Time For Kathmanduites To Go Thirsty

-By Jawahar Manandhar

It is summer time and it is the time for the Kathmanduites to go thirsty. As a matter of fact not only during the dry season almost throughout the year there has been shortage of drinking water in the valley since last couple of years and it seems it has become the destiny of the Kathmanduites to go thirsty specially this time of the year every year. The sight of people carrying empty buckets, pitchers, jerkins etc in every nook and corner of the capital city speaks volumes of the scarcity of the drinking water. It is a great irony that Nepal being one of the richest countries in the world in water resources and having the 2nd highest potential of producing hydropower has to suffer from the acute shortage of drinking water.

According to the Nepal Water Supply Corporation there is a demand of seventeen million litres of water in the valley for daily use but it has been able to supply only nine million litres during the dry and hot season and upto only fourteen million litres during the rainy season. There do not seem to have been a long term and permanent solution at the moment to solve the ever increasing problem of the drinking water.

People have been repeatedly told that once the Melamchi project is completed there would not be any problem for the next 50 years. But the question is when the much desired project will take off let alone its completion.

Until the said project gets underway and completed it seem the Kathmanduites are destined to face the shortage of water which will only aggravate with the passing of years. Since at present we do not have any other alternative to solve the problem it is but natural that the existing sources be maximized and properly utilized.

Besides being in short supply one of the main causes of scarcity of drinking water is the leakage. It has been reported that there has been thirty to forty percent leakage due to various reasons. But there do not seem to be anybody who take prompt measures to stop the leakage. The one hour supply of water on every alternate day has, to some extent, given relief to people so far as drinking water is concerned.

However, the mentality of people all over the country to settle in the valley has been mainly responsible for the ever increasing population in the capital and to some extent for haphazard development, environment degradation etc.

Perhaps the problem of drinking water in the valley may be solved permanently if the concept of proportionate development of all the regions is activated without any delay so that people do not have to come to the capital for every small job.

In the meantime it should be taken into consideration that in the existing situation the problem of drinking water supply in the valley is the drilling of water from the underground and also development of civic sense among the consumers to use the precious liquid economically.

Water which is the second basic need of human beings after air must be available to all and it should be managed judiciously and utilized properly to the benefit of all.

Art Review
Replicating Nature On Paper

-By Our Correspondent

For William Wordsworth, the propounder of romanticism in English literary movement, nature was the form of God and the true inspirer of life. Meanwhile, for artist duo Deepak Shrestha of Nepal and Shoko Kashiwano of Japan, nature is art which helps bridge present with the future and thus all inspiring.

Shrestha and Kashiwano’s readings of nature are scheduled to be displayed at Siddhartha Art Gallery, Baber Mahal Revisited from Tomorrow (Monday). The 10-day-long joint exhibition is to be opened by Takashi Ato, first secretary, Cultural Affairs, of the Embassy of Japan.

Shrestha in his paintings entitled "Nature, Paper and Art" displays how nature can be copied on papers and can help bring peace to ones’ mind. Though the art pieces portraying nature can not exactly work like the nature itself they can replicate the image of the beauty of nature and console our thirst for it, Shrestha opines.

Similarly, Kashiwano’s art works also talk about nature but with a different contiguity. In her pieces audiences can find nature human-personified and moving. And she calls such movement "New Beginnings".

The exhibition will remain open till May 10.

Jottings: Idle And Otherwise

-BY MRJ

Swearing, in whatever language, is commonplace. Fairly common, too, is the predilection for people while learning a foreign lingo to first pick up cuss words in that language.

CUSS CONTROL: Recently, as informed by the Los Angeles Times, a book has been published in America which deals with the subject. Entitled "Cuss Control: The Complete Book on How to Curb Your Cursing", it is written by one Jim O’Connor who admits he was inspired to write the book after deciding to curb his own cursing and discovering that there were no books on the subject.

O’Connor says: "No matter where you go — in the office, walking down the street, watching television, at the ballpark and especially in the movies — you hear it all the time." He also believes that more people are offended by swearing than we think.

And that, he says, is because it is rare for someone to go up to someone else and ask them not to swear. That leads many to assume that swearing is all right. O’Connor’s view is that swearing is not accepted — it’s only tolerated.

Thus, while he concedes that most people today will probably not complain if you swear, that doesn’t mean that they are not judging you. "Your choice of words determines whether you are viewed as mature, intelligent, polite and pleasant or rude, crude, insensitive and abrasive."

Interestingly, he divides swearing into two categories — casual and causal — with the latter sort being the more defensible "because it is usually provoked by an emotion and is very hard to resist." And what about casual cussing?

"Casual swearing is just lazy language. You just do it without even trying to think of a better word. This often projects a negative attitude. It’s not just the words but the attitude behind them that also reflects poorly on your personality."

In his quest for a less potty mouth, O’Connor advocates substituting words for curse words. But, if, for example, one says "bullspit" in place of the obvious curse word "bullshit", does not the listener still think of the obvious curse word?

To that query, O’Connor agrees but then goes on to add that it’s still better than the actual swear. Why not say ‘bunkum’ or ‘balderdash’ instead, he suggests? The effect would be considerably softened, he believes.

Who, using the vernacular here, would not agree, for example, that "mula" is a softer substitute for another four-letter cuss word that is probably used a zillion times a day?

TERRIBLE INEQUALITY: Moving from cussing to educational inequality, there is this Times of India piece that comes up with some pretty shocking statistics, culled from a book entitled Adding the Education Puzzle: The Distribution of Education and Economic Reform.

In the said column by Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar, he points out that India’s high-educated upper crust is world class; that it has now become the second largest computer software exporter in the world; and that over 1.5 million Indians have migrated to the USA and become the richest, most skilled ethnic group there.

At the same time, he points out, "illiteracy in India (38 percent in 1997) is far worse than in African countries like Zimbabwe (12 percent), Kenya (20 percent) or Tanzania (26 percent), and is deepest among the poorest and socially excluded (dalits and tribals)."

As Aiyar explains, the immense opportunities created by globalisation have been seized by the well-educated Brahmin. But the illiterate dalit remains out in the cold. "The Nehruvian educational model has produced horrendous inequalities, the very opposite of what the Nehruvian economic model strove for."

Aiyar then goes on to say that some silly people blame this on globalisation. In fact, he asserts, it lies in absurdly bad educational policies. So, what is the answer?

His prescription is not to stop globalisation — largely technological and unstoppable — but to urgently provide education for the masses so that they too can clamber aboard the globalisation train as the well-educated Brahmins.

There is a clear message for our own educationalist in the above, don’t you think?

If only our schools and colleges (campuses, these days) can produce young men and women who are computer-literate and have a working command of the English language (the dominant language of the Internet), they should be able to better fend for themselves than they do today if not in Nepal, then elsewhere.

Talking about inequality, reminds your weekly jotter of democratic equality, recently underlined in a news story that reported that British Prime Minister Tony Blair was summoned, via a letter from a jury officer in central London, to attend to jury duty on June 12, on pain of a fine if he did not turn up with a valid excuse.

Will Blair turn up for such duty on the said date? Of course not: he has perfectly valid reasons since he is disqualified both as an MP and as a qualified barrister.

The point to be noted, of course, is that the "computer" which was responsible for the summons doesn’t discriminate when it selects people. The onus is on the individual to indicate whether or not they are able to perform the assigned task. Viola!