Chennai (Tamil Nadu): The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) on Friday launched the 'Jal Dhan Campaign' in the campus in the presence of Union Minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey. Prof. V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, faculty and students were present on the occassion.
The campaign was inaugurated during the National Level Water Conclave – 2K23 held with the theme of 'Sustainable Agriculture with millet focus, water conservation and rainwater harvesting in Industrial sectors'. Addressing the students, Ashwini Kumar Choubey said, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also launched ‘Mission LiFE’ (Lifestyle for Environment) that will nudge individual and collective action to protect and preserve the environment. Our Ministry is continuously working to improve environment..”
Recalling the slogan of ‘One drop, One Crop’, the Union Minister added, “It is important to conserve water for the future. The Government is also working to rejuvenate 75 water bodies in each district of the country. I congratulate IIT Madras for having such great flora and fauna at the campus.”
Dr. Vasantha Lakshmi, Chairperson of VLCT & RC, said, “Because reluctance or negligence across the world, each and every day, each person is wasting 11 litres of water. Everyone should start saving water at their homes.”
“The Jal Dhan Project is intended to save water. We are going to cover various components like awareness and virtual water concept where we are going to talk about how industries can conserve and reuse water. Till now, we have covered 12 states as part of this project. 475 non-governmental organizations are working on this initiative across the country,” Dr. Lakshmi added.
Prof. V. Kamakoti said, “Water is one of the greatest contributions of nature to mankind. When we want to find if moon is habitable, the first thing we ask is, if there is water there? Today, due to climatic conditions, we are seeing extreme variations in terms of heavy drought or heavy flooding and there is also an imminent need to conserve this precious nature’s gift. Our small drops make an ocean.”
“IIT Madras is very committed to this major task, which is one of the prime deliverables of the Sustainable Development Goals. All the 17 SDGs put forward by the United Nations has some connection to water, either implicitly or explicitly,” he added.
Prof. Balaji Narasimhan, Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Madras, said, “Even if we do achieve 100% rainwater harvesting, in order to achieve our Sustainability Goals, we have to start reusing and recycling our water. This is something we have achieved in our campus. Chennai city is taking expertise from IIT Madras on reusing and recycling water. There is a project where 260 MLD of sewage is being taken, treated and the water is being put back into the lakes, which are in turn treated and supplied to meet the water requirements of the city.”
“IIT Madras has a climate action plan. We want to be carbon neutral by the year 2050. We have a bicycle friendly campus and very good green cover. We are very proud to be a ‘Zero Discharge’ campus. We have a very beautiful lake with a capacity of about 165 million litres and a secondary lake with 104 million litres capacity. We harvest as much of rainwater that falls on the campus as possible," he added.
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