Waste not, want not

The great thing about being in a small town is that all vendors come home. While in cities, you can now call for groceries or vegetables or fish and meat or shop online, it is a different pleasure to be able to choose from fresh vegetables or fish at one’s doorstep.

Along with their wares on their cycle vans, the vendors are also the bearers of local happenings. On a recent morning visit our vegetable vendor informed us that, this year, the administration of Burdwan district has barred farmers from sowing the winter paddy as it is dependent solely on ground water.

As my husband and I discussed how grave the situation is, our conversation naturally veered towards the absolute indiscriminate wastage of water that we have seen at the Visva Bharati University. The university supplies water to its office buildings, hostels, staff quarters and people like us who live on university land (historically, these were given to those who were in some ways connected to the university). Unlike the Burdwan administration, the university authorities seem oblivious of any impending shortage of underground water. For years, we have observed that many of the university buildings, especially the residential ones like hostels and staff quarters have tanks overflowing three times a day. The overhead tanks of these buildings obviously have no float valves that stop the input once the tank is full.

In fact, there is a staff quarter  opposite to the building where I run a craft shop. Almost everybody visiting my shop comments on it because to most aware adults such wastage of water is indeed alarming. Many times, the house is not even occupied. What is amazing is that nobody from the university seems to have even noticed.

My husband encounters these fountains on his morning walk daily but had not really done anything about it. Now with the Burdwan district alarm, he decided to talk to the person in charge of water supply. He spoke to him on the phone and explained what we were anxious about. He even offered to pool money and buy some float valves. 

The gentleman’s response left my husband speechless. The gentleman said, firstly funds were not in short supply and they could afford to buy their own float valves, but that the overflows were deliberate. Apparently, the boys preferred to have their baths in the cascading waterfalls rather than in their bathrooms. And if the overflow stopped, they might complain to the higher authorities.

With the staff quarters, apparently, the issue was different. Since the water in Birbhum district in general and Visva Bharati in particular is very high in iron content, the faculty or non-teaching staff occupying the quarters think that an overflow three times a day might make the water in the tank somehow rid of the iron content. 

Since my husband was talking to him on the phone, he couldn't make out if the gentleman was serious or was just thinking on his feet and making up these excuses.
 

Anyway, the gentleman did tell my husband to send him a list of buildings in which he has observed overflowing tanks. We have now sent him a long list and even videos of the waterfalls and we are keeping our fingers crossed.