Importance of clean water within the socio-economic system

  • 17.11.2022
  • Financial Express

Our attention has recently been drawn by the media to the results that have emerged from a ground-breaking research which has helped to quantify vast ground water reservoirs across Bangladesh that can be of immense help in revolutionising the agriculture and food production.

Many Bangladeshi climatologists had been following for some time the ground-breaking research that was being carried out by six scientists-- five of whom were of Bangladeshi origin. Recently, the lead researcher Mohammad Shamsudduha informed over the phone from London that a month ago, "Science", a renowned journal, had published their research paper about a great water reservoir below Bangladesh that hardly runs dry. The more water is pumped out of the "Bengal Water Machine", as the researchers called it, the more water is pumped into it from the vertical and horizontal flow of freshwater from the surface and nearby lateral water sources. Such a mechanical dynamic is being considered by geoscientists as nature's very special gift to the people in the Bengal basin, a vast sediment-filled region upon which lies Bangladesh and a part of West Bengal. This has led Mr. Shamsudduha, a Professor at the University College London, to inform a local daily that this evolving scenario would assist in "revolutionising our farming further, as irrigation strategy could now be set scientifically." Apparently, according to these scientists the vast underground reservoir for fresh water was crafted slowly over thousands of years by the Ganges and the Brahmaputra that brought in tons of silt and sediment every year from as far away as the Himalayas to form the delta's spongy soil.