Should India allow multinational NGOs to sell Indian's their own water?

Should the Indian government make Indian's buy water they already own?

On November 5th, 2018, the Hindu newspaper on page seven carried a report by Priscilla Jebaraj that was captioned, "Water ATMs  may help in bridging the safe water gap" !

i realized to my horror that some water peddling worthies had talked one of India's most respected newspapers into implicitly advocating the gradual privatization of the nation's water resources. Reading further into the article i realized that an NGO called "The Safe Water Network" was all agog about selling water deprived Indians their own water. Consumers would also have to keep paying a slew of charges including high NGO overheads and the cost of setting up water dispensing ATM's in remote service areas.

At that point, suspicion began to dawn. Our Water ATM writer, was waxing lyrical about how thousands of communities across India were apparently heading to water ATMs to get water for their daily needs. 

Now the water ATM idea is deliciously deceptive. People normally go to ATMs to collect their own money whereas with the Water ATM they would be giving up their own money to purchase water they could have had for free (or at least, much cheaper) if the government did what it is supposed to do, (pipe clean potable water into communities). Meanwhile, what IS the government doing? It is building Rs 3,000 crore statues of dead politicians while leaving the living to the tender mercies of multinational NGOs fronting for soft drink peddlers. 

Ahh, where do the soft drink companies come in, you gasp? The answer in plain English is on the New York City based NGO's web site at www.safewaternetwork.org. A key Board Member and the "India Country Head, " Mr. Ravindra Sewak" are Pepsico veterans. 

The NGO has extensive operations in Ghana and has also begun operations in India in Telangana, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Utter Pradesh. Their web site proclaims that their  "priority is to reach millions in need of safe water through the broad-scale replication of (their) model".

Now, no one is suggesting that laws are being broken here. The question really is about our priorities as a nation. Do we need to leave the people of India to the tender mercies of people who have spent their lives getting children hooked onto drinking colored sweet fizzy water? Is India a near bankrupt banana republic that is unable to rise to the challenge of providing clean potable water to all its citizens?

If indeed we are politically unwilling or technically inept then let's by all means mortgage the futures of our children. These kind people are here after all from the goodness of their hearts and will continue to go to great lengths to sell the nation its own water.

Written by Pravin J P Arapurakal
Editor, CitizenzNews

For more information on India' s 'water woes' please read our piece on the
2018 NITI Aayog Water Report at;
https://www.citizenznews.com/2018/09/india-is-facing-water-crisis-that-is.html