[ಕನ್ನಡ ಅನುವಾದ ಶೀಘ್ರದಲ್ಲೇ ಬರಲಿದೆ — Kannada translation coming soon]
Unfortunately without informing Mysoreans it was decided to open the left sluices to supply water to Bangalore since few days. This has resulted in Belagola not getting one liter of water. Sadly no one knows about this. It seems efforts are made now to close the sluices. In addition there is complete break down in law and order. Farmers below the downstream of setukatte have powerful pumps to withdraw water before it reaches Belagola. It seems even police cannot control them. What can be more ironical! To save few lakhs worth of agricultural produce, lakhs of Mysoreans are suffering every day because of shortage of water. Can there be another worst example of total break down of law and order? Why are Mysoreans quiet? Or indifferent? The only silver lining is that the government has released one TCF of water from Hemavathy. This may delay or avoid the KRS water dropping down to dead level of 60 feet. There is absolutely no contingency plan should water fall to 60 feet when there will be no water flowing even on the river bed. Then there will be no water from Hongally or from Melapur. There will be water from Kabini of about 30 MLD only. This is black swan type of event. However no one even thinks of such a possibility. If only they had done some scenario planning, Supreme Court could have been convinced not to supply cauvery water to Tamilnadu. Currently we are getting 35 MLD from Hongally (which may increase to 50 MLD), 40 MLD from Melapur and 30 MLD from Kabini. This will be reduced to just 30 MLD if KRS falls to dead water level of 60 feet. There are no pumps to pump water from KRS dead storage into any of the canals and no sluices at that level either. This is our level of contingency planning. No one is responsible or accountable. VVWW puts blame on Mysore City Corporation. MCC blames Karnataka Urban Water and Drainage Board. They in turn blame either MCC or Cauvery Irrigation Department or both. In MCC our elected corporators blame JUSCO or the Commissioner (who are transferred at the drop of a hat) or VVWW. Citizens blame every one excepting themselves. More than 50% of consumers do not have working meters or have illegal connections. Most would like to get free water supply because during maharaja’s time water was free. It is sad that Mysoreans were not given the true dimension of the crisis. On the other hand we were assured that under any conceivable situation there will be no need to worry. They were even told that most areas will get water supply on alternate days. In the event there are some areas which have not
got water even for five to seven days. Authorities should have known that when water level falls to 70 feet or below water supplies will be reduced from Hongally just to 35 MLD from 90 MLD. Why didn’t they inform us about Belagola going dry? No use blaming the government for forcing to supply to Bangalore. We should learn that there is no one authority who can be held responsible and accountable for water supply. As far as water access, might is right and any can tap into water supply. There is no rule of law. There has been no proper contingency plan. Finally we the people are docile and put up with any amount of inconvenience. Where do we start now? MGP has been urging for an autonomous body to be in charge of water supply to Mysore just like the one in Bangalore with professional and competent managers for the last 15 years. But our corporators who will then lose the chance of “managing” distribution of water supply do not like it. Water tank owners will not have opportunity to earn money then. We have also learnt that KUWS&D has submitted a project to install jack wells upstream from Setu katte by passing Belagola to supply water directly to Mysore by laying a shorter and more efficient pipeline which cannot be accessed by the farmers. This project should be implemented on war footing before the next major water crisis hits us. Are Mysoreans ready to support these two initiatives? We have now newly elected MLAs supported by our own CM. They may be a big help if Mysoreans take interest. How to bell the cat? Mysore’s 24 X 7 water supply: Why has it remained a pipe dream? (June 23, 2013) Mysore would have been the first major city in India to have 24 X 7 water supply just like the cities in all the developed countries. Unfortunately we lost that golden opportunity. 24 X 7 water supply would have been a reality if only there was strong and competent political and technical leadership and also there was accountability on the part of those who have the responsibility to ensure water supply. MGP from our several meetings with
different authorities connected with water supply came to the sad conclusion that there has been total lack of accountability, leadership, and competence. JUSCO contract will come to an end in 2015. They are ready or even eager to say goodbye to Mysore after losing close to Rs 100 crores according to one JUSCO official. We have no way to check the veracity of this mind boggling loss on a contract of Rs 132 crores. While some government officials, and politicians are happy to see them depart, there will be many consumers who will miss their expertise. JUSCO has come as a convenient whipping target for politicians, VVWW officials and bureaucrats though they have failed miserably over the years to supply water to the city. Water revenue collection has been shockingly as low as 15%. There has never been an emergency plan to face water crisis as was seen again this year. Nothing concerning 24 X 7 water supply project seems to have been done correctly from day one. There was no integrated planning to ensure adequate storage and transmission pipelines connected with bulk supply of water to meet the distribution infrastructure requirements. Instead of having one contract for the entire project, it was divided into two contracts – one for bulk supply and the other for distribution. It would have worked if there was enough coordination and technical integration between these two groups. This unnecessarily created problems later resulting in delaying the project and also increasing the cost. No one was held accountable for this grave mistake the way our system works. Even now no one is bothered. When the distribution contract was awarded to JUSCO, there were three phases – the first year was to study the current water supply system and give a new cost estimate if there were major deviations from the initial assumptions and rehabilitation plan, the second phase of three years was to rehabilitate the distribution system and the third phase was of two years was to maintain the system to hand over the improved billing, collection and management system to VVWW. The problem started soon after the first phase. The contract had estimated total number of connections (legal, illegal, working and non-working meters etc) of around 1.18 lacs whereas the actual turned out to be about 1.75 lacs. The distribution pipeline in the contract was 900 kms whereas the actual turned out to be 1911 Kms.
The new estimate submitted to complete the project was Rs 217 crores versus the original bid was for Rs 132 crores. The government accepted the new estimate on a tentative basis and asked JUSCO to start the project. However after a year, they were asked to limit their project only to the original scope. JUSCO was shocked when the scope changed after the project was started. Still as of June, 2013 government has not defined the actual scope of JUSCO work because of ever changing targets. This has resulted in total chaos. In addition to win the support of “noise” making corporators, or to show favours to some select corporators, MCC (read the then commissioner) forced JUSCO to take up work in certain areas despite the obvious technical problems. Such non-optimum rehabilitation plan is a sure recipe for disaster. JUSCO management should have stood firm. Their compliance with such interference shows weak management. As a result they faced problems of supplying water on 24 X 7 later. In addition when JUSCO asked for additional amount of just Rs one crore for East Zone and Rs 4 crores for the West Zone to complete the task there was hue and cry raised to sanction and work slowed down. Can we recall how a war was lost for want of a needle? Again MGP has no way to assess if this is true or not. Considering the total lack of trust and cooperation between JUSCO and the client, one may accept this being true. Because of this type of misunderstanding and deliberate hurdles on the part of the client, precious time was lost. A competent management should have been able to overcome this type of hurdle. How did Sridharan, the manager in charge of Delhi metro overcome even bigger hurdles than JUSCO faced in Mysore? As phase two period is over, only about 40 Discrete Metering Areas (DMAs) have been completed and agreement is to complete five more to rehabilitate the original target of 1.18 lacs with 900 KMs of pipeline. Only these will get 24 X 7 water supply whereas those who are unlucky to have less noisy corporatos (Gokulam, Yadavagiri, JL Puram etc) will have to wait for future date. Again considering the way our system works, not only they are unlikely to get 24 X 7 water supply, what little water supply they are getting will get even worse. It is MGP’s prediction that MCC will fail to
maintain the improvement made by JUSCO because of the political interference and incompetence of VVWW. At the end of JUSCO contract, only 1.18 lacs will have the provision of 24 X 7 water supply. Of the rehabilitated houses, only .65 lacs will get 24 X 7. Thus more than 50% will not have 24 X 7 water supply. Who will be happy about this tragic development? Tanker owners will have roaring business as we saw during the recent water crisis collecting as much as Rs 2000 for partial loads. Politicians can continue to play their favourite game of diverting water to their areas (can they do it with power supply?). VVWW staff like the meter readers can continue their mamul collection by operating valves at their will. Corporators can happily tap into raising mains to get 24 X 7 water supply when many are crying for water supply. In billing and collection operations, JUSCO has been able to make substantial improvement because of use of modern technology. Even here they could have made bigger gains if only they had greater cooperation from the client. The old meter readers who had master minded the system to milk could not be managed by JUSCO because of lack of cooperation from MCC. Despite the complaints filed by JUSCO against the guilty, MCC/VVWW was not prepared to take disciplinary action. Revenue collections have improved from Rs 8.5 lacs when JUSCO took over the management to Rs 25 lacs a year. JUSCO’s billing efficiency is claimed to be 98% (since there are still 60,000 unauthorized connections and MCC has not given permission to disconnect them, this is not a credible number. It is more like only 65%) collection efficiency is only 50%. This is because of the delay in getting approval from MCC to bill those whose connections were illegal. VVWW revenues should easily exceed Rs 50 crores per year. While JUSCO can claim that they have met the terms of the original contract by providing 24 X 7 water supply by rehabilitating 1.18 lacs of houses and changing 900 KMs of distribution lines, there will still be many DMAs ( about 24) without 24 X 7 water supply. Even in areas where system is in place to give 24 X 7 water supply, not all houses will get it because of several technical problems like shortage of mass balancing reservoir capacity, pumping capacity, etc. Who should be held accountable for this dismal state of affairs? While the government will strongly argue that it is JUSCO which has failed, two independent consultants
commissioned by JUSCO from IIT Khargapur and IIT Madras point out several failures on the part of the client. They have strongly recommended that the government should give a new contract to JUSCO to complete the project since they now have experience and they are technically competent. Even if the government were to get another contractor to complete the task, things will not improve unless we bring radical reform the way Mysore water system is organized. MGP has been recommending an independent body to manage a complex task like water supply manned by competent staff just like we have Chamundeswari Energy Supply company to supply power. If we continue to have multiple levels of organization with shared responsibility but no accountability, any contractor will face the same fate as JUSCO. In the future, after learning about the experience of JUSCO, a Tata company, only a corrupt contractor with no scruples will be interested to take up the contract since he knows how to work in a difficult environment. Passing of Dr. Parpia: End of an Era of activism in Mysore (July 9, 2013) How many top scientists we can identify in Mysore who after having achieved the pinnacle of success will take up the equally important role of questioning the status quo in our society and fight for much needed reform? But for Dr. H. A. B. Parpia, I have not come across any one in Mysore. With his passing on July 9th at 91 years, Mysore has lost a great social worker with many outstanding qualities. Just two weeks before his demise, he was busy writing letters to different authorities on the justification for awarding high grade to Amity University by NAAC. Since one year he was collecting information on the amount of money spent on different ministers in Karnataka using RTI. He was pushing MGP members to publish an article using the information before the recent assembly election so that voters can elect the right candidates. He was very much agitated about the corruption in high places despite huge financial benefits our elected representative got for themselves. He had gathered volumes of information through RTI on this issue and was very serious in exposing this malady in our democracy.