The missing matka of water. This was arguably the most telling image of the year that is just about to end. While parched fields, dried up wells and dying cattle are uniquely summer phenomena, this year - in some parts of the country at least - drought persisted even after the monsoon. It drove home to even notoriously apathetic urban citizens the importance of a substance that had hitherto been taken for granted: Water. It's not the general unavailability of water that is the problem - India gets something like 4,000 cukm of water every year through precipitation - but the blatant exploitation that has characterised its use.In Gujarat, a state that has become synonymous with water shortage, ground water aquifers have been permanently depleted in districts like Mehsana and completely destroyed because of the thoughtless disposal of toxic industrial effluents in places like Vapi. Since water management takes place at various levels - at the individual, household and community levels - managing the resource wisely necessarily requires a participatory approach. This was one of the insights that emerged this year and it should, hopefully, guide interventions in 2001,including the urgent one of ensuring safe drinking water for all. A similar carelessness marked the administration of the country's wildlife resources. The death of 13 tigers in Bhubaneshwar's Nandankanan zoo and the horrific skinning of another in the Hyderabad zoo were just footnotes to a far greater tragedy unfolding in the wilds. The tiger - the symbol of our national heritage - has never seemed more on the verge of extinction than it did this year. This is, technically, the result of accelerated poaching combined with habitat loss and disappearance of the prey base, but it is an enormous lack of vision that has brought about this catastrophe. The intimate links between the human and natural world demand not just better surveillance and quick, preemptive action against human predators but long-term strategies to secure the biosphere on which the web of life is so crucially dependent. At the centre of it is the human being. While this year saw some sections of Indians enjoy an unprecedented prosperity thanks to economic reform, eliminating poverty continued to preoccupy economists and administrators alike. For instance, the World Bank's annual report reiterated an old insight: Poverty is more than inadequate income or human development - it is also vulnerability and a lack of voice, power and representation. What makes people particularly vulnerable is lack of adequate access to education and healthcare. Here again, progress has been spectacularly slow despite government rhetoric about its enlightened Sarvah Siksha Abhiyan or a population policy that is ostensibly sensitive to the health dimension of family planning. The recent UNESCO report of the year revealed that 72 million Indians between the ages of 7-14 are deprived of basic primary education and, worse, have no opportunity of ever attending school. As for health, the number of infants dying in Orissa's Ganjam district every yearhappens to be one of the highest in the world. Action strategies for next year must then necessarily focus on the most vulnerable.
