The Iran War's Most Precious Commodity Isn't Oil, It's Desalinated Water

A RO system costs like $350, plus the filter renewal costs. I did the math, and it's cheaper to just buy the purified water off a purifier plant which is what most people do, unless you have a really large family. Also, a lot of places face severe hydric stress, making such systems unfeasible unless you have a large enough water reservoir to provide you with running water for a while. Most people don't have the space and even if they did, the low water pressure and or availability wouldn't allow them to get their reserves full in time, so they'll end up buying purified water anyways.

750 is an incredibly high picture and I can't speak about hyderabad but I can speak about my experience talking with a person who cleans RO and knows about water purification and my talks with them.

IIRC, 750 is usually around in small villages who have a pond or some water body. The reason for its impurification are the reason that Dairy Industry in India is very localized and cows/buffalos are given as much freedom as possible and they are taken to baths in such water bodies too which increases the impurity. Indian Dairy Industry takes a much more let the cows/buffalos be free and roam around in green areas. This is also the reason why you can see still see (shepherds?) who roam their cows to find green areas.

In fact, I can speak from personal experience, We used to have one such shepherd old lady come in front of our house to pasture the grass/open-area.

Contrast this to American Dairy farming which from what I hear is very centralized and when I read the book sapiens, it had an image of calf and below it the text said that this is a calf which is born in this box and will die in this box (I am paraphrasing it as I don't remember the original quote)

That is terrifying to hear as well.

We have also made handpumps and motor pumps and tubewell and atleast within villages, these are quite common although you'd be hard bound to not find an RO even within villages from my personal experience not until you see BPL type situations and there is some cooperation factor too plus the availability of tubewells.

I can be completely wrong and be mixing some concepts that I have heard from time to time though, but that's my understanding of it. It's rather the fact that animals are left free within India which can contaminate water sources plus the pollution from industries is another large contributor as well but India is migrating towards Green Energy at an accelerating rate, its just that its not really quite feasible for old machineries which you will see the case being within countries like china too.

the people who work within the dairy industry are truly passionate about it and treat their cows well. Both of my grandfamily from my mother/father side had dairy animals and my mother still tells us story about when they were young. You can truly sense some passion as my mother remembers the names of cow and what breed they were so many years later and how my father used to ride these cows to the very sources of water that I mentioned earlier for taking them to bath and actually the only reason my mother's side had cows were for self-intake.

This still happens in villages btw, there is a reason why when we go into villages, we are given some dairy product usually which is considered to be of highest quality.

India has many many flaws not gonna lie, even within the dairy industry and my parents reminisce the older times in this regards but I think that we are working towards better future more collectively and this issue ain't one of them.

India as a whole even does try to do a lot for its cows. The cows left on the streets are usually taken by religious institutions and places are made for them to live, where they can eat food. A lot of religious donations occur to keep these cows well fed so that they can be hopefully treated with dignity till they die of natural causes.

Also each house has somewhat of a tradition to feed any leftover food to stray dogs,cows and cats and certain rituals require you to must feed a cow that particular day.

For what its worth, I have also had a peacock come near our house and fly in open. I recorded it on camera and that was truly one of the most coolest things I have ever recorded. It literally came in like it owned the place.

And for a moment, it absolutely did :)

Have a nice day. I'd be curious to know if hyderabad shares some aspects of the story that I shared as I am not well aware about it but where I live, Animals are treated with co-existence (usually) and yes, not all things are sunshines and rainbows and traffic jams can happen because of cows sometimes and the places for cow to stay are over crowded because of lack of funding at times. I'd just say that Living in India is an experience long term and I treat these things as granted but writing these comments make me feel gratitude towards somethings haha. Although the things I mention are hard to be quantified within GDP numbers and the capitalist system of dairy at the very least which treats animals with some very severe conditions all because they can.

I don't quite understand what's the point of having animals be tortured for their lives for a few cents.

[this comment did get long but I don't think anyone has ever commented on HN in such detail from the insides about the dairy industry in India that I heard growing up from my family and my culture. I have tried to write everything actually I know of. That being said, I do have hopes that in the future, water can be more clean as well.]

“Yes, I am afraid electricity also drives command-and-control systems. If President Milošević really wants all of his population to have water and electricity, all he has to do is accept NATO’s five conditions and we will stop this campaign. But as long as he does not do so we will continue to attack those targets [that] provide the electricity for his armed forces. If that has civilian consequences, it is for him [Milošević] to deal with

Shea, 1999

But what's powering all those plants? Doesn't desalination require huge amount of power?

I am assuming it's natural gas and not oil but still they could lose power sources even without the plant itself being damaged or destroyed