 the city of lakes is expected to become the next city to run dry Tamil Nadu and its capital city are struggling to meet the water demand of its citizens the Indian farmer they say is born in debt lives in debt and dies in debt a harsh truth closer home in Karnataka which is the brink of a crisis in one of the most fertile regions of the state the Kaveri Veld the rivers in India are in a serious condition on an average all rivers in India are depleting approximately 8% every year in sixteen years most rivers will be gone 8% drop almost seven months in a year Kaveri doesn't reach the ocean it dries up right here somewhere today it is 46% less than what it was 40 years ago your children or maybe their children will not know what is Kaveri when we launched the Lary for Rivers moment we did over 50,000 art competitions around the country because we want the children to become conscious you won't believe this many children painted brown sand and they thought that's the river because that's the only river they have seen the biggest concern is not even water the biggest concern is soil there is not enough organic content you can't boil water India has 160 million hectares of aerable land of this 104 million hectares of aerable land is under distress soil distress this country is going to have serious problems about growing food in the next 15 to 25 years with 1.3 billion people if you can't grow your food that's going to be the biggest disaster 96% of our rivers flow only with rain water if you have vegetation our ability to hold the rain water is enhanced either the rain water which happens approximately in 45 to 50 days in the year it all flows out within the next 50 days the only way you can slow down is by vegetation simply not by increasing the forest cover is out of question these are the only ways to transit them into agroforestry we have converted literally over 69,670 farmers in Tamil Nadu due incomes have gone up 5 to 10 times in a matter of 8 to 10 years right now in Tamil Nadu in Kannada we are launching what is Kaveri for you 25 of us will be riding motorcycles from Talla Kaveri to Tiruvavur in Tamil Nadu all along Kaveri and create not only awareness we are talking to both the governments to support the farmer to move from regular cropping to agroforestry all it takes is 3 to 4 years of subsidies to help him transition after that he doesn't need support these 4 years if you support him he will shift to agroforestry once there is economic benefit after that even subsidies are not needed Kaveri basin amounts to about 83,000 square kilometers we want to convert one third of the Kaveri basin into agroforestry if you do this the 46% depletion that's happened in the river waters will come back river will flow once again farmers will be rich and well to do when I was speaking in the UN I said I want to officiate the marriage of economy and ecology only then we will produce something significant ecology is not against the economic well-being of the people economy and ecology have to go in hand in hand how to do our economics in an ecologically sensitive way this is the important thing this project is called Kaveri calling because she has been calling can you hear is the question hello can you hear Kaveri is calling