Groundwater Up ... a documentary on the water crisis in North India

On 30^th March 2011, Wednesday, Ms. Tarini Manchanda came to our school. She is the founder of an organisation called “The Ground Water Up Project”. We had earlier seen a trailer of the documentary movie she and her 2 friends made, on the website www.groundwaterup.com. She showed us the full documentary movie on Water Crisis in Delhi and North India. The movie’s name was “The Ground Water up Project”. Grade 3 students were also present for this interaction as they were doing a unit called “Water Wise” in which they were learning about the wastage of water and water crisis in India. The facts that we learnt from this documentary movie are:-

•           Half of Delhi’s sewage is trapped due to poor waste disposal.
•           Delhi’s groundwater is decreasing and will be finished in 2015.
•           Delhi has no water shortage.
•           New Delhi and South Delhi have a water crisis, even for the rich.
•           If the water is distributed equally there will be enough for everyone.
•           40 % of Delhi’s water is wasted.
•           4000 dams have been built in India.
•           The government plans to build a new dam in Himachal Pradesh.
•           Land to be acquired for the dams is 376 hectares and 642 hectare.
•           10,000 people in Tehri will be submerged.
•           People in Tehri don’t want any more dams.

     The 2^nd documentary movie was called “A dam old story” which was based on the Renuka and Tehri dam. We learnt the following:

•        Due to the Renuka dam being built 34 villages and more than 1142 families will be affected.
•        Renuka dam will submerge 1630 hectares of land.
•        Renuka dam was rejected by the public of U.P (Uttar Pradesh) in 2010.
•        Tehri dam – the water is rising higher – can submerge 100,000 people and 42 villages.

Siddhant Gupta and Anmol Chawla, 
The 9 Planet Savers