It may sound bizarre but it is true! Water - the elixir of life - is being rated as the world's great business opportunity, holding the promise of being to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th. If you still feel that this is a lot of eyewash, and are an ardent believer that water is infinite, then ponder on these snippets for a while:

July, 2002: Several hundred people broke out into a riot, setting fire to buildings and vehicles in the eastern coastal town of El Arrouch in Algeria, protesting against the severe shortage of drinking water.

June, 2002: Villagers residing in Saurashtra, a drought-prone region in Gujarat, India, rioted over water scarcity. In 2001, similar riots in another village near Jamnagar, Gujarat, had taken such a violent turn, that the police had to fire at a protesting mob, killing two farmers.

October, 2002: A 12-hour strike brought the state of Tamil Nadu to a grinding halt, hampering civil services, law courts, public transport, shops, businesses, and fuel delivery. The dispute was over the sharing of River Cauvery's waters with the neighbouring state of Karnataka.

As the pressure on freshwater resources increases, incidents like these, the world over, will become as intrinsic to our lives as the very presence of water is to our existence. Even today, about 1.2 billion people have no access to safe drinking water, although 70% of the world's surface is covered by water. Only a fraction of that (2.5%) is freshwater, of which again 70% is frozen in ice caps; the remainder is present as soil moisture. This means that what is available for human consumption is less than 1% of the available freshwater resources. And this too is fast depleting. The scenario is predicted to worsen by 2025 when, according to the UN (United Nations), nearly half the world's population will experience critical water shortages.

The stress on water resources is a result of a multitude of factors. On one hand, the rapidly rising population and changing lifestyles have increased the need for freshwater and on the other, intense competition among competing users - agriculture, industry, and the domestic sector - is pushing the groundwater table deeper and deeper still. According to Natural Resources and People's Rights, a report by Delhi-based NGO, Navdanya, nearly 40% of India's urban population, which is below the poverty line, has no access to water. The scenario in rural India is no better. In 1985, there were 750 villages with no water sources. The number increased to 65 000 villages in 1996. Aggravating the misery, areas affected by drought are on the increase as the groundwater table in Rajasthan, the most drought-prone region of India, has gone down by a whopping 87% between 1998 and 2001. Even the granary of India, the state of Punjab, is feeling the pinch with its water table dipping by half-a-metre every year.

According to the IWMI (International Water Management Institute) (Pretoria, South Africa), India's burgeoning billions have already reached a stage where the groundwater being pumped for utilization is estimated to be double the rate of aquifer recharge from rainfall. This overpumping will also have adverse impacts on India's grain harvest, possibly reducing by up to one-fourth of present levels. This is definitely not good news for a country that adds 18 million people every passing year.

In effect, people will not have enough water to produce food and satisfy residential and other needs. Says Mr Anupam Mishra of the Gandhi Peace Foundation, Delhi, 'Agriculture per se is not the culprit but the type of agriculture practised is. Farmers are not practising sustainable agriculture and are opting for water-intensive crops, looking at short-term gains.' Of course, easy credit and subsidized diesel and electricity have also encouraged farmers to use water indiscriminately.

The IWMI fears that if the present trend of water consumption continues, there will not be enough water resources to maintain the current level of per capita food production from irrigated agriculture, even at high levels of irrigation efficiency, and also to meet reasonable water needs for domestic, industrial, and environmental purposes. To sustain basic needs, water will have to be transferred out of agriculture into other sectors, thus affecting the economy of countries or regions, as they will increasingly become dependent on imported food.

Exacerbating water scarcity is the menace of contamination of available water. Inaccessibility to clean freshwater manifests itself in epidemics of infectious diseases. Nearly 1 million children in India die of diarrhoea each year, directly as a result of unsafe drinking water and unhygienic living conditions. Some 45 million people in India are affected by water quality problems caused by water pollution, excess presence of fluorides, arsenic, or iron in water, and the ingress of salt water. In India, 80% of the children suffer from water-borne diseases (like cholera, diarrhoea) and 0.7 million succumb to them each year. Millions do not have adequate quantities of safe water to drink, leave alone to bathe or wash clothes, particularly during the summer months. In states like Rajasthan, fluoride contamination in the groundwater has reached alarming proportions, with nearly 40% of the state's water resources affected. Things are no better in West Bengal, where arsenic contamination of groundwater and drinking water continues to be a major concern.

Water scarcity has affected the socio-economic condition of the society as well. 'It has brought about a migration from rural to urban India,' observes Mr S K Chopde, Programme Officer, Water Management Division, Winrock International, based in Delhi. Drought conditions have pushed villagers to move to cities in search of jobs. 'Increased population and usage has led to the production of more waste water, adding to water pollution,' says Chopde. The way forward according to him is better urban management.

In rural areas, women and girls still have to trudge across long distances, spending up to four hours every day, to provide their households with water. With increasing opportunities available for women to engage in productive employment, this time lost in fetching water can very well translate into financial gains, leading to a better life for the family. If opportunity costs were taken into account, it would be clear that in most rural areas, households are paying far more for water supply than the often-nominal rates charged in urban areas. If this cost of fetching water, which is almost equivalent to 150 million woman-days each year, is converted into a loss for the national exchequer, it translates into a whopping 10 billion rupees per year.

Taking heed of the warning signals, the UN declared 2003 as the 'International Year of Freshwater'. In fact, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development at Johannesburg (in August-September 2002), world leaders agreed on key targets to tackle water and sanitation problems. This was only a follow-up of the pledge taken at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000 to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people unable to access or afford safe drinking water.

Echoing the UN's concerns, nearer home, Indian Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has voiced serious concern over the depleting water table, calling for an urgent end to indiscriminate exploitation of groundwater. He launched an ambitious scheme called Swajaldhara, aimed at providing water to all Indian villages by 2004. The scheme would be operationalized in 883 villages with the Centre earmarking Rs 870 million for the cause. In the scheme, under the rural development ministry, the Centre will provide 90% of the fund, while the people will have to raise the residual 10%.

This is, however, not the first time that such schemes have been launched or theme years celebrated. Whether this will translate into something concrete, is the question uppermost on every mind. 'We have nothing against such celebrations but there should be a sense of balance,' says Mishra. 'The year should not just go by with a number of posters and a lot of fanfare.' 'True, but a solution has to be found. And the answer lies in holistic water management,' says Prof. Subhash Chander, hydrologist and consultant at TERI. 'Treated waste water should be made part of the resources and used for non-domestic purposes.'

Even as the debate continues, every precious minute results in further sapping of existing freshwater resources. Mishra argues that there should be introspection as to what has happened in the past years. Why have we reached a stage where we have to search for adjectives like clean drinking water, or contaminated drinking water? He rightly adds, "Water already means fresh and pollution free". And, echoed in his concerns lies the gravity of situation. Can we come together at the global, regional, national, and local levels to build a bridge over these troubled waters is a million dollar question

Two reasons are usually quoted for this worrying upsurge. First is the emergence of drug resistant strains of the disease, in particular the extremely drug-resistant variant (XDR-TB) that has proved so lethal in South Africa (see 'South Africa told: TB epidemic needs tough measures, URL - http://www.scidev.net/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readnews&itemid=3358&language=1). Second is the way that reduced immunity caused by HIV/AIDS has encouraged the spread of TB in infected individuals. It would be wrong to claim that the biomedical community is ignoring either. Increasing attention has been paid to TB control by international agencies, such as the World Health Organization, and private foundations, particularly the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This has resulted in a replenished pipeline of new drugs and vaccines that promise, at least in principle, to beat back the disease again.

A role for journalists

But much more needs to be done, as events taking place on World TB Day (24 March) hope to highlight. The most obvious is the need is for more money; there is still a large gap between the funding needed by TB programmes and the financial commitments made by Western aid agencies.

Equally important, however, is the need for greater awareness about TB in both public and political communities.

Journalists have an important role to play in informing people in the developed and developing world alike  about the nature and extent of this disease, the shortcomings in current treatments and future possibilities for improved control.

Properly informed journalism can also create public pressure to spur politicians into action. In the United States, public lobbying through the media by groups formed to support research into specific diseases is known to play a key role in persuading congress to boost funding for biomedical research.

In the developing world, few such groups exist. Where they do, their leverage over politicians tends to be more limited. All the more reason for journalists to bring important issues such as the need to combat the spread of TB, particularly in its more virulent forms, and the various ways in which this can be done to the attention of policymakers.

Health reporting hurdles

This is not an easy task. Many journalists in Africa, for example, say they have difficulty in getting health-related stories accepted by news editors because these tend to make depressing reading that does not sell newspapers. Others point out that journalists often lack the training needed to handle such stories confidently.

An additional factor is that lesser known diseases like TB tend to be overshadowed by high-profile illnesses, in particular HIV/AIDS. One 2002 survey found that a prominent Kenyan newspaper devoted 10 per cent of its news coverage to HIV/AIDS, 2.8 per cent to malaria, and less then one per cent to TB.

Then there is the problem of language. In South Africa, for example, the medical research organisations and health departments involved in monitoring and responding to XDR-TB are only set up to communicate in English. As a result, there is a considerable amount of TB coverage in English-language newspapers but the average South African remains ignorant of the threat posed by XDR-TB. Until there is more science reporting in Zulu, Xhosa, or Sotho, this situation is unlikely to change.

Best practices

 Over the past few years, ways of combating these problems have been increasingly explored.

The Maisha Yetu project carried out by the International Women's Media Foundation started by analysing the media coverage of HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria in five African countries in 2004, and went on to launch a programme to develop better health reporting within media organisations in Botswana, Kenya and Senegal.

In Senegal, this has led to an increase of 20-30 per cent in the number of stories written by provincial reporters on HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria.

Drawing on experiences gained from both its research and practical efforts, the initiative has come up with a list of eight best practices for health reporting:

• Persuade top editors and management to back health stories;
• Raise the professionalism of health journalists through customised training programmes;
• Build a professional niche for health journalists;
• Share resources amongst journalists;
• Diversify sources of information;
• Report from outside of the newsroom;
• Maintain regular contact with everyone involved in health projects at all levels; and
• Learn to manipulate newsroom politics.

This year is the 125th anniversary of Robert Koch's discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Hopefully, this will allow journalists and their editors to provide a few more column inches about this destructive disease. And perhaps they can also take the opportunity to reflect on why it is so difficult to achieve this during the rest of the year and what they can do about it.

David Dickson

Director, SciDev.Net

(This article has been published with permission from SciDev Net in arrangement with Ms. Sridevi Sunder Rajan)