In the 19th Century the great English poet Coleridge wrote, ‘Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink’. In our times, in the not too distant future, the lines could be rewritten ‘water, water nowhere, nor any drop to drink’. Already the world is witnessing an acute shortage of water which, according to many estimates, would develop into a major water crisis in a decade or so. India is on the brink of a major water crisis. There is every possibility that water, and not only religion or language, would be the cause of future conflicts. The need to address the water crisis was realized by the Supreme Court of India which directed the Union Ministry of Science and Technology to prepare a plan document. The plan document is appropriately subtitled ‘War for Water’.
Aligarh Muslim University has made this war for water its own holy war. The university provides the lead in an India –European Union joint water technology project which includes countries like Spain, Denmark, France and Germany.
The project SWINGS Safeguarding Water Resources in India with Green and Sustainable Technologies), with Aligarh Muslim University its coordinating agency, has 10 partners each from Europe and India. Funded by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India and the European Commission within the prestigious Seventh Framework Programme, SWINGS would develop ‘optimized cost-effective wastewater technologies for municipal waste water for reuse for irrigation, cleaning and aquaculture farm feed’. The technology is based on anaerobic digestion followed by constructed wetlands and solar disinfection. The treated effluent shall be free from all kinds of impurities for safe disposal or recycling As Dr. Nadeem Khalil, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at the Zakir Hussain College of Engineering and Technology at the Aligarh Muslim University and the principal investigator in this project, says that “the treatment plant is based on the principle of zero energy and minimal operation maintenance making this technology perfectly suited for Indian conditions.”
The programme requires land for its operation. By a rough estimate two to three acres of land is required for the treatment of 10 lakh litres of water. Aligarh Muslim University which has a sprawling campus has provided four acres of land behind the Barula bypass on the outskirts of the city. AMU sees the potential of recycling its millions of litres of waste water and recharge the moat around the historic Aligarh Quila.
The vice chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University Lt. General Zameer Uddin Shah, an environmentalist by temperament, is especially keen on the university participating in a big way in the cleaning of Ganga and Yamuna.
“If this could be done without energy costs with this technology so much the better,” says Shah.
The results of the three-year project would be utilized by the Government of India to make a policy for waste water treatment. Khalil, who also does the appraisal of different Government schemes for technical and financial viability, is convinced that this technology would be extremely effective for rural India where land is available.
(The author is Associate Professor of English, Aligarh Muslim University)