Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of Ramdevbhai Samatbhai Sanjva Vs State of Gujarat & Others dated 09/05/2025. The matter related to remedial actions to be taken for abatement of pollution of river Bhadar near Ahmedabad. Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) has filed the response affidavit, March …
COMMUNITY participation in constructing and managing check dams and the use of water through lift irrigation has transformed the local ecosystem of 37 tribal villages in the Vansda taluk of Gujarat"s Valsad district. Cropping patterns, incomes, employment and even the social system have undergone remarkable changes. The villagers are now …
AS GUJARAT gears up to face another summer of water riots in the cities, the farmers of Shankerpura village in Panchmahal district will continue to irrigate their fields: they have their lift irrigation systems, run collectively and set up with help from the Sadguru Water and Development Foundation (SWDF). Shankerpura …
ON NEW Year's Eve, 1991, newspersons covering the 2-week Sangharsh Yatra from Madhya Pradesh to Gujarat against the Sardar Sarovar project (SSP) witnessed an ominous phenomenon: an area under prohibitory orders changing its contours like an amoeba. The Gujarat police stopped the yatra at the interstate border in Ferkuva village, …
Ya apo divya uta va sravanti khanitrima uta va yah svayamjah samudrartha yah suchayah pavakasta apo deviriha mamavantu Apah Suktam, Rigveda, VII. 59.2 "May the waters that are in the sky, or those that flow (on the earth), those (whose channels) have been dug,* or those that have sprung up …
THIS is a pond with a difference -- a lifeless, bitter-with-salt body of water that gets hotter as you go deeper and is scalding at the bottom. But for the Kutch dairy in Bhuj, Gujarat, the 6,000 sq metre pond is a gargantuan trap for solar energy and heats about …
THE "do nothing" principle of natural farming has resulted in bounteous harvests for Bhaskar Save, whose 14-acre farm, Kalpavruksha, is located in Deheri village in Gujarat"s Valsad district. Three decades ago, Save abandoned chemical fertilisers, pesticides and heavy machinery. "Minimum interference with growth is called natural farming," says Save. "Trees …
ONCE upon a time, the beautiful blackbuck (Antelope cervicapra) lorded over the Velavadar National Park in Gujarat. But in the early '80s, the blackbuck's territorial sovereignty was challenged by a formidable enemy -- the wolf (Canis lupus pallipes). Earlier, the wolves had been casual visitors to the park; the past …
Pro-Narmada dam activists in Gujarat have succeeded in forcing a fact finding team appointed by Union ministry of environment and forest (MEF) to put off its visit to the dam site. The NBA felt that what would be just another project review was not required. The team was to find …
The battle to raise hopes and lower the heightTHIS is the kind of demagoguery that haunts the Sardar Sarovar Project. The late Gujarat Chief Minister, Chimanbhai Patel, had used the emotive words jeevan dori (lifeline) to cement the project on an emotional platform from which, with infinite political cunning, it …
THE NARMADA Control Authority (NCA) - a body controlling all aspects of the utilisation of Narmada waters - has restrained the Gujarat government from closing the sluice gates of the Sardar Sarovar dam until the three states involved in the project clearly state their rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R;) plans. The …
PASTORALISTS are a vanishing breed the world over. These herders of sheep and cattle have a key role to play in the rehabilitation and sustainable management of fragile ecosystems. India has 34 million pastoralists managing a livestock population of more than 50 million. Apart from producing milk, meat, leather and …
IN MANY agricultural ecosystems, manure is used to provide the nutrients and organic matter needed for soil fertility on cropland. Even where chemical fertilisers are available, organic matter such as that provided by manure is the key to sustainable cropping. Farmers and pastoralists often develop relationships centred around each other's …
I understand you have an alternative to the Sardar Sarovar irrigation project, for using Narmada water. Can you give us an outline? The alternative is to use exogenous water judiciously to supplement local water. There are two reasons why we cannot rely only on local resources. In a drought-prone area, …
The Union agriculture ministry's plan to draw up a national fisheries policy for the integrated development of fishing in India has drawn flak from organisations representing coastal fisherfolk in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Goa, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Gujarat. The fisherfolk have objected strongly to the Union government's policy of supporting …
RECENT press reports have cast aspersions on the Gujarat government's commitment to wildlife and biodiversity conservation. A notification issued by the state department of forests and environment on July 27, cancelled a 1981 notification, under which specified areas of Lakhpat taluka in Kutch were designated as the Narayan Sarovar sanctuary. …
The American multinational company Cargill Inc has abandoned a proposal to establish a $15-million salt manufacturing unit near Kandla port in Gujarat. The decision came on the eve of a satyagraha planned by Janata Dal leader George Fernandes on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, who led the salt protest …
LESS THAN a week after Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar put off the much publicised jal-samarpan (death-by-drowning) protest against the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP), she attended the first round of talks with a five-member committee established by the Union government to review the project. Prior to the meeting, there …
SEVERAL foods people all over the country consume daily -- milk, butter and cereals, for example -- have been found to contain substances hazardous to health by a nationwide survey conducted by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). The ICMR surveyors found that as much as 87 per cent …
African locusts, which have been infesting parts of Gujarat and Rajasthan since mid-July, are keeping pest control experts on their toes. The agriculture ministry has pressed into action two helicopters and a Vayudoot aircraft, armed with sprayers and insecticides, to fight the locusts that rode a cyclonic storm from Oman …
OUT OF sight, out of mind. Perhaps that is why the depletion and degradation of groundwater throughout India has gone virtually unnoticed while much concern has been expressed over the condition of surface water resources. The crisis created by falling groundwater levels has grabbed the attention of only the immediate …
