While the Chief Minister inaugurates Jalabhishek campaigns and the finance minister pleads for water conservation, their own party men trash all proposals for the same purpose in the Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC). A local daily recently reported how municipal councillors summarily axed BMC's plans for environmental and water conservation in the town.

In its budget for the 2008-09 fiscal the BMC made substantial provisions for greening of the city and for conservation of water with a view to assuring its more plentiful availability in the future. A sum of Rs. 30/- lakh was provided towards gardening in squares and in the open lands around the VIP Road as also towards creating a "green city fund". They axed it all ensuring that nothing was provided towards these heads. Likewise, the substantial amount of Rs. 55/- lakh provided towards conservation of the Upper Lake was axed along with Rs. 20/- lakh provided towards rainwater harvesting. The provision of Rs. 50/- lakh towards the Jalabhishek programme was drastically reduced to a paltry sum of Rs. 10/- lakh.

The proposals were rejected out of hand by the councillors, not for the sake of economising or for spending on more useful projects, but only to provide for their discretionary fund. Thus a hefty amount of Rs. 1.45/- crore committed towards meaningful expenditure for the citizens' welfare in the long run was diverted by the councillors for their own discretionary spending. That most of it is likely to be unwisely spent on inconsequential items of work in pursuit of generally elusive votes, with a substantial portion disappearing into various pockets is, of course, another story.

Clearly, for the councillors their own concerns are more important than those relating to environmental conservation despite the looming threats of widespread water scarcity caused by climate change. For such an attitude of self-aggrandisement one can blame only their lack of liberal education and an enlightened social consciousness. However, cynicism also so permeates the civil society that the thoughtless and patently selfish action of the councillors failed to draw any adverse comments from any quarter.

In consequence, the Corporation will spend nothing at all on these heads during the next fiscal. Not only the greening of the city, with all its cosmetic and healthy effects, will suffer, no steps towards conservation of water will be possible. Clearly, the scarcity of water that various segments of population endure all through the year, more so at the onset of summers, will not be alleviated during the next fiscal. The proposal for harvesting of rainwater, a dire need in the context of uncertain monsoons with reduced precipitation and relentlessly increasing incidence of indiscriminate tapping of groundwater, too, has been unfeelingly thwarted.

Tragically even the amount earmarked for conservation of the Upper Lake has not been spared. This was, perhaps the first time ever that the Municipal Corporation displayed a sense of its responsibility towards the Lake of which it is the custodian. Ever since winding up of the Bhoj Wetland Project in 2004 nothing has been spent towards its conservation and making it pollution-free. It is needless to say that for its sustainable use urgent appropriate steps for its conservation are necessary. That in the surrounding gloom of a water-scarce state the Lake stands in the city as a symbol of hope and solace for the citizens, protecting them from the prospects of a dry, waterless future is, unfortunately, often forgotten.

The BJP councillors, rather strangely, seem to be against the strengthening of the city's water supply system. Earlier, for reasons not quite known, they had shot down a perfectly legitimate proposal for a water tariff hike. Hence, if ever any decision of the BMC deserved review by the government, clearly, these two eminently fit the bill. Being of highest importance for the citizens in the short and the long term, their review is commended.