Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
Tapasya Mohan, a 29-year-old executive in a telecom company, recently purchased a refrigerator. She did not go by looks but the five-star label on the fridge for energy efficiency. She did not mind paying more; the salesman convinced her she would save more in the long run on her electricity …
Every year, during monsoon, it is the same story for roads across India. Potholes, potholes and more potholes. It requires a small intervention to not only help reduce costs incurred in repairing a damaged stretch but also increase groundwater levels. Yet, the government has failed to do so. The potential …
BENGALURU residents look forward to December 2011, when the new water treatment plant at T K Halli would deliver 500 million litres of potable water every day. This would increase each person’s daily water allowance in the city by 25 litres. Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) fast-tracked the …
Tango with nature India has been using lakes, ponds and baolis (step wells) since ancient times ('What monsoon means', July 16-31, 2010). Delhi was once replete with water bodies. In the past 50 years, government agencies started disbanding natural ponds, lakes and baolis, declaring their water untested, and therefore, unfit …
The Pushkar lake dried after dredging last summer. The dredging was part of a lake conservation project funded by the Centre and the Rajasthan government. The Rs 48-crore project aims to spruce up the catchment and concretize existing channels that carry the run-off. The latter is to curb losses through …
Why is the river so notorious? Assam has lost about 170,000 hectares to the Brahmaputra and its major tributaries between 1990 and 2007. These are mostly prime land such as tea gardens and the economic loss is phenomenal. The problem is the Brahmaputra transports heavy sediment load—about 800 million tonnes …
A walk along the bank of the Ganga, a drive across the Gangetic plains and a boat ride through the Ganga. These are the three segments of the exhibition, Ganga 21, that opened at New Delhi’s Indian Council for Cultural Relation’s Azad Bhavan auditorium on July 15. In 21 large …
TELUGU Desam Party chief Chandrababu Naidu reignited the Godavari river water sharing controversy when he was arrested last month on his way to the Babhali barrage in Maharashtra’s Nanded district. Andhra Pradesh has long held that the barrage, located 7 km into its border with Maharashtra, will deprive Telangana of …
MAHABUBNAGAR A Shekhar, 25, committed suicide a year ago. A resident of Burgupalle village in Andhra Pradesh’s Mahabub - nagar district, he had bought half a hectare (ha) for growing paddy. He borrowed Rs 1.5 lakh to sink three borewells but did not find groundwater. Shekhar could not repay the …
“We don’t govern water. Water governs us,” writes James G Workman. In 2002, Workman, who was previously a speechwriter for the Clinton administration and worked on the groundbreaking report of the World Commission on Dams, set off for the Kalahari Desert in search of a coping strategy for water scarcity. …
The million-odd users of groundwater in Andhra Pradesh need a new form of regulation, everybody agrees. The system based on permits—under WALTA—only adds to the transaction cost of farmers. The fact is there is a desperation to dig and then dig deeper. There is no estimation how much the farmers—private …
The quantum of groundwater Andhra Pradesh received earlier from 100,000 borewells is now obtained by drilling 260,000 borewells, said A K Jain, special secretary to the state’s irrigation and command area development department. B Peddiraji, tehsildar of Butchayyapeta in Visakhapatnam district, added there is tremendous pressure on groundwater, with the …
The Water, Land and Trees Act (WALTA) was enacted in 2002. Meant to regulate groundwater use, the Act requires farmers to register their borewells with the mandal revenue office after getting clearance from the district groundwater office. Farmers like Muniratnam Naidu in Chittoor district laugh at the idea of taking …
On the bottled water revolution Bottled water consumption in the US, and worldwide, has been growing rapidly for two decades. It really began when bottlers started using plastic bottles. In my book, Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water, I argue there are four major reasons …
US $1 TRILLION WORTH OF MINERALS Afghanistan is suddenly richThe Pentagon recently announced that Afghanistan is sitting on mineral wealth worth US $1 trillion—about 1,000 times the government’s annual revenue. The untapped mineral deposits, including iron, copper, cobalt, gold and lithium, a key raw material for laptop, cell phone and …
On reasons for conducting social audit Social audit means involving people in an audit process. It provides a platform to the public to voice their grievances. We wanted to reach out to the common man as many problems affecting them go unheard. A social audit would give them a platform.On …
women in Bikhnatori village in Bihar are jubilant they no longer have to walk hours to fetch water. For the first time since Independence, the border village is getting potable water supply. The Bihar government started supplying 3,000 litres of water daily through a tanker from March 25. Down To …
BERHAMPUR: A long march demanding linking of major rivers of Orissa was flagged off from Kasinagar in Gajapati district of south Orissa on Friday. Different organisations of south Orissa have come together for the march from Kashinagar to Bhubaneswar demanding linking of Vansadhara, Rushikulya and Mahanadi rivers of Orissa. The …
Greeshma Gopal Giri | ENS MERE spattering, brief spells will not suffice for certain parts of Ambattur Municipality this year; the prayers are for heavy rain. Delayed monsoon has led to wells drying up and groundwater level getting depleted. Water scarcity is particularly acute in the localities in and around …
