Thaneer Thanner 2.0

The notification from the Chennai Metro Water Board that they will deliver water needs within 2 days made my heart glad. Whether they deliver or not in 2 days is a big question but even if they do in seven days  and on a scheduled time basis will give Big Big relief to people like me and others in my society  and throughout the city who have gone bonkers trying to manage the water ordering , storage and supply and maintaining water availability schedules. This issue built up stress to many in the city.

Ours is a very small flat – just five  and with two out of the five flats being let out , the onus is on the balance three to manage the booking and the affairs. One may say it is an easy task compared to other big assn where number of flats are more – I am not disputing that .. But everyone  is going through massive amount of time being spent – on  discussions , arguments etc etc. just to manage the water.

Early in January of this year , we threesome ( who incidentally are the President , Secretary and Treasurer of the Assn out of the five flats ) realized that we will be in big trouble on the water front . With one bore drying out and the other bore giving saline with rich Iron content , we had no choice but to get water from the Chennai Metro water or through Private tankers ( most expensive ) . Our storage was limited and can last three days .. the first thing that we did was to augment the storage. We set up additional storage  that gave us additional three days of storage.

With piped water supply trickling in ( on alternate days ) , we said we will book for metro water  tanker every 5^th day by each of us . This would ensure a tanker supply every week and if supplies was received every week , then we are good . This was the plan !!

What happened in reality –

1.    For the month of March , the tankers came on time – it was working . Then everything went haywire.  Everyone in our locality was booking . Flats with more number of flats booked and they outnumbered the small guys. Delivery days went from three days to Seven to fifteen to twenty five and then everyone lost count. The piped water supply stopped as well.

2.    Metro water took action – they could not report out that they were unable to deliver to the bookings…. The outstanding bookings create a bad metric. They solved it instantly . They just cancelled all the bookings on one fine day and reset to base .. OMG – Some booking that were more than 30 days old and very close to getting supplied went out of the  Q !!   This action they took at times when the bookings went very high,

3.    The choice  for us  now was to  balance with Metro water tankers and Private suppliers. Everyone used contacts – The private guys were in demand .They started taking up the prices . Water was not of great quality either. But one had no choice. You could buy the most expensive soap or shampoo but you needed water to use it !!! Such was the state.

4.    We re worked our plan . We had to be optimal . Based on metro water tanker supply, we had to manage the private supply. Since no one knew when the metro water tanker would turn up , it was very difficult to predict and order the private tanker. People were on tenterhooks to pick up any unknown call as it could  be that call from the Metro water tanker lorry driver. If you did not pick up , the booking would be cancelled . And at times when you picked up a call from an unknown number , it used it be someone selling Insurance or banking service J Patience was a virtue that all of us learnt .

5.    At times , it was very tough . Our storage would be very low and we would place the order with the Private tanker and before the Private tanker showed up , metro water tanker would arrive . And the private guy would follow . We had to hurriedly manage the storage and there would be flurry of instructions to our Security—Pump the water up fast ( he cannot do that as the pumping depends on the motor HP )  – close the valve that is the inlet for piped water – Store in sump first and then the additional storage and so on- Instructions would be in multi languages  ( Hindi, English and Tamil) – the Security guy normally would do what he had decided already !!

6.    At times , someone would leave a tap open his flat  and what “Gyan” would be given in the Association WhatsApp  to this person is something that you can imagine . Everyone  ( other than the guy whose flat the tap was open ) will be a water saving expert and will cry as to how we abuse nature and how water is precious as well as expensive and so on and so forth. This will happen in turns and the  same message and links will fly through the group whenever a tap is left open !

7.    The first spell of rains brought so much joy to the Chennaites – It was so little but it broke the long dry spell and did no good to the storage or supply of water . But everyone rejoiced as if the water problem was solved .. that was the state of mind !

8.    The private tankers also had their share of issues. As they wrenched the water from nearby village bore wells , the villagers protested and on few occasions , hijacked the tankers , had the drivers arrested etc.  and did stop supplies but the tankers  find a way and continue

9.    Plans changed every day and by the hour based on supply – Some of the week ends were spent discussing various plans – they could never be implemented as things kept changing

10.  This issue is not going to get sorted out so easily and the future is still very bleak as the ground water levels have depleted.

Some call outs :

In spite of all the difficulty and the demand situation  and with all the lakes/ reservoirs that supply  water to the city having gone dry , Metro water has done a decent job to handle the situation.

Our Local MLA was of outstanding support – he was very helpful to us to understand the situation ,most times chipping in to help with the supply . He was not only helpful on the water front but was very active in our colony association helping us to address civic issues and other issues in the colony. He was very responsive , available at all times ( esp on WhatsApp ) – Please re read “ available at all times ‘’ For me it was pleasant surprise to see the kind of support and communication that the MLA was doing .. May be he was a bureaucrat turned politician and so knew how to network and had a service mind set…

I am one of the ever optimistic Chennaite ready to handle this ongoing issue J-- Waiting for the Tamilnadu weatherman to shower his FB page with rain predictions for Chennai. And can someone write a Predictive Algorithm to help  ?