At the age of 80, Aabid is fixing leaks across households in Mumbai every Sunday morning to conserve water. He founded Drop Dead Foundation, which he runs single-handedly. Yes, he’s the only employee who takes along a plumber with him, to search for and fix leaking taps everywhere, for free! Born and brought up on the pavements of Mumbai, Aabid has witnessed the violence that lack of water can lead to. But that’s not what inspired him. It was an article he read that threw light on the scarcity of water. So, in 2007, when he won Rs 100, 000 under the Hindi Sahitya Sanstha Award, he decided to kick off his water conservation efforts. In just one year (February 2007 – February 2008), he visited 1, 666 houses in Mumbai, fixed 414 leaking taps, and saved an estimated 414, 000 litres of water! One can imagine what the impact must be today. Recently, the Maharashtra government issued specific instructions to urban municipal bodies to stop water supply to organisers of rain dances and swimming pools during Holi. The Central government is toying with many ideas such as promoting drip irrigation and sprinkler irrigation in agriculture. Yes, everything is debatable at the moment. But, it’s heartening to see how different players right from the government to the common man are attempting to mitigate the water crisis.
