instead of auctioning the spectrum, it was awarded on a first come first served basis. Based on this, licenses to telecom companies were cancelled in retrospect for which they suffered great losses. That is unfair – it was not their decision. We may have gained in the auction second time (though nowhere near the astronomical figure cooked up by CAG) but we lost a lot of credibility and foreign equity by doing these kind of arbitrary things.

In fact, once a cabinet passes a bill, it should hold for at least two terms. You can not simply keep reversing decisions and after plants have been set up like Nano, close them or change the spectrum allocation rule and then cancel licenses after the companies have invested. Unless poverty is our aim, we have to present a better environment to industries but at the same time, make them partners in environment protection and ecological habitats development.

Women

About the status of women, well, the lesser said the better. The core solution is simply “law enforcement”.

We can work on social reforms etc. but that is a long painstaking process and no reason why we should not keep plodding at it. But law enforcement is key which is utterly lacking at the moment.

The more criminals get away with their wrong doing, the more they commit crime with increasing level of boldness. Unchecked crime increases exponentially. Filing FIRs, decent investigative processes and quicker judicial system are all easier said than done. There is so much inertia in the current non system.

This requires a bit of a positive approach. There are a few cops and investigative officers who do a commendable job in cracking crime – they ought to be rewarded. If fast track courts actually deliver on conclusion of cases, reward the teams that do so. The Nirbhaya fund can be used for this purpose.

Already some positive change has begun with the Supreme Court trying to pay attention to such matters and that needs to be highlighted in the media for creating a culture of positive reward system.

But, it is not easy to deliver on any or all of these for any government so public awareness and interest generation and cooperation is almost critical to bring about such changes. In that, the news media and entertainment media can play a huge role.

Well, well, well…

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