Catch Water Where It Falls – Toolkit on Urban Rainwater Harvesting

Posted byalaiwahPosted inEnvironmentTags:, ,

Clip_63This is a hands-on book with exhaustive case studies on how rainwater harvesting (RWH) is being implemented, right across India – in residential, institutional, and industrial/ commercial segments. You will find cases that you can relate to with all the details you would need, to implement RWH in your premises – right from preparing your water budget, harvesting for storage/recharge to maintenance and beyond.

Water is what urban India is fighting for today. Cities across the country are facing the crippling effects of acute water scarcity. There is hardly any city that can boast of a 24-hour water supply. Groundwater tables are falling rapidly, centuries-old water bodies have disappeared or are severely polluted. Urban floods are becoming a regular phenomenon during monsoons. In addition to this, most of our rivers have become carriers of urban filth.

This is giving rise to a nightmarish scenario in which urban populations – mainly the urban poor – are at the receiving end. Our effort in publishing this toolkit is to re-train and re-skill a generation of Indians who have lost touch with nature’s most precious gift – rain.

The book documents the experiences of diverse segments, and most importantly, the new innovations adopted – from the design of filters to rainwater harvesting sumps etc. This innovation is what the society needs as it rebuilds its knowledge of living with nature.

The best part is there are easy solutions out there to address this serious issue, and many are already implementing them. And we owe it to ourselves and the coming generations to implement them, before it is too late.

Published by alaiwah

ALAIWAH'S PHILOSOPHY About 12 years ago, while studying Arabic in Cairo, I became friends with some Egyptian students. As we got to know each other better we also became concerned about each other’s way of life. They wanted to save my soul from eternally burning in hell by converting me to Islam. I wanted to save them from wasting their real life for an illusory afterlife by converting them to the secular worldview I grew up with. In one of our discussions they asked me if I was sure that there is no proof for God’s existence. The question took me by surprise. Where I had been intellectually socialized it was taken for granted that there was none. I tried to remember Kant’s critique of the ontological proof for God. “Fine,” Muhammad said, “but what about this table, does its existence depend on a cause?” “Of course,” I answered. “And its cause depends on a further cause?” Muhammad was referring to the metaphysical proof for God’s existence, first formulated by the Muslim philosopher Avicenna. Avicenna argues, things that depend on a cause for their existence must have something that exists through itself as their first cause. And this necessary existent is God. I had a counter-argument to that to which they in turn had a rejoinder. The discussion ended inconclusively. I did not convert to Islam, nor did my Egyptian friends become atheists. But I learned an important lesson from our discussions: that I hadn’t properly thought through some of the most basic convictions underlying my way of life and worldview — from God’s existence to the human good. The challenge of my Egyptian friends forced me to think hard about these issues and defend views that had never been questioned in the milieu where I came from. These discussions gave me first-hand insight into how deeply divided we are on fundamental moral, religious and philosophical questions. While many find these disagreements disheartening, I will argue that they can be a good thing — if we manage to make them fruitful for a culture debate. Can we be sure that our beliefs about the world match how the world actually is and that our subjective preferences match what is objectively in our best interest? If the truth is important to us these are pressing questions. We might value the truth for different reasons: because we want to live a life that is good and doesn’t just appear so; because we take knowing the truth to be an important component of the good life; because we consider living by the truth a moral obligation independent of any consequences; or because we want to come closer to God who is the Truth. Of course we wouldn’t hold our beliefs and values if we weren’t convinced that they are true. But that’s no evidence that they are. Weren’t my Egyptian friends just as convinced of their views as I was of mine? More generally: don’t we find a bewildering diversity of beliefs and values, all held with great conviction, across different times and cultures? If considerations such as these lead you to concede that your present convictions could be false, then you are a fallibilist. And if you are a fallibilist you can see why valuing the truth and valuing a culture of debate are related: because you will want to critically examine your beliefs and values, for which a culture of debate offers an excellent setting.

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