last month hyderabad had bagged the title of being the most habitable metropolis in the country for the second time in two years while the news gave the city a reason celebrate the survey also came with a warning sign about the plight of waterbodies in the city truth is mana hyderabad has actually dipped five places globally from last year to rank 144 in the mercer 2017 quality of living index survey the reason dearth of proper water supply the spate of recent instances of fish deaths in lakes across the city one thing is clear most lakes in the city are either dead or dying hyderabad had over 3000 lakes in the 70s only 50 of them remain todayhyderabad was used to be called the city of lakes but today most of its water bodies have either dried up or enchroached to such an extent that its heightening an acute water crisis in the city and is effecting the overall environment the city had about 3000 lakes in 1970s but now 50 per cent of them have either disappeared or are shrinking most water bodies have been reduced to small ponds or worse been drained out illegally to make way for real estate ventures and it has resulted in a decline in ground water levels rise in temperatures and water logging during monsoons it is time the civil society and general public wake up and hold the authorities responsible or else there will be no water bodies left in hyderabad jasveen jairath founding convenor save our urban lakesthe state government and the ghmc themselves have become encroachershyderabad has turned to a drought city today because we failed to protect our ground water sources with the the lakes destroyed the city is forced to draw water from krishna and godavari which are over 250 kilometers away after turning a blind eye to private companies encroaching our lakebeds over the decades the ghmc has now backed them by laying roads through the lakes in the guise of building walking tracks and beautifying them as was the case with malkam cheruvu kapra lake and ibrahim cheruvu looks like the ghmc is hell bent on making these lakes commercial hubs the state government and the ghmc itself is an encroacher today lubna sarwath social activistits time we stop cribbing and start to facilitate the change we wantevery successive government have made some noise about the environmental mess but didnt stop developing satellite townships on the dead bodies of lakes so there is no point blaming the government unless we do something about it all we do is take out rallies protest and pledge to save the environment but nothing translates into anything concrete on the ground we all are to be blamed for the current situation polluted lakes dead lakes water shortage and floods if we cant facilitate the change we want we should stop cribbing for water anuradha reddy coconvenor of intachthe need of the hour is to develop