Former scientist who never pays water bills

Hyderabad: It is better to light a candle than curse darkness, goes the saying. An innovative scientist puts this adage to apt use by harvesting rainwater than blaming the civic authorities for erratic water supply or worrying about the depleting groundwater levels.

He has abundance of pure water throughout the year. A bonus for him is that he doesn’t have to pay water bills. What an idea!

Meet the retired ICRISAT scientist Murli Sharma, who was prodded by his mother, to go for water conservation. Sharma has been using the harvested rainwater for his domestic needs for the last 20 years. He says water conservation is very simple technique and every household should adopt it for better future.

Sharma, who constructed a water sump which stores 1.25 lakh litres of rainwater, barely spends any money to buy water for his daily needs.

Sharing his experience with The Hans India, Murli Sharma, a resident of Sanikpuri said, “I am from Jodhpur, Rajasthan and shifted to Hyderabad in 1977. When compared to Rajasthan, Telangana gets sufficient rainfall.

Because we get enough rains we do not conserve water and later suffer for the whole year. As I have seen water crises in Rajasthan, I started rainwater conservation in my house since 1995.”

Speaking about the idea to conservation water, Murli said that his mother inspired him to go for it. "My mother gave me the idea. I started conserving water in a traditional technique in which the rainwater from the rooftop comes down through a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe and passed through a filter made of a single brick and is later stored in the sump.”

“The underground tank is located at a place where there is no sunlight and because of which the water does not promote growth of algae and others plants which contaminate it. Water stored in the tank is used for the whole year for drinking, cooking and for daily use as well. We do not boil this water, we directly use it from the tank. And the used water goes into the soak pit,” he said.

Explaining about the extension of the underground water tank, he said, "earlier the rainwater which was stored was not enough, but now it is sufficient as I have started collecting rainwater from my neighbour’s house.

During a normal rainfall season, we get 2.5 lakh litres of rainwater, which is more than enough. For instance, I pumped out around 20,000 litre of water last year. Water conservation is very simple technique and every household should adopt the technique of water conservation, Murli Sharma advises all.