Uma Bharti to visit Israel to gain insight on water technology

Hyderabad, June 1: Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti is visiting Israel later this month to gain first-hand knowledge on technologies and expertise in water sector including desalination, urban water systems and smart metering and how they can be implemented back in India.

"Uma Bharti will visit Israel end of this month to see what kind of technologies can be adopted in India," Spokesman of Embassy of Israel, Ohad Horsandi said.

After defence and agriculture, Israel sees huge scope for furthering cooperation in the water sector, with its companies keen to tap opportunities in India and scale up the level of engangement in this country.

"This (Water technologies, knowhow and expertise) is the main topic we are focusing this year", he said. Pointing out that challenges faced in Israel are similar to India, like lack of water and farmers having small land holding, he said his country had faced successive severe drought a decade ago but by using different tools and methods it was able to deal with the situation."

"Today, end result is Israel has surplus water". As much as 75 per cent of water used by Israelis at home is desalinated. About 80 per cent of water used for domestic purposes are recycled and reused later, mainly in agriculture, Horsandi said. 70 per cent of the Jewish State is desert.

He spoke about Israeli techology and knowledge in the areas of urban water systems, desalination, drip irrigation, checking leakage and illegal connections and smart metering, among others. Horasandi also said under the Indo-Israel Agricultural Project (IIAP), a centre of excellence -- essentially a tool centre for fruits and vegetables -- is being set up at Kuppam in Andhra Pradesh.

It is planned to have another centre of excellence -- likely to be focused on bee-keeping, vegetables, mangoes and citrus -- in Medak district of Telangana, he said.

Andhra Pradesh government is keen to have a desalination facility with Israeli expertise, and homeland security technologies based on the experience of his country in dealing with terror and terror threats, Horsandi said.

PTI