জল সঙ্কট নিয়ে উদ্বেগ প্রকাশ নোবেলজয়ীর। কী বললেন অর্থনীতিবিদ অভিজিৎ বিনায়ক বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়? জেনে নিন
~ED.1~
~ED.1~
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00I hope that together, somehow, is undermined.
00:05The fact that that can continue is partly
00:08a result of the fact that we have no public conversation
00:13about the right to water.
00:16I think the fact that water is something that is simply
00:21impossible to live without, and yet some people almost
00:25live without it because, for force,
00:26because they have so little access to it.
00:29And certainly, so little access to clean water,
00:32that you end up with the, I think,
00:37as a society, we haven't yet confronted
00:40the deep inequalities that are in water.
00:44And this is getting worse, because especially
00:49the water, as the water table falls,
00:52we are getting into situations where
00:55some people, ones who are not particularly
00:59connected to urban infrastructure,
01:02will just not have access to it.
01:05So all of that was in my mind, but I
01:10wanted to be able to maybe create
01:15a subject for a public conversation, which
01:18didn't start with hitting people on the head with the facts.
01:24It needed, I felt, a lightness that Sarnath can bring.
01:30That would make the conversation maybe a little bit,
01:35you start from, you throw the facts at people,
01:38but you don't throw it, you hit them on the head with it.
01:42You see them, and maybe that's a way
01:45to get people to understand that these things are not simply
01:49a matter of just asserting that there should
01:57be this or that outcome.
01:58It's a matter of a series of policies.
02:01Water is really policies about the pricing
02:06of agricultural power, policies about the support
02:10of certain agricultural, the prices of certain crops,
02:15but not others.
02:16All of that feeds into the water crisis.
02:19And as does the second of the water wars,
02:23and as does the construction boom, which
02:26is what has been happening in South Asia.
02:30All of these things feed into it in different ways.
02:33And from both sides, in fact, the construction boom
02:36both creates demand for water and creates barriers
02:45to the flow of water, which often creates
02:47water lobbying along with water shortage.
02:50So all of that.
02:51I think where we came out of, I would
02:54say it was not so much impelled by the contemporary concerns
03:00at all.
03:00It was more, I think, Sarnath and I were
03:07with one together before, and I think one thing
03:10that I appreciate in Sarnath is his ability
03:13to take something that potentially heavy and dead
03:19serious and infuse some lightness and life into it.
03:23And I really think that's a great gift.
03:28And I think many of these conversations
03:32that we need to have in India.
03:33Water is absolutely the first and most obvious one,
03:37because it's one where there is vast inequalities
03:40and vast waste.
03:42And lots of water shortage.
03:45And all of that together somehow is
03:49undermined that the fact that that can continue
03:52is partly a result of the fact that we
03:56have no public conversation about the right to water.
04:01I think the fact that water is something that is simply
04:07impossible to live without, and yet some people almost
04:10live without it, perforce, because they have so little
04:13access to it.