It is heartening to see that
citizens are finally waking up to the acute water crisis that the country is
facing. The most notable achievement has been that of the Udupi Citizen’s Forum
which organised a grand wedding of two frogs to please the God in charge of
rains. The Udupi Citizen’s Forum did not stop at just the wedding. The newly
married frog couple has also been packed off for a honeymoon. Unlike my Marxist
husband (yes, there are still a handful of them left in India) who hates gala weddings,
I love them. Good food, sarees, dance and selfies (in a frog wedding selfie may
be a bit difficult though) are the true essence of my life. Not just God and
me, but I have a feeling the Citizen’s Forum has managed to please Rabindranath
Tagore as well.
The young Tagore, as the manager of
the family’s zamindari, was moved by the poverty and helplessness of the
villagers and resolved to provide an example of rural reconstruction in his own
zamindari. In his estate, the river was faraway and water scarcity was the main
concern of the villagers. Young Tagore, keen to help the villagers, proposed
that the villagers get together and dig a well while he would bear the costs of
cementing it. Rationality, as any micro economics textbook would have us
believe, would make the suffering villagers jump at such a proposal. But the
villagers reasoned that such a collective action to address the water problem
would help Tagore get an easy ticket to heaven. They firmly believed that by
helping the villagers access water, Tagore would go to heaven, something that
they felt they needed to prevent at all costs, even at the cost of their own
inconvenience. So, the well never got made and they continued living in hell.
Many such experiences with villagers
deeply disappointed Tagore and subsequently led him to question the politics of
the day around home rule and self-reliance. But had Tagore been alive today, he
would surely have been very happy to see that people in India are at least
bothered about their own welfare now and are also uniting to solve their own
problems. Finally, self-reliance is here. Now that we have collectively managed
to marry off two innocent frogs, off course without their consent, let us spend
the next hundred years on working out rules of frog weddings. Firstly, we need
to classify frogs according to castes and gotras. Marriage between a brahmin
frog and low caste frog will surely annoy our Gods and worsen the water crisis.
Secondly, dowry needs to be worked out and all the wedding expenses must be borne
by the bride frog’s village or city. If two frogs dare to fall in love and
decide to have a good time on their own then such frogs should be killed
honourably and anti-Romeo squads must be formed immediately to make sure
inter-religious and inter-caste frog unions don’t happen. We must do all this
at once to please the Gods who will then address our water woes.
It will take another century for us
to be able to collectively decide that in addition to lavish frog weddings, we
need to better manage our water resources by recycling water, increasing the
water-use efficiency in irrigation, water harvesting etc. What? We don’t have
another century? The worst impacts of climate change will be felt in the next few
decades itself? Majority of India’s river basins are vulnerable to droughts
because of shifting rainfall patterns? Climate change and water stress would
displace thousands of people in India in the coming decades? India’s food
security is under severe threat because the frequency of droughts will
increase? Shut up. Will you please? We will not let climate scientists,
hydrologists, social scientists and others of that kind desist us from the holy
duty of organising lavish frog weddings. All that these researchers ever want
is to go to heaven. What exactly is the purpose behind their research? Heaven?
More funds for their research? Awards? Money? No matter what their interest, we
shall focus on frog weddings to please Gods. Let’s pray that the newly married
frog couple falls in love in their honeymoon and they quickly have a baby frog.
The frog offspring must be male off course. Thereafter, we will send the baby
boy frog to Kota for coaching classes to crack the IIT entrance exams. A
corporate job after IIT for the baby boy frog and then we will put him up for
sale in the marriage market. What next? An even more lavish frog wedding. All
to please the Gods for adequate rainfall. God helps those who help themselves?
Shut up.
