On a sunny winter afternoon, I walked around the terrace of our new office, and, almost involuntarily, counted. From this fourth-floor rooftop in Panchsheel Park, a tony South Delhi colony, I could see 18 cellphone towers. Tall urban derricks with their dishes cocked to bounce millions of voices and text massages and whatnot to their intended destinations, with sphinxly non-judgement. Then I counted once more.

I could see 19 Sintex water storage tanks on various roofs, including the one I was standing on. And I thought it was rather symbolic. Nearly the same number of cellphone towers—speaking for the long way we have come on our path to modernity—as water storage systems that tell us that we still lack stability and reliability in the very basic infrastructural services that any citizen can demand legitimately, and that every government is supposed to provide. And this is South Delhi, where nearly every resident household would be in the top three per cent of the Indian population as measured by income. In less affluent parts of the city—and the country—I suspect that the number of cellphone towers would remain roughly the same, but the profusion of Sintex tanks would fall sharply; people wouldn’t be able to afford them, or water doesn’t reach them anyway. The phone calls, however, do.

What sort of country are we living in, and living in unquestioningly? On my last visit to the United States, five years ago, I remember being fascinated by the fact that gallon for gallon, drinking water was more expensive than petrol. And we later heard top American bottled water companies admitting in court that they were just selling tap water in bottles, without any filtering or purification. We are a nation that has nearly 40 per cent of its population toting cellphones and downloading ringtones and filming themselves having sex, and god knows what else, and a lower number having access to a stable supply of water to their homes! And if I say “a stable supply of clean water”, then the percentage would possibly fall to a single digit.

... contd.