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Yes even most people in Pakistan/India have access to those, plus broadband internet. Yes I've been there.

by meric 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sumedh 9y ago
> Yes even most people in Pakistan/India have access to those, plus broadband internet. Yes I've been there. Indian here, lot of people in metro cities dont have clean water. Most middle class and rich people use water filter to clean the water in their house. Forget the villages.
- meric 9y ago
  Oh well I stayed in Pakistan cities and villages and farms and there's clean water, housing and mobile broadband... Sorry to hear the state in India - I incorrectly assumed they were ahead due to higher GDP per capita.
  - vidarh 9y ago
    From https://www.dawn.com/news/1319157 https://www.dawn.com/news/1319157 "ISLAMABAD: Eighty-four per cent of the population does not have access to safe drinking water in a country where commercial banks posted windfall profits exceeding Rs475 billion in three years, the Senate was told on Tuesday. Quoting a study, Provision of Safe Drinking Water, conducted by the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR), Minister for Science and Technology Rana Tanvir Hussain said only 72pc of water supply schemes were found to be functional, and 84pc of those had supplied water that was not fit for consumption." This article was published March this year. Maybe the report in question was alarmist, I don't know. In case dawn.com isn't a reputable source, here's a number of other articles covering it: https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/03/09/safe-drinking-water/ https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/03/09/safe-drinking-wa... http://nationalcourier.pk/editorial/pcrwr-report-eye-opener/ http://nationalcourier.pk/editorial/pcrwr-report-eye-opener/ This one has a slightly different focus, and also links to reports claiming the same agency has found contaminations in bottled water too: http://pakobserver.net/arsenic-detected-above-permissible-limit-in-drinking-water-pcrwr/ http://pakobserver.net/arsenic-detected-above-permissible-li... http://pakobserver.net/pcrwr-declares-11-mineral-water-brands-unsafe-report/ http://pakobserver.net/pcrwr-declares-11-mineral-water-brand... Here is the agency's actual report on Punjab province, with a quote below: http://pcrwr.gov.pk/images/document/Water%20Quality/Water%20Suply%20Schemes%20Punjab%20Report.pdf http://pcrwr.gov.pk/images/document/Water%20Quality/Water%20... "The outcome of the survey conducted in the domains of 21 districts of the Punjab province, has revealed that water supply schemes are providing piped water supply for drinking purposes to meet household needs and for other multiple uses to an enumerated population of 19.017 million persons on 2408 surveyed water schemes. The survey has however, summed up that the performance of these schemes in terms of providing water in an adequate quantity and of safe quality, is extremely poor. This inability and inefficiency may be scaled from the fact that 35 percent of the schemes are presently not functioning. As a result, nearly 61 percent of the total enumerated population remains unserved by the water supply schemes. More alarming situation is that 88 percent of the functional schemes are providing unsafe drinking water to the consumers. It is also notable that, on province basis, the average water charges per scheme figure out to Rs. 64 per month. "
    - meric 9y ago
      Ok apparently I have been served unsafe drinking water. "For Pakistan’s majority, the main source of drinking water is groundwater. The most common instrument for extracting groundwater in rural areas are the hand pump and the motor pump. Hand pumps and motor pumps together provide 61 percent of households with drinking water; in rural areas this percentage rises up to 70. " http://nation.com.pk/blogs/13-Jun-2015/provision-of-safe-drinking-water-a-new-challenge-for-pakistan http://nation.com.pk/blogs/13-Jun-2015/provision-of-safe-dri... "In 2015, 91% of the population had access to an "improved" water supply.[15][16] This was 94% of the population in urban areas and 90% of the population in rural areas." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Pakistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...
      - vidarh 9y ago
        Note that the point was not to criticise Pakistan - it seems like they are putting in quite an effort to modernise the systems. It's just that lot of these things look better on the surface and so are easy to underestimate the seriousness of the challenges. E.g. if you have a well or running water, and no alternative, you use it, because no water is far worse than bad water. And most of the time chances are it'll be ok. That makes it easy to conclude that it's probably safe even when there are flaws in the supply that can quickly render it unsafe or that makes it unsafe for sustained consumption. E.g. arsenic leaking into the supply won't kill you from a drink here and there - arsenic is difficult to kill with, because too high concentrations makes you puke it up - but sustained ingestion of smaller doses may have severe and lasting health effect and may ultimately kill you. (Arsenic is "interesting" in that a lot of arsenic contaminated water from pumped wells in developing countries is a result of inadequate testing in the rush of upgrading water sources from surface sources prone to bacterial contamination - as such, a lot of those pumped sources may in fact still represent an improvement, but in some cases also still represents a severe health risk) Overall there's a great deal of progress in securing basic safe water supply. We're just not there yet. Even many developed countries regularly run into water supply issues.

Yes even most people in Pakistan/India have access to those, plus broadband internet. Yes I've been there.

by meric 9y ago

Yes even most people in Pakistan/India have access to those, plus broadband internet. Yes I've been there.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

sumedh 9y ago

> Yes even most people in Pakistan/India have access to those, plus broadband internet. Yes I've been there. Indian here, lot of people in metro cities dont have clean water. Most middle class and rich people use water filter to clean the water in their house. Forget the villages.

meric 9y ago
Oh well I stayed in Pakistan cities and villages and farms and there's clean water, housing and mobile broadband... Sorry to hear the state in India - I incorrectly assumed they were ahead due to higher GDP per capita.
- vidarh 9y ago
  From https://www.dawn.com/news/1319157 https://www.dawn.com/news/1319157 "ISLAMABAD: Eighty-four per cent of the population does not have access to safe drinking water in a country where commercial banks posted windfall profits exceeding Rs475 billion in three years, the Senate was told on Tuesday. Quoting a study, Provision of Safe Drinking Water, conducted by the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR), Minister for Science and Technology Rana Tanvir Hussain said only 72pc of water supply schemes were found to be functional, and 84pc of those had supplied water that was not fit for consumption." This article was published March this year. Maybe the report in question was alarmist, I don't know. In case dawn.com isn't a reputable source, here's a number of other articles covering it: https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/03/09/safe-drinking-water/ https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/03/09/safe-drinking-wa... http://nationalcourier.pk/editorial/pcrwr-report-eye-opener/ http://nationalcourier.pk/editorial/pcrwr-report-eye-opener/ This one has a slightly different focus, and also links to reports claiming the same agency has found contaminations in bottled water too: http://pakobserver.net/arsenic-detected-above-permissible-limit-in-drinking-water-pcrwr/ http://pakobserver.net/arsenic-detected-above-permissible-li... http://pakobserver.net/pcrwr-declares-11-mineral-water-brands-unsafe-report/ http://pakobserver.net/pcrwr-declares-11-mineral-water-brand... Here is the agency's actual report on Punjab province, with a quote below: http://pcrwr.gov.pk/images/document/Water%20Quality/Water%20Suply%20Schemes%20Punjab%20Report.pdf http://pcrwr.gov.pk/images/document/Water%20Quality/Water%20... "The outcome of the survey conducted in the domains of 21 districts of the Punjab province, has revealed that water supply schemes are providing piped water supply for drinking purposes to meet household needs and for other multiple uses to an enumerated population of 19.017 million persons on 2408 surveyed water schemes. The survey has however, summed up that the performance of these schemes in terms of providing water in an adequate quantity and of safe quality, is extremely poor. This inability and inefficiency may be scaled from the fact that 35 percent of the schemes are presently not functioning. As a result, nearly 61 percent of the total enumerated population remains unserved by the water supply schemes. More alarming situation is that 88 percent of the functional schemes are providing unsafe drinking water to the consumers. It is also notable that, on province basis, the average water charges per scheme figure out to Rs. 64 per month. "
  - meric 9y ago
    Ok apparently I have been served unsafe drinking water. "For Pakistan’s majority, the main source of drinking water is groundwater. The most common instrument for extracting groundwater in rural areas are the hand pump and the motor pump. Hand pumps and motor pumps together provide 61 percent of households with drinking water; in rural areas this percentage rises up to 70. " http://nation.com.pk/blogs/13-Jun-2015/provision-of-safe-drinking-water-a-new-challenge-for-pakistan http://nation.com.pk/blogs/13-Jun-2015/provision-of-safe-dri... "In 2015, 91% of the population had access to an "improved" water supply.[15][16] This was 94% of the population in urban areas and 90% of the population in rural areas." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Pakistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...
    - vidarh 9y ago
      Note that the point was not to criticise Pakistan - it seems like they are putting in quite an effort to modernise the systems. It's just that lot of these things look better on the surface and so are easy to underestimate the seriousness of the challenges. E.g. if you have a well or running water, and no alternative, you use it, because no water is far worse than bad water. And most of the time chances are it'll be ok. That makes it easy to conclude that it's probably safe even when there are flaws in the supply that can quickly render it unsafe or that makes it unsafe for sustained consumption. E.g. arsenic leaking into the supply won't kill you from a drink here and there - arsenic is difficult to kill with, because too high concentrations makes you puke it up - but sustained ingestion of smaller doses may have severe and lasting health effect and may ultimately kill you. (Arsenic is "interesting" in that a lot of arsenic contaminated water from pumped wells in developing countries is a result of inadequate testing in the rush of upgrading water sources from surface sources prone to bacterial contamination - as such, a lot of those pumped sources may in fact still represent an improvement, but in some cases also still represents a severe health risk) Overall there's a great deal of progress in securing basic safe water supply. We're just not there yet. Even many developed countries regularly run into water supply issues.