Use less water and only when you really need it

EXCERPTS FROM ACTOR AAMIR KHAN’S INTERVIEW TO NDTV ON WATER MANAGEMENT

What can Mumbai do?

In cities like Mumbai, which receive a lot of rainfall, if all of us harvest the water instead of letting it go into the sea, it will help to reduce the load on water greatly. There are thousands of societies, complexes, houses, schools, universities and offices in Mumbai. If we plan and decide to get together and do it, it will make a humongous difference.

Secondly, when you actually hold on to that water and save it, less of it goes on the road and less of it creates floods. It is time we start doing that across the country. Individually, we need to think how, in my space, I can harvest water.

Watershed management can happen in rural India but water harvesting can happen anywhere. Conserve as much as you can and be very careful while spending it. Use less and only when you really need it. These few things all of us can do.

Perhaps water metres can be installed and people can be charged for usage. That will immediately bring down water usage. Each one of us must try to save as much and use as little as possible.

Everyone has to work together. There are villages working for it, the government has been working for it, and there have been key industrialists like Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata, Deepak Parekh, Mr Piramal, Mr Bajaj. In a people’s movement, people from different strata are coming together.