Q1.
Ask your parents or elders, about the condition of water bodies near your home when they were your age. What is the status of those water bodies today?
Answer
How to do this properly:
- Choose one elder — a grandparent, a parent, or an old neighbour who has lived in the area for a long time.
- Ask them to name the water bodies near your home when they were ten years old: the river, the pond, the stepwell, the tank, the canal, the village well.
- Ask these five questions and write the answers in a notebook:
- Was the water clear? Could you see the bottom?
- What did people use it for — drinking, bathing, washing, cattle, crops?
- What lived in it — fish, turtles, frogs, birds?
- Did it have water all through the year?
- Did anyone throw waste into it? Who looked after it?
- Now go and look at the same water body yourself. Answer the same five questions for today.
- Make a two-column chart: Then and Now. Compare, and present it in class.
| Question | Then (about 40 years ago) | Now |
|---|---|---|
| How the water looked | Clear; the bottom could be seen | Greenish or grey; often smells |
| What it was used for | Drinking, bathing, cattle, crops | Mostly cattle and washing; nobody drinks it |
| Life in the water | Many fish, frogs, turtles, birds | Few fish; some birds; more mosquitoes |
| Water through the year | Water even in summer | Dries up or falls very low in summer |
| Waste | Very little; people kept it clean | Plastic, drain water, sometimes building rubble |
| Who looks after it | The whole village, together | Often nobody in particular |
Sample answer: “My grandmother says that when she was my age the pond behind our street was full of clear water all year. Women washed clothes at one corner, cattle drank at another, and children caught small fish. Every year before the rains the village cleaned the pond together. Today one side of the pond has been filled up for houses, a drain empties into the other side, and the water is green and smelly. There are no fish. In May it is almost dry. She says nothing changed suddenly — it changed slowly, a little each year, because everyone thought it was somebody else's job to look after it.”
What the comparison teaches: Water bodies rarely die in one day. They die slowly — one drain, one filled-up corner, one dumped load of waste at a time. That is also the good news: they can be brought back the same way, a little at a time, if people decide to look after them again.