An economy needs constant supply of a few things. Energy, foreign exchange and food are things which come up on top of our mind when we set out to make a list of economic essentials. One essential we often ignore is water. Our reservoirs are bone dry. Our storage levels of water is the lowest in two decades. We don’t have enough drinking water to meet citizen’s needs in several hundred taluks of our country at the moment. Yet, we always pay more importance to shortages of other essentials. The lack of focus in ensuring adequacy clearly has been amplified by a crisis of this order. We need to focus upon ensuring adequacy of drinking water in the next decade. Water adequacy can even adversely affect food security. This is not merely the job of the state. Every citizen must measure his water requirement and calibrate his consumption. Water harvesting, linking of water bodies, creation of interlinked storage ecosystems, revival of defunct water bodies, optimisation of water consumed in agriculture and achieving more crop per drop are all measures that we need to consider as an emergency. Building the domain of water security ground up becomes a national priority now.
In investing, what is comfortable is rarely profitable.