The Web's watery ways

WITH CHENNAI receiving the occasional shower of welcome, convectional rain and the monsoon in full swing over other parts of the country, this may be the right time to check out the Web presence of "watery" Indian institutions - Central and State departments that deal with marine matters: the science as well as the business of water bodies - fresh, blue and brackish.

A week-long surfing exercise shows that voluntary and environment education agencies offer a wealth of online resources about water.

Let us start with the premier institution dealing with ocean sciences - the Goa-based National Institute of Oceanography (www.nio.org), which has units on both the Indian coasts. But try finding out the address of the Kochi or Visakhapatnam regional centres or what they do and you will come back from the NIO website, none the wiser.

Indeed, the site contains little that can be said to be educational or informative in nature, except for a copy of a year-old annual report and brief descriptions of some ongoing projects. One cannot find out what NIO's 600-plus scientists are up to this year because the site has not been updated since October 2000!

Another substandard website is that of the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI). The link provided from the Central Government website directory of the National Informatics Centre (www.nic.in) is http://education.vsnl.com/cmfri.hqr. There are two photographs on the home page that are badly scanned. The parting kick is the blurb which promises a contact address - and gives nothing.

Far more informative and well organised is the webpage of CMFRI's sister institution (in fact, it was spun off from the parent institute in 1987) - the Chennai-based Central Institute of Brackish Water Aquaculture

( www.nic.in/ciba). Research achievements are well documented and additional pages providing details of the work done at CIBA's field facility at Muttukadu near Chennai and the research centres in Kerala, Orissa and West Bengal are smoothly linked.

The Mumbai-based Central Institute of Fisheries Education (www.nic.in/icar/cife) is another neat and functional site that provides information about all the courses it conducts. Possibly the best resource on marine fisheries is the elegant site of the Marine Products Export Promotion Authority (MPEDA).

The Government of India departments like the Central Water Commission (www.nic.in/cwc) and the Water Resources Ministry (www.wrmin.nic.in) are unimaginative.

The sole map of the India's water resources in the CWC site and of the major river basins in the Water Resources Ministry site, are virtually unreadable.

Indeed, one was better off seeking relevant information at the websites of voluntary environmental agencies. The Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (www.cseindia.org) has put up loads of information and has a separate site (www.rainwaterharvesting.org).

The Centre has recently published a comprehensive book, "Making Water Everybody's Business: Practice and policy of water harvesting" that costs Rs 890. For those of us who cannot afford this, the CSE site does not offer even brief extracts from the book or even an outline.

The site of the Chennai-based CPR Environmental Education Centre( www.cpreec.org) is packed with goodies: details of their test lab; as well as the offer (for Rs 250) of a portable do-it- yourself kit to test samples for 10 parameters.

One of the best sites is www.everythingaboutwater.com, which has lots of educational material about the role of water in our lives; a calculator to tell you how much water you should drink every day; tutorials on the different types of water purifiers and categories of bottled water, and an essay called "Water on celluloid".

A. VISHNU

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