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 …
A recent letter from a reader has disturbed me enormously. B P Radhakrishna, president of the Geological Society of India, in response to a story in Down To Earth about how drought was affecting the mango harvest in Andhra Pradesh, wrote that the problem was not the current failure of …
sky's the limit: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is going to launch a European satellite into orbit from its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle by the end of 2005. ISRO chief Madhavan Nair said this would be the first EU satellite to be launched by the country. The organisation recently …
geologists have found that there are sudden and pronounced changes in the water level of wells in the Thar Desert before an earthquake. The observation raises the possibility of using wells to predict the seismic activity. The geologists, D Muralidharan, Rolland Andrade and U Satyanarayana of the Hyderabad-based National Geophysical …
an ecological disaster is waiting to unfold in the coastal belt of Saurashtra in Gujarat. Rampant illegal mining of building stone is wreaking havoc on the region's biodiversity. It has also resulted in severe groundwater depletion, apart from impacting the quality of water. Agriculture, too, is a major casualty. What …
Residents of drought-hit Osmanabad district learn from an innovative programme on groundwater conservation that local involvement and schemes at the micro-level can go a long way in saving the precious resource. Surekha waits in a line for hours on end for the tanker that brings drinking water to her village. …
function map() { var popurl="files/images/20040630/37.jpg" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=550,height=500,scrollbars=yes") } All signals emanating from the recently elected United Progressive Alliance government in India suggest that the country’s grandiose river-linking project is to be reviewed. These indications may not, however, be enough to allay apprehensions caused by the proposed venture in neighbouring Bangladesh. The …
Living amidst rivers and lakes and blessed by bountiful rain, the people of Kerala are yet to realise that they face a water crisis. Droughts come, but are treated as aberrations. On the one hand water usage is shooting up, on the other rains are playing truant. Unless it gets …
All places in Kerala, except a few in Palakkad, got more rainfall this summer than the national average. “Considering that India receives only 1,100 mm of rainfall as long period average, isn’t it absurd to say that Kerala suffered acute water scarcity even after getting 2,270 mm of rain in …
function map_table() { var popurl="html/20040531_cover.htm" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=780,height=500,scrollbars=yes") } In Kerala, land of 44 rivers and backwaters and a state with over 3,000 mm of annual rainfall there was a drought this February and March
THE steady downward trend of rainfall in Kerala for the past five years went unnoticed. The rapid fall in groundwater, too, didn't raise eyebrows. With 44 rivers and an annual average rainfall of 3,000 mm, Kerala goes to sleep with sweet dreams of water all around. But in February 2004, …
Under the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) of the United Nations (UN), it has been agreed to halve the number of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015. The Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, agreed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, added a similar global sanitation target. All this …
the onset of summer has again brought into sharp focus a plethora of issues pertaining to groundwater. It has been found that the authorities in Rajasthan have yet to spring into damage-control mode despite the state being parched. The situation is equally alarming in states like Tamil Nadu (tn) and …
A failed monsoon brings distress to Kerala; its second longest river, the Bharathapuzha, is virtually dry, and Palakkad district faces the worst drought in its history. Palakkad district is facing one of the worst droughts in its history. The Malampuzha dam, the biggest irrigation dam in the State, has failed …
Who does the water under the ground belong to? Who has the right to exploit it? Are there limits on what can be extracted? Till three months ago, the answers to such questions were simple. Groundwater under Indian law belongs to the person who owns the land. In other words, …
The report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on pesticide residues in and safety standards for soft drinks, fruit juices and other beverages is out. It agrees there were pesticide residues in soft drinks the Centre for Science and Environment had tested, so clearly posing a health hazard. But more …
At one point in the epic Mahabharata, the pandavs and kauravs go to warfare school. Amid thick forests, they train hard. Then, the time comes when they must leave. Yudhister, the eldest pandav, gifts the space as guru dakshina to his guru, Dronacharya. In time, there came up a town …
46 cities in China are sinking due to excessive pumping out of groundwater. According to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Land and Resources, rapid depletion of groundwater has lead to the soil sinking below the cities and produced more than 100 massive tunnels covering a total area of …
two recent directives of the Kerala High Court (hc) have further vindicated the Perumatty Grama Panchayat's stand in its face-off with the Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Private Limited (hcbpl). On December 16, Justice Balakrishnan Nair of the hc told hcbpl to close down the borewells at its Plachimada plant in Kerala's …
