Many surveys conducted by govt, semi govt and NGOs on the scarcity of drinkable water have failed to jolt the administration from its deep slumber. The water table in our country is going down at an alarming pace.

There will be no exaggeration if we say that we are inching towards the civil war on water issue. Already many states are raring to pounce at each other's neck on the sharing of water. It is not necessary to mention the names of the states since such news are always on the forefront of the newspapers and a very pliable issue for the opportunistic politicians to exploit this inflammable issue to get political mileage. Dooms Day will not be far if we failed to take some concrete steps in the direction of water management.

Like unequal distribution of wealth, availability of water is also lopsided. On one hand there are persons using it lavishly resulting in wastage and on the other end of the continuum there are children of lesser God for whom getting a bucket of drinkable water is the most agonizing worry of the day. Isn't it a fitting fuel for the flames of civil war? Does it leave us with even an iota of doubt that we are inching towards the inevitable civil war? Alarm bells are already ringing but our ears are deaf and are used to hear not the sound of bells but explosions. Aren't we edging our way towards the explosion in the form of civil war ignited by the water crisis? Ponder over it!

Dr Suram Singh Verma: Yes, we are really inching towards a water war in next few decades. With the increase in population and with the indifferent attitude of coming up generations (for which parents are only responsible) towards the judicious use of water as well as with the water resources either drying up or are being polluted by us beyond repair, situation is going from bad to worse.

Affordable section of the society thinks that they have full right on the basis of their money to waste water in their every day activities without caring about its availability for other sections of the society. Such people to some extent at the moment may be satisfied as they are getting drinking water either with the help of money or power but time is not for away when people being deprived will start fighting for their share of drinking water and then only muscle power will survive and that will be the start of a water civil war.

Need is to preserve, conserve and keep clean all drinking water resources and also to have a check on all other such human activities which may prove harmful to maintain the continuous supply of drinking water in the times to come.

Arun RS: Yes, we are of course moving towards the civil war as there is water scarcity in all parts of India due to excess use of water and polluting

the quality of water by mixing harmful and toxic chemicals into it. The water is also getting contaminated by the action of the anepheles mosquitoes which causes malaria, dengue fever and many diseases. Although water is saved in many ways, usage is more than the amount of saving. Due to the chemical actions many lakes, rivers and seas are getting polluted and when used by animals it results in deterioration of their health.

Water is required for drinking, for cooking food, for bathing, for washing clothes. It has already become a rare commodity and is being sold in bottles and in cans. Everybody cannot afford to buy water all the time and this would lead to resentment and quarrels.

Many states including Chennai in Tamil Nadu are facing acute drinking water problem. The government has made water harvesting compulsory there.

Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are at wars over sharing of Okkanakhal river water. Kerala is also facing problems. In the end I may suggest to pray to God who controls the rains to give us enough water during the rainy season.

Balak Ram Kashyap: Water is crucial to plant and animal life. An acute water shortage - nay water crisis- is almost staring us in the face. Water level has dangerously gone down in wells and reservoirs. Quite a number of water bodies have already dried up or are in the process of being dried up. In some places water is not available for normal domestic use like washing, bathing, cleaning etc. In the times to come no significant improvement in the overall water scenario is expected. Although high hopes are pinned to imminent rains but we know from experience that mostly rains are erratic and do not come as expected. The situation is grim indeed and has a potential to drive the populace towards a civil war.

Therefore to avoid the unfortunate situation from cropping up, every drop of water needs to be conserved. Waste of water should be scrupulously avoided. Water coolers which consume maximum water should be used only when absolutely necessary. Repeated use of water can be thought of to the extent possible. If we judiciously use available water sources we can hope to survive till we are in a position to ward off the trouble.

Sushmita Shrivastava: Yes, water will lead to a civil war in our country. We have inhumanely mismanaged and wasted water. Nature had provided enough water for all living creatures. But we wasted it callously and now we have reached point of no return. The modern civilization will collapse due to non-availability of water.

In India , from the 19th century onward, the paradigm of managing water has followed two interconnected routes. One, the state took upon itself the role of sole provider of water. It was the colonial state that centralized control over water resources. The post-independent state inherited this role, and continued with it. Among other things, this led to communities and households being no longer the primary agents of water provision and management.

Two, the earlier use of rainwater and floodwater declined. In its place, there came a growing reliance on surface water (primarily rivers) and groundwater.

Today, the effects of this way of managing water are clearly visible. There is complete dependence on the state for any kind of water provision. It is a kind of fostered parasitism since the state, via its bureaucratic machinery, does not seem to possess the will to alter such a situation. Such has been the level of extraction from rivers that most of India 's river basins have degraded and the rivers are polluted. Large dams are the major source of water storage, and canals are the major distributory route. The former have caused large-scale community displacement and ecological havoc. The latter, large-scale degradation of land via soil salinisation.

Groundwater resources have been heavily over-used. Thus water availability, both in terms of quality and quantity, has declined to such an extent that many parts of India , rural and urban, today face a drought-like situation. And when drought actually sets in scarcity takes on a frightening visage. An already bleak reality seems even more grim. After a few years our major rivers will also become dry, as glaciers are receding and melting at a very fast rate. Therefore drying up of life-giving rivers is inevitable. This is a horrible reality and perhaps it will be doomsday for the modern world.

Krishna Chander Mouli: If we go by what some leading scientists say about the doom sayers who predict the glaciers that feed rivers like the (sacred) Ganga (Ganges) will disappear due to global warming in the next 40 years, the water shortage might be there seasonally only and in no case there will ever be a water crisis that may compel us to inch towards civil war.

VK Raina, Chairman Monitoring Committee on Himalayan Glaciology, Govt of India, at a recently held conference at Lucknow outright rejected the western analysis of melting glaciers and retreating water levels in rivers stressing of course that India need to continue its efforts vigorously to clean the perennial rivers and preserve the environment congenial to water conservation. He further added that glaciers in the west speciallyaround north pole open up into the sea whereas in the Indian context our glaciers are situated at 3500 metres above the sea level and origins like Gangotri will last for l500 years more even if its retreating rate is 20 metres per annum.

75% discharge and flow of almost all rivers - perennial and seasonal- depend upon the snow fall and rain fall which have been fortunately satisfactory in India till now.

Dhruv Sen Singh another geologist at Lucknow University who was involved in India 's first scientific expedition says that in fact the rate of retreat of Gangotri has decreased due to favourable cooling effect. Yet Himalayan tragedy awaits India and China and shrinking glaciers may turn Ganga and Yangtze (China) into seasonal rivers, says a Washington based study. The Indian scientists do not subscribe to this panic call and at least in the Indian scenario where there are so many perennial huge rivers there can be no civil war, unless mis-managed and irrationally exploited. This does not mean Indians start frittering away with the precious treasure of water and waste it through the water supply systems and relegate the seriousness of environmental balance to background. Otherwise water shortage may become a crisis in India too and we may then be compelled to inch towards civil war. Not of course before l500 years hence.

Syed Zia Ul Hasan Naqvi Water is like an elixir of health and life for us, because scientifically it is now proved that seventy percent of our body is made of water. It is often said that our body is made of five elements and water is one of the most important element in them.

If we compute the situation of ancient human civilization then we will come to know that most of them were situated near the rivers or any other water source. Even today cities are built near water. By all this we can very well understand the importance of water in our life. Due to hiatus in the protection measures for water and its sources, inexorable misuse of water by us, continuous deforestation, water and air pollution and global warming.

Nowadays we hear hue and cry for water. Water scarcity is increasing by leaps and bounds throughout the world. Now it is a global problem. On a global level many plans are afoot for controlling water crisis. But the progress of those plans is at snail's pace because public is not cooperating fully in this regard.

Ground water level has gone very deep and because of that people are panicky throughout the world. This water crisis is posing a threat to international peace and tranquility. Due to water crisis there was litigation between different provinces of our country. In many countries like Turkey, Syria, Iraq there was dispute over the Euphrates and the Tigris River. Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt have also dispute over Nile . Seeing all these disputes and daily conflicts on water there is every possibility of civil war on account of water scarcity. For avoiding civil wars on water it is necessary that every individual should save water and take all precautions to avoid this water scarcity.

RJ Khurana: Water is a basic need of living beings. The poet sang, "Without water it is all desolate and so you must use water economically" Imagine a waterless city.

Its residents will start fleeing to places with water resources. The residents of the places with water resources will resist if necessary with arms. This will result is clashes. If there are many waterless cities there will be massive migrations and more confrontations over possession of water resources.

Soon it will take the shape of a civil war. Presently, most cities and villages in India are in the grip of water shortage. Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Haryana have already seen rioting in their respective states over sharing of river waters for irrigation.

Rajasthan was always a water deficit state and now many other states including Delhi Maharashtra, UP, MP, Chattisgarh, Uttrakhand and Bihar , once water surplus states are facing drought like conditions. While the most traditional water resources like rivers and lakes have been polluted beyond redemption and ground water levels have been falling every year, little attention has been paid to water conservation and efficient water management techniques. When traditional water sources dry up due to ecological and climatic changes or for lack of proper conservation or efficient management, a civil war over possession of available water resources is bound to erupt.

RK Kutty: Water is undoubtedly the very basic requirement for survival of all living beings. All our scientific pursuits to explore outer-planets depends up on availability or otherwise of water there. NASA is hotly pursuing to find the possibility of water availability on Mars and other human friendly planets. Recently, Stephen Hawkins, the world famous physicist too argued quite well that man should now endeavour to explore outer planets on the same spirit Columbus set to sail to explore other continents on earth in 14th century. All these are certainly borne out of the fact that the existing resources on planet earth are nearing its completion stage and the possibility of breaking out war like scenario over water is fast looming large.

What we see or hear about the water problems in a fast developed city on the outskirts of Delhi Ghaziabad, which is reeling under severe water scarcity, should make the city or rather urban planners of Bhopal to wake up to the harsh reality, specially when the present leadership in Madhya Pradesh is inviting massive investments inside the State in general and the capital city- Bhopal in particular. It is fine that we should have the craze to bring in fast growth, development but at the same time we must be sure of providing all the basic needs, infrastructure for the investors to open up their shops. Very soon we will have several multi-crore private as well as government institutions like the much publicized Ambani Institute of Technology worth Rs. 5,000 crores, an HRD ministry largesse of a Central University, an AIMS, International Airport and a host of other shopping malls or multiplexes in our city. But, looking to the crisis like situation we experiences on every alternate day in plugging the intermittent leakages in the main Kolar water supply pipeline, resulting thereby non-supply of water to the city residents for days together in this scorching summer months; then again looking to the reports of fast depleting ground water level, where residents depending totally on bore-wells are frantic where as the excruciating summer is still ahead. One must, therefore, caution the Bhopal city water supply agencies to tighten up their belts and plan how to face the water crunch. It is a universal phenomenon and those who are mindlessly wasting this precious commodity, without any impunity, will feel the pinch only when they will wake up to see the reality of dry taps in their mansions. The need of the hour is how to preserve maximum water, how to recycle and use the existing water, how to make people aware of rain-water harvest, need of having more stop-water dams, ponds et.al, so that this scarce resource the real gift of God to humanity to exemplify His great love to His creation, is preserved. Even while scores of mortals live a Godless life, God brings in rain and dew in time to nourish them. If these changed its course or have gone dry- like the melting glaciers that too were due to the fault or rather insensitivity of mankind which will never learn any hard lessons from their mistakes. We are too senseless than pigs which looks upward only when they are hit hard or fall flat.

Vaishakh Kurud: Water is one of the most important necessities of all living beings. In its absence we will die. It is a natural resource which is sufficient for all of us but due to greed of everyone, we have cared a hoot for water and are heading towards a crisis point.

There are problems regarding distribution of water among different states in India. This has created hatred between the people of the states. The unity of the nation is at stake. The Cauvery river water dispute is clearly an example which also indicates that we are heading towards turmoil.

One of the main problems for water shortage is rapid increase in population.

The rivers in India have become extremely polluted due to varied reasons and we alone can rectify the situation. As an individual we should play our part in conserving water and avoid its wastage.

Recently many programmes were launched by the govt, NGOs to create awareness about water. At least some of the people have become aware as a result.