Saturday, April 13, 2013

"DIWALI Water"

Last Wednesday, Dr H Kuypers of Netherlands met me. He is the Senior Advisor on International Innovation. He explained that "Diwali" was an acronym for "Dutch Indian Water Alliance for Leadership Initiative" and that this was a joint water technology initiative beteen Holland and India.

It seems that the Diwali initiative has nine components and these include New Urban Sanitation, Recycling Greenhouse Concept, Water Farming, Concentrated Solar Power & Purification etc..

The New Urban Sanitation talks of recovering energy and minerals from waste-water  using superior technology.

The Recycling Greenhouse concept is within the context of a "zero waste" society by producing drinking water, energy and fertilisers from waste. As I understood it, it basically irrigates plants in a greenhouse using waste-water and captures the 75% transpiration water vapour as pure water.

I was quite interested in these two concepts.
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Tomorrow evening, Dr Uday Narayan Singh will deliver a lecture on Rabindranath's Letters. Dr Singh is associated with Viswabharati. I'd recently read about his lectures in Shantiniketan for the freshers of Viswabharati...Yesterday was the last day of Sangeet Mela in Rabindra Tirtha. The week-long music festival in Eco Park and Rabindra Tirtha was a great success. Here is a photo of yesterday's mela at Rabindra Tirtha, taken on my mobile:

6 comments:

  1. Sir,

    Cant we make rain-water harvesting mandatory for all new buildings of New Town. In Bangalore, that is already a norm for any residential and commercial buildings ; even for individual houses of 1200 sq ft.

    The same suggestion applies for roof top solar panels.

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  2. Unless backed by 100% subsidy, the plan of water harvesting and Solar Power generation wont encourage people. Developers would also just pass on the expenses upon buyer, which may not help either. We also need more public Consciousness about these.

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    1. Solar power panels already carry a huge ( as far as I remember > 75% subsidy) from West Bengal Govt. Rain water harvesting cannot be subsidized and should be borne by builders and residents because we just cannot end up ending ground water resource. In a high rise apartment, where cost gets shared, the cost of water harvesting will be less than Rs. 50K / flat. If a person is paying > Rs. 50 L for a flat, do we really think that he cannot pay another 50 K more ?

      We all know in New Town, there is no property tax. How much more can we expect from the Govt in form of subsidy?

      Also we never know when will Ganga water project get completed in New Town. Dhapa project for EM Byepass adjoining areas did not get completed in last 5 years. Plus I seriously doubt whether 100 MGL of drinking water will be enough for office population and citizens of New Town after sharing water with the densely populated areas of South DumDum municipality.

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  4. @ Abhishek, Please refer to WBREDA's website
    http://www.wbreda.org/solar-energy-programme/ to know the subsidy pattern. West Bengal Government never provided >75% subsidy. And I am really not at all expressing my concern about people who can afford >50 L flat.

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  5. Hey, nice site you have here! Keep up the excellent work!

    Diwali

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