India today is undergoing a phase of high-tech industrialisation with several high tech projects coming to the country due to one reason or another. These vary from low production and labour costs, and in some cases, due to the restrictions in the developed countries on certain chemical industries and hazardous processes, etc. But that is another story. The moot point is whether this mega industrialisation is sustainable or not? Whether our manpower is sufficient and competent enough to cope up with the demanding business environment?

A closer look at the education pattern and employment in the country and one can see very clearly that cream of our brainpower is headed to work in the IT industry/software development. The middle level brainpower is also working in the IT-enabled services like BPOs/call centres, etc. Only a handful of people turn to the engineering and manufacturing industries. No seems to be interested in dirtying their hands with the grease and the grime.

Here, it becomes important to the owner/promoter of Indian industry to use the best possible quality of instrumentation to achieve the goal of excellence in manufacturing. Liquid measurement is one of the basic instrumentation that is neglected at present.

If you take any plant, one can see hundreds of valves, pipeline arrays and a large number of pumps, etc., equipment that is used mainly to handle some or other liquid that is used in the industry. There are thousands of pump manufacturers in the country and countless number of valve manufacturers. Roughly 75% of the pumps are used for water, 10% are for petrochemicals and the remaining 15% used for chemicals.

Chemicals are definitely costly and some of them even hazardous to human health. The fuel prices have been sky rocketing and 3% of sweet water on the earth is cleary not going to last for ever. So it becomes very important for the industry to measure, control and audit the use of water or any liquid. To control the use of any substance, it is important to measure and monitor its use. And to do this in case of a liquid, it is crucial to use the best quality solutions like flow sensors and flow meters.

Before liberalisation, most of the instrumentation, especially flow meters, were mainly imported from Europe or the US, and prices were very high. Only a few corporate sector or pharmaceutical companies could afford to purchase and use these flow meters. But now there are many types of flow meters available locally. A few indigenous manufacturers are even exporting these meters worldwide. Magnetic, Positive Displacement Oval Gears (PD in short), Turbine, Vortex and Ultrasonic meters are now being manufactured in our country on a large scale. The availability and prices are reasonably good.

But the old mindset is not yet changed. People are still reluctant to measure and use technology, and even when they do, it is often to comply with the law, e.g., when the Pollution Control Board makes it mandatory.

This is not only the case with water, but fuel and chemicals also are measured with an ordinary dip stick! The diameter of a drum is not a reliable constant, yet we see people using a dip stick in the drum carrying the liquid to measure the fuel or oil or any liquid it may hold.

All this ignorance and reluctance towards adaptation of new technology is going to cost us dearly in the long term. We should understand that a drop saved today is a drop earned for tomorrow.

One has to study the examples of Singapore and Israel. Singapore is densely populated and low on water resources, hence they have invested a lot on water recycling infrastructure. And not just that - they took their initiative to the people and started a drive called "10-litre challenge". This was started at the school level and later on everybody was motivated to keep a tab on their water spending. This awareness later on percolated to the lowest levels of social strata and most of the residences now have a water meter installed which is monitored by family members - not the corporation employees.

Similarly in Israel, they decide the yield from their agriculture by how much water was is used. If I provide 500 litres of water then I should expect this much crop - this is the way of their calculation. Not only that, they collect water from the evaporation in green houses and recycle the condensed water again and again.

If we want to achieve control on any resource planning, the most important thing is to know our consumption. Hence metering is very important in any field whether it's water treatment, oil, automobile, chemicals, petrochemicals, construction, textile, breweries. Wherever there is a pipeline there should be measurement - and the necessary instrumentation is here to help you. It is just a matter of getting the priorities right.

(Contact Vatturkar Industrial, Tel: 020-25472157, 58. Email: marketing @vatturkar. com)