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March to reclaim water as commons on June 30

March to reclaim water as commons on June 30


Mangalore Today News Network

Mangalore, June 24, 2012: The Peoples’ Campaign For Right To Water – Karnataka is organising a simultaneous march on June 30 by informed people in six districts across Karnataka to the nearest river as a direct action to reclaim water as Commons with the understanding that approaching the future of water through the Commons lens offers the best possibility to a sane, sustainable and just future for the conservation, use and management of water in India.

Water MarchThe government’s own reports detail wide scale destruction of water bodies and aquifers all around the country, and the significance of the data is self-evident. India is facing a future with little or no water. Water along with the air we breathe, and the seas, the forests, the mountains are all creations of nature that we inherit jointly and freely, and hold in trust for future generations are all called ‘Commons’. When governments do not adequately protect the Commons on our behalf, they fail us as well as future generations.

While the poor have always been denied access to appropriate quantity of potable water, the desertification of India is an existential issue for the many civilizations that make up this country. Instead of focusing on the root causes of this destruction, the National Water Policy 2012 is deliberately playing in to the hands of powerful international interests who want to commoditize, privatize and profiteer from water. It denies water the status of a Commons and reduces it to an economic commodity to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Faced with a national outcry, the water resources minister of the Government of India has gone to the extent of lying to the parliament by quoting utterly failed, distant water privatization models in Karnataka as grand successes.

The march will be held because the state has not let the people’s repeated requests for water justice appeal to its heart, and the public is deeply concerned with the dire water situation and the state’s intent to use it to push for policies and laws that facilitate private profiteering.


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