Affidavit on behalf of Union Territory of Puducherry in the matter of a news item titled "India lost 2.33 million hectares of tree cover since 2000 Global Forest Watch" which appeared in the Indian Express, April 13, 2024. The report dated April 25, 2025 said that there is no loss …
About 20 km away from the district headquarters of Rajkot, this village shows how environmental management can bring about a socio-economic turnaround. According to Narayanbhai Limbasia, a 70-year-old farmer: "Around 15 years ago, people were unwilling to marry their daughters to grooms in this village due to the water crisis." …
The credit for the socio-economic turnaround of Raj-Samadhiyala village in Rajkot district of Gujarat goes to Hardevsinh Balwantsinh Jadeja, the 48-year-old head ( sarpanch ) of the village council. He thinks that rainwater harvesting is the only solution to deal with the grave water crisis in the Saurashtra region of …
This village in Mandvi taluka of Gujarat's Kachchh district has embarked on rainwater harvesting and wm quite recently. For the past 10-12 years, the residents have been facing a drinking water crisis. "Even officials of the Geological Survey of India failed to get water from a borewell a few years …
In the past six years, the 3,500-odd residents of this village in Rajkot district, which falls in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, have come a long way. After a prolonged water crisis, the village is well on its way to solve the problem through recharging of wells. Shamjibhai Antala of …
A micro-watershed management project was launched under the Rajiv Gandhi Mission for Watershed Development in this village of Jhabua district in 1996. Since then, a lot has changed. The underground aquifers have been recharged and all the eight handpumps in the village yield water throughout the year, says Bhurji Bhawar …
Some really serious issues face Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh today, and the present drought has highlighted them. "Water-related disputes are gradually increasing in rural areas. They are expected to surpass land disputes in the next 10 years," Rajora fears. And it is quite clear that the government cannot supply water …
The government of Gujarat has launched a project worth Rs 70 crore to dig 120 bores in the Wankaner taluka of Rajkot district to supply drinking water to Rajkot city. At present, the city is supplied water for 20 miniutes every two days. According to P V Trivedi, district magistrate …
everything is picture perfect in Mahur village, about 75 km from Pune in Maharashtra. Acres of marigold and lilies in full bloom, teak trees and a variety of crops conceal its unpleasant past. This huge tract in the Western Ghats was, till the mid-1970s, barren and untended. Even vast expanses …
Water harvesting systems have certainly benefited a large section of society in the Saurashtra and Kachchh regions. There is no way better than such systems to optimally tap water resources," says R C Trivedi, former chairperson of Gujarat Pollution Control Board, who lives in Ahmedabad. Manibhai Padmabhai Patel of Dhoraji …
Dear Prime Minister, This is a year of severe drought in Gujarat and western Madhya Pradesh - an area that is well known for natural disasters of this kind. During the last general elections, your home minister, fighting for a fresh term from this region, had to face evocative slogans …
community participation can work wonders , especially when it comes to tackling diseases like malaria. The Zimbabwe experience in recent years shows that, in what otherwise appears to be a hopeless situation, communities can reverse the fortunes of thousands of people susceptible to the disease. Also referred to as a …
If there is any lesson that the Indian government needs to learn from Seattle it is that it must learn to work with its own civil society. While all our politicians and press commentators may remain focussed on economic issues like 'market access' and 'market control', it is ultimately the …
born in 1950 in Ratlam district of Madhya Pradesh, Rakesh Trivedi has a multi-dimensional personality. A professor of zoology in the Gujarati Science College in Indore, he is also director of the ecoestate faculty of the Centre for Environment Protection, Research and Development ( ceprd ) and writes for Naiduniya …
the Delhi government will soon be involving resident welfare associations (rwas) in the capital to participate and monitor the working of the four civic bodies in the state. The step, initiated and supervised by the chief minister's office (cmo), is in the preliminary stage of consultation with the rwas and …
in spite of protests by villagers of Pulichintala, the Andhra Pradesh government has proposed to construct a Rs 675-crore dam downstream of the Nagarjuna Sagar Project near the village in Guntur district. Speaking to a news agency , Krishna Rao, superintendent engineer of the project said, "Around 16,000 people of …
in the 1980s, a few institutional and community biogas plants were set up in some villages by cooperating centres of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research ( icar )-sponsored All India Coordinated Research Project. Islampur village in Bhopal was one of the villages selected. As in any other village, cowdung …
for Premjibhai Patel, the title ganda bapa (crazy old man) fails to work as a deterent in pursuing his zeal for trapping much-needed water and restoring the depleted forest cover around his hometown in Gujarat. In his 60s, Patel is also known as vriksh premi (tree-lover). He abandoned his profession …
The residents of Kuil Thothom, a slum tenement in Santhome, Chennai, have a lot to be thankful to the Rotary Club of Madras Central, especially R Jeyakumar, its chairperson. The club helped in bringing clean water to their homes. The need to explore the possibility of rooftop rainwater harvesting in …
of the nearly 39,000 tanks that recharge the groundwater in Tamil Nadu, more than 20,000 of them are small minor irrigation tanks. The level of water in these tanks is dependent on the vagaries of the weather. Most of the farmers of the area are entirely dependent on this system …
