Nagpur: It is because Laxmi has become much more important than Saraswati that our world is facing complex problems related to environment and climate change, believes waterman of India Rajendra Singh. After attending the recent climate summit at Paris, he feels that many redundant issues were given too much time and several important ones didn't come up at all during the convention. Contrary to popular belief, he also believes that India was unsuccessful at this meet. Singh was in the city to inaugurate an exhibition on water conservation at Raman Science Center. Addressing the gathered school kids, he expressed surprise that so many of them were present on a Sunday morning. Sharing his experiences from around the globe, the waterman and 2015 Laureate of the Stockholm World Water Prize encouraged students to take up water conservation on the individual level. “Like some countries have been made to pay war reparations, developed countries have been made to commit paying a sum of $100 billion per year by 2020 during the climate summits at Copenhagen in 2009 and at Cancún in 2010. They were freed of this compensation at Paris. This alone is enough to call it a failed summit,” said Singh. He added that India could have made a better contribution to the summit by discussing important policies, like those on water and forests. This, he said, would have provided some good examples to other countries while increasing the country's prestige. “In the next summit at Morocco, I would like the Indian delegation to talk about policies like Jalyukta Shivar and some of our model river rejuvenation plans. There are plenty of good examples, like those in Ralegaon Siddhi and Narkhed in Maharashtra,” said the waterman. Singh said developing countries have policies that are more sensitive towards environment. “Take India for example. Traditionally, our culture has been built on the basis of respect of nature, the protection and conservation of the five elements being essential to our lifestyle. I agree that despite calling earth and river as mothers, we don’t accord them much respect,” he said, adding that “modern” western science doesn't give nature much thought. In fact, he believes that most developed countries had reached disastrous stages by first harming nature, then experiencing it’s wrath and finally spending big bucks on undoing those harms. “At this juncture, it becomes even more important for the world to learn a thing or two from traditional societies like India about ecological balance. Sadly, the opposite is happening, with traditional societies giving up their way of living in favour of the modern way of life,” said Singh. A silver lining to this dark cloud, according to him, is that youngsters today are more sensitive to nature, giving him a hope that the future is not be all that bad.

