Reply affidavit on behalf of Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board in the matter of Tribunal on its motion Vs State of Uttar Pradesh & Others dated 02/05/2025. The NGT, March 5, 2025 directed the authorities to file their replies/responses by way of affidavits regarding action taken for compliance of directions …
For the villagers of Lava ka Baas in Alwar district of Rajasthan, the Ramon Magsaysay award for Rajendra Singh, secretary of the Alwar-based Tarun Bharat Sangh could not have come at a more opportune time. After their face off with the irrigation department, who questioned the safety and the legality …
He loves to dabble with pumps. Fourteen-year-old Sukumal Dutta along with the other members of the community has undergone training as a mechanic for diesel pumpsets. With help from the NBTDP, the conventional diesel pump which used to lift water was modified to increase the overall efficiency, reduce cost and …
Our stock brokers can learn a few things about rising and falling prices from the Rabha tribe. Sheetin Rabha is a dynamic and wise women. Her group of 24 members decided to invest and took Rs 600 from their deposits and purchased 480 kg of rice. The price of paddy …
For all the people scripting the success stories, there is a warning: history has seen the death of millions of the country's water structures due to government's apathy. Now, for the first time in the last 50 years governments have really shifted their focus to drought proofing from the adhoc …
Keshubhai Patel Chief minister, Gujarat On overflowing check dams: We needed a permanent solution that not only drought-proofs the state but also provides livelihoods. The effort is to trap every drop of rainwater through check dams. The overflowing dams are a lesson for people to take up more water conservation. …
Digvijay Singh Chief minister, Madhya Pradesh On institutionalisation of structures: They are already public property. They were built according to needs of the people. For example, the farmers themselves have worked on the recharging of wells without any government money. Though loans are given, the wells belong to the people. …
This is not the only hurdle in making water conservation a long sustained movement. To make it a sustainable social movement and to reap its dividend in the form of poverty eradication, the government needs to put in prolonged efforts. Most of India's poverty eradication programmes have failed because they …
Investment in water is an insurance against poverty and drought. Down To Earth reporters visited the eight villages below during the droughts of 2000 and 2001. These villages have several years of experience in water conservation. The inference: the more the years of water conservation, the more the capacity to …
It is an unnecessary controversy over ownership of rainwater. The johad (traditional check dam) of Lava ka Baas in Alwar district of Rajasthan has been in the eye of a storm and so has Kamla Beniwal, Rajasthan irrigation minister. Claiming rainwater to be government's property, she supported the demolition of …
Along with Tarun Bharat Sangh ( tbs) co-workers, Gopal Singh stood by the villagers during their vigil at the Lava ka Baas johad. Credited with having designed over 4,500 water harvesting structures, this johad has also been designed by him. To express solidarity, villagers from neighbouring villages had come to …
Water laws in India are archaic and anti-people. Made to disempower rather than empower communities, these are used to terrorise the people rather than assist them. Secretary of tbs , Rajendra Singh received notices from the Rajasthan irrigation department stating that the johad constructed by the villagers of Lava ka …
All attempts by cse coordinator Indira Khurana to meet Rajasthan irrigation minister Kamla Beniwal went in vain. The minister refused to give an appointment. Khurana was directed to speak to the irrigation secretary who passed on the buck to the additional secretary cum chief engineer. She decided to call it …
Kalakhoont village's spin out of the poverty cycle began on a rainy day in June this year. Four days of rain filled up to the brim the long-forgotten tank in this nondescript village of Jhabua district in Madhya Pradesh ( mp ). Now almost the entire village is encircled by …
To fight drought, the Madhya Pradesh government embarked on a water conservation drive in February this year with its Pani Roko Abhiyan (Stop Water Campaign). The state administration geared up to reach all its 52,000 villages. It was inspired by an earlier effort of the state to conserve water through …
The experience of the last 22 years, starting from Ralegan Siddhi and Sukhomajri, shows that regeneration of a highly degraded village, ecologically and economically, takes more than 10 years. The chart below is a summary of the ecological regeneration-economic development process in six villages spanning over 16 years. The chart, …
This is a story of hope and of a major change. For the first time in the last 50 years, several state governments are dealing with drought in a different way
Devastating floods ruined Bhavesh Mandal's crops in the late 1960s. The hapless farmer had no option but to migrate to Mumbai and work as a masonry worker with no roof over his head. However, thanks to the North Bengal Terai Development Project ( nbtdp ), today Bhavesh is back in …
Never has a monsoon entered India with so much people-government efforts to arrest its downpour. An extensive array of water harvesting structures built after three drought spells in 11 states
Traditional water harvesting systems, such as tanks locally called "talabs', are an integral part of every village in Madhya Pradesh. Varying in size from less than an acre to a hundred hectares or more, talabs were built by rulers and communities several hundred years ago using the traditional knowledge of …
