Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of Naresh Kumar Vs Government of NCT of Delhi & Others dated 13/05/2025. The matter is related to illegal extraction of groundwater in Manakpura, Delhi by the water supply mafia. According to the complainant, one Hemant has illegally drilled a borewell …
the supply of recycled water for Bangalore's public parks has not started yet, although, a year ago, the Karnataka government banned the use of potable water and groundwater in such places. The reason: the Bangalore City Corporation (bcc) has no vehicles to transport recycled water from Bangalore Water Supply and …
The draft National Environment Policy (nep) released recently by the Union ministry of environment and forests (moef) identifies major environmental problems, outlines their causes and puts forward a set of principles to address problems. But glaring loopholes remain. The most obvious ones pertain to the draft's contradictions with current government …
when you buy a bottle of Coke, the company's sales figures increase. The stock price goes up, encouraging, activists claim, it to support dubious labour practices in Latin America, deplete groundwater in Kerala, and sell drinks laced with pesticides all over India. And now Max Keiser, a former New York …
A cruel summer has been left behind. Pipes are gurgling to life and the surge of water tankers on Chennai's streets is on the ebb. People and leaders are now free to discuss issues non-aqueous. There are even days when Chennai's papers skip the almost mandatory columns devoted to water. …
Uncertainty in the occurrence of rainfall with respect to time and quantity is a major contraint to agricultural production in rainfed areas. To alleviate the constraint, groundwater is pumped at an unsustainable rate causing continuous water table decline. Groundwater recharge by the rainwater and runoff harvested in percolation tanks can …
Western Ghats form the catchment of all the 44 rivers that sustain the agroeconomy of Kerala. A study was conducted to assess the effect of land use on runoff from small watersheds of Western Ghats. Three small mono-culture watersheds, planted with cashew, coffee, tea and one small watershed with dense …
Any discussion on the water problems of Kolkata is a paradox indeed, as the city is situated in the lower reaches of one of the world's largest delta regions. But like all other Indian metropolitan centres, Kolkata too is facing water woes, with both its freshwater and groundwater sources dying …
the Andhra Pradesh government has introduced new measures to check over-exploitation of groundwater resources. The Andhra Pradesh Water, Land and Trees Act, 2002 (walta), which was amended in August 2004 and came into force recently, regulates the drilling of borewells for irrigation purposes. The drying of borewells was a major …
When Neena Khanna from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences called to tell us that her patient who lives in Ballia district of Uttar Pradesh had high levels of arsenic in his blood, hair and nails, we were stunned. Why Ballia? We knew of arsenic in West Bengal and …
karnataka treats its groundwater with utter callousness, a recently released government report illustrates. Not only has the water level in the state depleted further and the water quality declined, the area under exploitation has also increased. The situation in 84 of the 380 watershed areas in the state is critical. …
In July 2004, the Union ministry of water resources was asked a question in parliament on the extent of contamination of water by arsenic and fluoride. The ministry replied that arsenic had affected the following eight districts of West Bengal
The government deigns to recognise the arsenic problem only in West Bengal and one district of Bihar. But recent studies prove the presence of the contaminant in several other states too: Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. As early as 1991, the Jadavpur University of West Bengal and the United …
There is no doubt that arsenic is present in Ballia. But why is it there? Is there anything common between the geology of this place and West Bengal, or any other affected area? Why aren't natural arsenic poisoning cases reported from Delhi or Mumbai on a widescale? Why are most …
It is one thing for scientific theories on arsenic contamination to conflict with each other. But it is another when it plays out in real life. We know that arsenic interweaves with the geology and hydrology of the place where it is found, or not. It is also known that …
with the menace of arsenic contamination in groundwater continuing unabated in Bangladesh and India, reuse of surface waterbodies has been proposed as a way out. These waterbodies were abandoned in the past because of bacterial contamination owing to poor sanitation practices. Instead of cleaning them up, the officials had propagated …
Dinanath Singh has a cancerous wound on his left foot from which blood and pus continuously ooze. He has black and white spots (lesions) all over his body. The 61-year-old also suffers from skin cancer. Two fingers of his left hand had developed ulcers and had to be amputated. His …
HEARD of Plachimada? Over the last two-and-a-half years, people in this Kerala village have been agitating to get a neighbouring Coke plant shut down. According to them, Coke's water mining has parched the lands of over 2,000 people. Welcome to the water wars. This is why it was heartening to …
On July 12 this year, Punjab's legislators passed an act which annulled all previous water sharing agreements with neighbouring Haryana and Rajasthan. It sparked off a dispute whose roots actually go back to the 1960 Indo-Pak Indus Water Agreement. In its haste to exact much more than India's due share, …
in passing the Punjab Termination of Agreements Act, 2004, Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh has defied the law of the land and taken on the Supreme Court and the Union government. The Act renders null and void all legal agreements and treaties forged till date regarding sharing the water of …
