Technology institute highlights acute water crisis
Kolkata, Feb 28 : Marking National Science Day, Heritage Institute of Technology in Kolkata organized a debate session on Tuesday to address drinking water crisis which is projected in the near future.
According to the reports of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the current world population is 6.6 billion and it is projected to be 9.3 billion in 2050 but as on 2050 World Water Resources will be 200000 cubic Kilometers which is also the same at present.
The FAO noted that the situation is grave and everyday drinking water is misused when it constitutes 3 percent of the total water bodies present on the earth.
The event was organized by the Department of Biotechnology, in association with the National Environmental Science Academy (NESA), West Bengal Chapter.
EC Member, NESA, Dr. Amit Krishna De inaugurated the programme along with Principal, Heritage Institute Dr. Pranay Chaudhuri and Former Scientist, Department of Science and Technology Govt. of India, Dr. Somsubhra Sen Sharma.
Jadavpur University's MTech student Abhishek Dutta and also an alumnus of Heritage Institute presented some unknown facts on drinking water crisis in India.
Dutta displayed some statistics which says that 10 liters of water is used to produce one A4 sheet of paper, 70 liters of water is required to make one apple and 91 liters of water is required to make one pound of plastic.
He gave some useful data from FAO which says that India has the least total water resource per capita in comparison to the USA, China, South East Asia and Brazil.
Later on Sudipta Dey, a faculty member of the Department of Biotechnology, Heritage Institute spoke about phenolic waste water management and biological treatment of such water.
The debate started off with the Btech students of Heritage Institute speaking for and against the motion on the topic 'pricing of drinking water'.
For the motion students focused on the different treatment processes with which ground water is treated to make it available for drinking.
Such process is very much costly and misusing drinking water will demolish the essence of such treatment processes. Also in Hungary, the US and other foreign countries, water are priced especially industrial water and drinking water is subsidized, they said.
If drinking water is not priced, one cannot stop the misuse done daily, they said.
Against the motions, students stressed on the fact that one third of the India's population is poor and can't even afford the essential commodities of daily life.
If in such a situation, water is priced, how this population will survive. Besides, consuming drinking water is the fundamental right of every citizen of India being a democratic country, they said.
The debate session ended with vote of thanks to the best performers which was done by Dr. Amit Krishna De and Dr. Anniruddha Mukherjee, HOD, Environmental Science Department, Calcutta University who was present as judges during the debate.