Ranchi, March 8: The desultory and listless debate on water scarcity this afternoon was livened up by some light-hearted banter and repartee.

But the debate on an issue of life and death, on which the Opposition had walked out of the House and boycotted the governor?s address on the inaugural day of the session, failed to throw much light or generate much heat. Nor did any solution come in sight or any assurance given. Indeed, RJD member Ramchandra Chandravanshi threw a spanner by recalling that a similar debate in the Assembly some three years ago had yielded nothing.

The debate, however, was kicked off in earnest by Bandhu Tirkey, who said that while the government could afford to supply water in the urban areas in tankers, what about the people in the countryside ?

Water resources minister Jaleshwar Mahto conceded that the crisis has been caused by very little rainfall during the last eight months. The state recorded only 800 mm rainfall this time as against a normal of 1,400, he informed.

Bandhu Tirkey suggested that the government can be flexible in choosing the depth of tubewells and borewells. The prescribed depth, he added, cannot be the same everywhere.

The water resources minister said attempts were on to harvest rain water and that the government will not let anyone die of thirst. For good measure, he informed, against the national average of one handpump for 251 people, in Jharkhand there is one handpump for 81 people.

Two BJP members, Loknath and Chatruram Mahto, suggested that public sector companies working in the countryside or remote areas can be asked to supply water in tankers to villages. The Coal India subsidiaries similarly, it was suggested, could be asked to filter water trapped in mines and supply them to people.

The government was caught napping by nominated member Joseph Gelaustin, who made a rare intervention to complain that although the government had sanctioned Rs 2.39 crore for a water project in Sahebganj three years ago, nothing had come of it.

Urban development minister Raghubar Das saved government the blushes by claiming that there were ?technical flaws? in the project and they would be corrected soon.

The monotony of the somewhat direction-less debate was broken by some light-hearted banter when Speaker Inder Singh Namdhari first inquired about the Hindu god controlling water. ?Indra?, replied a JMM member, prompting the Speaker to ask for a synonym. Jaleshwar, pat came the reply, which is the name of the drinking water and sanitation minister.

Some members later grumbled that the Speaker had trivialised the debate by encouraging puns when Forward Bloc member, Bhanu Pratap Singh, was speaking on the rain-shadow area (paani ka grahan) in Palamau. The smiling Speaker pointed out how close it was to panigrahan (wedding in Hindi).

The word paani not only stands for water but with a slight modification but with the same pronunciation, it also stands for hand and occasionally honour. There are any number of proverbs based on the word like paani-paani hona or paani sar ke upar se jaanas. The debate, luckily, did not go into such semantics.