What the Eff is TMC Feet anyway?
I'm in Bangalore. And the panic of the day obviously has been the amazing Cauvery issue (again?).
Thousands of guys in my office - nobody working but everyone clicking F5 (Refresh) every few seconds on their favourite news site or message board. Such amazing productivity I say - and the news sites are also persistent, it was as if they had sworn they would not release more than a carefully worded 100 word article every 100 minutes.
So we're all anxious for news, and no news source is helping us. Only resort, friends in other offices - who it seemed had already been asked to go home (Lucky they, we thought).
Anyway, thought I'd watch some TV when I got back home and see if there is ay danger to any of us at all - I mean, the last time this issue surfaced it was big shit all over the place. and I also want to know if I should mentally prepare myself for a day off tomorrow or for another panicky day at my desk.
Anyway, so I watch all the gazillion channels that think that beaming news to the populace is their business. Well fine. But I do not understand why all these journalists on TV have to shout their news out? I mean - you have a journalist standing on a noisy intersection and reporting from there, okay I understand she has to shout in order to hear her own voice probably, but hey there was this guy on a golf course (a golf course!) and he was shouting like he was standing next to a rocket engine.
Dont believe me? Go to your TV and switch on NDTV. Or Headlines Today or any other channel for that matter...do you really think this is the way news is supposed to be presented? I have enough of noise and pollution on the roads here, dont want more noise on my TV as well!
Anyway, so the Cauvery issue. So somehow there are these numbers floating around, some people are chuffed, others are just shocked - Tamil Nadu gets a million TMC feet, Karanataka gets only one. I'm like what? Hello? Wtf is TMC Feet? So I put my mind to it and I think...Trillion million cubic feet? Naah..thats wrong..so it must be Thousand Million cubic Feet.
Who the hell invented this unit? the person who did, probably had no idea oit is going to be abused by teenage wannabe ninjas that abound on Indian news channels.
Dude! a Thousand Million is what? Its a billion. A bleeding billion. So why cant they say Karnataka now has to release 192 bcf of water, rather than Karnataka has to release 192 TMC feet of water. Well can I also release 192 TMC Hands?
The reason these dudes dont know this, (and their editors dont notice) is coz they have no idea what the viewers want or that the average IQ of their viewers is at least twice theirs. In which case, we must try and be sympathetic to them - but I'm not, coz I pay for my cable TV and I get this nonsense. None of these news presenters have even a fuzzy idea of what (regardless of whether its thousand million or a billion) cubic feet of water really is.
So I did some calculations so at least I'd elucidate myself on this subject.
First I'd rather convert to SI units coz I hate imperial units. Karnataka can keep 250 bcf of water.
250 TMC Feet = 250 billion cubic feet (bcf) = 7,066,000,000 cubic metres.
Dude - 7 billion cubic metres, thats a lot of water, but how much is it really?
Thats a cube of water 1900 metres high, wide and thick! Or, in other words, if we were to make a swimming pool of 1.5 metre depth (so most Indians could swim), it would forma lake more than 68 km long and 68 km wide! Or enough to cover an incredible 6 lakh sixty thousand (660,000) football pitches!
So hey whats the problem? It seems to be a lotta water...
How much does Karnataka need anyway?
Karnataka has about 52 million people.
This amount of water can (amazingly) provide for the needs of 3.5 million americans (who we all know are the most wasteful species on our planet). And we all know our water consumption is way below what Americans use. I mean we dont use dishwashers, few use washing machines, hell we dont even use wasteful automated car washers - we dont even wash our roads!
7 billion cubic metres of water will serve the domestic needs of (hang on) a staggering 230 billion people in India.
Oops, but we ony have a billion, and we're just talking about Karnataka aye? 52 milion. You know what, even though the average India domestic water requirement is only 30 litres per day, I'll give you 1000 litres per day so you think you have a lavish life. The 1000 litres per day for every person - EVERY PERSON - would mean we have a requirement of 52 million cubic metres of water. And hell, we have 7 billion!
So its really a question of how much we waste, rather than how much we use, or need.
Karnataka gets to keep 250 bcf of water, when it needs only 1.8 bcf of water to provide 1000 litres to every person in the state. Every!
The rest - for irrigation and for the river itself...
Crazy acronyms.
Correction: I am wrong. We need about 1.8 mcf per day for the daily domestic use of everyone. DAILY. So in an year this becomes 632 mcf. We still have 7bcf or 700mcf, so we're still rolling in plenty, but the figures are not as exagerrated as I first thought. My bad!
Thousands of guys in my office - nobody working but everyone clicking F5 (Refresh) every few seconds on their favourite news site or message board. Such amazing productivity I say - and the news sites are also persistent, it was as if they had sworn they would not release more than a carefully worded 100 word article every 100 minutes.
So we're all anxious for news, and no news source is helping us. Only resort, friends in other offices - who it seemed had already been asked to go home (Lucky they, we thought).
Anyway, thought I'd watch some TV when I got back home and see if there is ay danger to any of us at all - I mean, the last time this issue surfaced it was big shit all over the place. and I also want to know if I should mentally prepare myself for a day off tomorrow or for another panicky day at my desk.
Anyway, so I watch all the gazillion channels that think that beaming news to the populace is their business. Well fine. But I do not understand why all these journalists on TV have to shout their news out? I mean - you have a journalist standing on a noisy intersection and reporting from there, okay I understand she has to shout in order to hear her own voice probably, but hey there was this guy on a golf course (a golf course!) and he was shouting like he was standing next to a rocket engine.
Dont believe me? Go to your TV and switch on NDTV. Or Headlines Today or any other channel for that matter...do you really think this is the way news is supposed to be presented? I have enough of noise and pollution on the roads here, dont want more noise on my TV as well!
Anyway, so the Cauvery issue. So somehow there are these numbers floating around, some people are chuffed, others are just shocked - Tamil Nadu gets a million TMC feet, Karanataka gets only one. I'm like what? Hello? Wtf is TMC Feet? So I put my mind to it and I think...Trillion million cubic feet? Naah..thats wrong..so it must be Thousand Million cubic Feet.
Who the hell invented this unit? the person who did, probably had no idea oit is going to be abused by teenage wannabe ninjas that abound on Indian news channels.
Dude! a Thousand Million is what? Its a billion. A bleeding billion. So why cant they say Karnataka now has to release 192 bcf of water, rather than Karnataka has to release 192 TMC feet of water. Well can I also release 192 TMC Hands?
The reason these dudes dont know this, (and their editors dont notice) is coz they have no idea what the viewers want or that the average IQ of their viewers is at least twice theirs. In which case, we must try and be sympathetic to them - but I'm not, coz I pay for my cable TV and I get this nonsense. None of these news presenters have even a fuzzy idea of what (regardless of whether its thousand million or a billion) cubic feet of water really is.
So I did some calculations so at least I'd elucidate myself on this subject.
First I'd rather convert to SI units coz I hate imperial units. Karnataka can keep 250 bcf of water.
250 TMC Feet = 250 billion cubic feet (bcf) = 7,066,000,000 cubic metres.
Dude - 7 billion cubic metres, thats a lot of water, but how much is it really?
Thats a cube of water 1900 metres high, wide and thick! Or, in other words, if we were to make a swimming pool of 1.5 metre depth (so most Indians could swim), it would forma lake more than 68 km long and 68 km wide! Or enough to cover an incredible 6 lakh sixty thousand (660,000) football pitches!
So hey whats the problem? It seems to be a lotta water...
How much does Karnataka need anyway?
Karnataka has about 52 million people.
This amount of water can (amazingly) provide for the needs of 3.5 million americans (who we all know are the most wasteful species on our planet). And we all know our water consumption is way below what Americans use. I mean we dont use dishwashers, few use washing machines, hell we dont even use wasteful automated car washers - we dont even wash our roads!
7 billion cubic metres of water will serve the domestic needs of (hang on) a staggering 230 billion people in India.
Oops, but we ony have a billion, and we're just talking about Karnataka aye? 52 milion. You know what, even though the average India domestic water requirement is only 30 litres per day, I'll give you 1000 litres per day so you think you have a lavish life. The 1000 litres per day for every person - EVERY PERSON - would mean we have a requirement of 52 million cubic metres of water. And hell, we have 7 billion!
So its really a question of how much we waste, rather than how much we use, or need.
Karnataka gets to keep 250 bcf of water, when it needs only 1.8 bcf of water to provide 1000 litres to every person in the state. Every!
The rest - for irrigation and for the river itself...
Crazy acronyms.
Correction: I am wrong. We need about 1.8 mcf per day for the daily domestic use of everyone. DAILY. So in an year this becomes 632 mcf. We still have 7bcf or 700mcf, so we're still rolling in plenty, but the figures are not as exagerrated as I first thought. My bad!
Labels: Bangalore, Cauvery, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, TMC feet
74 Comments:
This is absolute bullshit. what are you trying to prove?? Please don't go around advertising this bull shit in every place.
Whole India sucks!!! And Indian TV the first of all!
Well, i think this is the funny blog entry i have come across for a while now, the simple reason being you do not know the rationale behing the water sharing nor you know what is TMC. FYI- TMC stands for tubic metric cube...now to explain in simple terms it means 1000 feet length, 1000 feet height and 1000 feet breadth (if you were asked to teach maths for any student i fear even if the student was an avg person atlast you would have made him POOR FAILED, anyways). Now the actual reason why the water sharing is a issue - it is estimated that TN has around 33 lakh acre of cultivatable land and karnataka has around 11 lakh acre cultivatable land which comes under Kaveri basin. TN grows 3 crops a in a year, 2 of which they depend on rain and for 1 crop (between jun - sep) they depend on Kaveri for which they will not need more than 100 TMC also in spite of repeated requests from erstwhile govt's they have failed to build a dam/reserviour to store the incoming kaveri water/rain water - simply wasting the water by asking more than their share (something like what you have done with your blog entry, anyways again). In between Karnataka wants to increase the it's cultivatable land in the basin to 20lakh acre for which there is an opposition from TN and a ruling from highcourt not increase - this i think is total injustice cos kaveri is originated in Karnataka and it's own people do not have right to utilize it - it is something like you get married and i enjoy your wife :).
Anyways there are even more reasons why i think this is a injustice done to karnataka people. (in between i am not a kannadiga/from karnataka). In case if you are interested to know what are the other reasons/actual findings, then please go thru' some history related to the dispute, hey that would be good productivity to your brain so that you can write sense next time and so that i get a chance to reply back :).
Also please do not take the effort of replying back cos i do not think i will again visit this ***king blog.
Hahaha. Everyone likes to comment as Anon :-)
Anyway, there doesnt seem to be anything like 'tubic'. eh? Where do anonymous people get such ideas anyway? They think the Indian media has the creative enterprise to drum up a new word, err..acronym?
The Indian govt websites however, clearly refer to TMC as "Thousand Million Cubic". Dont believe me? Check this http://indiabudget.nic.in/es99-2000/chap83.pdf
Aree bhaiya,
You just calculated who much a man requires, but the real fight here is that agriculture reqires more water, industries require water, and every part of this world requires water.
Now only possible solution that is apparent to me is, don't let the water of Kavery get drained in Bay of Bengal, build Dams and water resviors along along the lines of Kaveri, both in KA and TN, so that in the summers we can utilize it, and this should be funded not only by both state govt. but also center.
2. Educate people not to wate water, I see in many place of Bangalore itself, the water keeps leaking from the Taps, the big pipe-lines which brings the Kaveri water to the city leaks at several hundreds of places before reaching at the detination, so this is an overall loss of the state and of the people,
3. Tax the people who are trying to use ground water by Boring/Well etc, as they are also ultimately going to finish off all the water avaialable underground.
4. Each reader here should try to minimize using water, except for drinking, bath daily with only 10L of water, don't keep the tap open while you are doing tooth-brush.
HI,
Very interesting debate!!.
Well i am not going to talk about water issue. But i wanna to say one thing. NEWS channel sucks and I totally agree with Pranay.
I concur on the quality of News and its manner of reporting, not only in India, but also the North American continent. I believe the BBC and other brit agencies are the only ones who do justice to NEWS.
Cutting back to your calculations, i beg to point out a number of logical fallacies. First up, Kaveri water is NOT slated for all of Karnataka, but Mysore and neighboring districts only. Secondly, the average Indian's usage of water is in stark contrast to that of, albeit 'wasteful' American, not because Indians are less wasteful, but due to the paucity of water (and every other natural resource) our surfeit population exerts on our land. Its like comparing the calorie intake of the famished people of south central Africa and the US and then declaring that the average 'requirement'/intake of calories in Africa is 1 / 10 th that of the WASTEFUL Americans, without wholly understanding the reasons behind those numbers. Frankly, I find such comparisons distasteful and insensitive, not to the Americans, but to those who are suffering in the developing world. And don't quip back with the "oh so ur in the west and suddenly you r American!" jingoism. I agree India has its fare share of problems and moving to the US was NOT to RUN away from it all!! Gosh!! Why am i explaining immigration to some stranger on the internet!
Thirdly, conveniently ignoring the math for estimating the needs of irrigation, industry and maintaining the ecological balance of the land is outright retardation. Might I also politely add that estimating these numbers is no easy task. The IISC, for example, has a whole "Water Resources" department which researches these causes (graduating multiple PhDs on the topic every year). And they are still not able to come up with a scientific solution to the water problem.
Lastely, lets face it. We have a LOT LESS water than what is required for either state. The decision was politically motivated, with TN having a far greater share of Lok Sabha seats than Karnataka does, was able to swing things their way and Karnataka did get a BAD BAD deal. Neither do you address the issue at hand with satisfactory scientific knowledge, nor do you really make an effort to understand the politics behind it all. Not to mention the emotions of all those farmers who prolly might hang themselves the next time the rains fail. This is exactly the plague of Indian Journalism (and American too). In an effort to publish quickly, the facts remain unanalyzed and obscure, the politics non existent and the personal connection missing.
I would also like to confirm that I am not any of the 'anonymous' guys who posted above.
The average urban American is not that much more wasteful than the average urban Indian. For example, both Bangalore and Philadelphia use about the same amount of water per day, about 800 million liters.
At a population of about 1.5 million, Philadelphia has about one-fourth the number of people of Bangalore. So the average Philadelphian uses four times as much water as the average Bangalorean.
But yes, agriculture is the biggest user of water, not individual urban use.
Take the example of New Delhi, a city more than twice as populous as Bangalore. On average, 9.711 bcf of water is used annually for the city needs, but for irrigating the land around New Delhi, the water requirement is a staggering 52.972 bcf.
Taking into account a densely populated 736-km portion between Tajewala and Etawah along the Yamuna, the demand placed by cities and towns in that route is 11.83 bcf as opposed to a staggering 266.978 bcf for agriculture along that corridor.
Keep in mind that the farmers in north India grow crops that require far less water than our crops here, such as rice.
To both the non-anonymous posters - my point was not to analyse whether the water sharing is fair, based on fact, or anything else. My objective was to highlight, that an ignoramus such as me (at least on this topic!) can spend 20 minutes and come up with some basic arguments.
the fact that the news orgs could not even decipher a simple unit such as tmcf really points to the crux of what I detest.
Really, it should be the responsibility of any news organization, to present facts and not propaganda - I'd have liked an in-depth report - how much water is needed, and why. How much water do other countries need (for a particular crop/yield combination) - can we invest more money and use water wisely? How much investment is needed to move efficiency up by 10%, or 20%? Will that help Karnataka/Tamil Nadu? Will it reduce political friction?
Give us a goal, make India better. The court cannot manage our resources. The decision is probably as fair as it could've been - but we don t want fair - we want to derive maximum benefit out of it.
Cheers.
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