PC Sorcar may be a forgotten name today but there was an era in 60s and 70s when he was regarded as the world’s greatest magician. To believe this is not easy but this columnist had the opportunity to watch Sorcar mesmerise a packed house of audience. What reminds of Sorcar today was one of his tricks that he called ‘Water of India’. This trick comprised taking a reasonably sized water jug and filling it up with water.

The jug would be emptied then and a member from the audience would be called on the stage to verify if the jug was empty. Once this was done, the magician would utter some words like ‘Gilly- Gilly Choo’ followed by his chant ‘Water of the India’. And lo, water would pour out from the empty jug every time Sorcar tilted it after the chant’. Needless to say that this would leave a virtually awestruck crowd in raptures. Water then, was an issue for India way back in the Sixties. It is an issue even today after decades down the line. Only, it is much more serious today.

As we reel under rising mean temperatures year after year, realising that every successive year is doing a shade worse than the previous one that the experts said was the hottest. So 2014 was the hottest till 2015 proved to be worse. The year 2016 is now being thought of as the hottest so far.Who knows 2017 may have worse in store, but rather than coming to formulating action strategies to cope with the impending disaster we seem to be still clueless wasting time on trivia. As studies keep on suggesting that large parts of the world are drying up we fail to heed to the warning.

Ground water depletion is continuing at a dangerously fast rate and one view is that if something serious is not done soon it may completely disappear making large tracts of our heavily populated regions uninhabitable. Despite that lurking catastrophe we are still groping in the dark. Water of India is the issue today and needs to be given immediate attention. The solution is not far to seek. A multi-pronged approach is needed. To begin with the first step is to save the rivers. It is unfortunate that our rivers that used to be a source of water have become source of sand, accidently or inordinately. One needs only to travel across the banks of major rivers to realise this.

It seems as if sand is the purpose of those rivers. State governments across the country must realise that sand could only be a by-product. Thus policy initiatives for reigning in the sand mafia and investments for de-siltation and dredging are needed. Then second requirement is to tackle the strong builder lobby that is largely responsible for ground water depletion of the cities. The deep bore holes without careful planning are pushing ground water deeper. Faulty cropping pattern is responsible for depletion of ground water in rural areas. Ground water recharge and replenishing the local source of water like village level ponds and reservoirs are the need of the hour. Finally, active participation of masses for water conversation is called for. The sooner we do this, the better or else, water of India will vanish for good and no magic would bring it back