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 …
Indians have lived with drought since time immemorial. Communities have built water-harvesting structures and learnt to treasure the value of every raindrop. All this has been done keeping in mind that it does not rain throughout the year and it may not rain next year. Therefore it would not be …
the Himalaya mountains are among the youngest ranges in the world - its formation having begun only around 100 million years ago and still continuing. The range was formed by the collision of the Indian and Tibetan plates which lie below the Earth's surface and are continuously moving. With the …
It was a real pleasure to go with President K R Narayanan to Hamirpura village. People always come to the Rashtrapati Bhawan estate to receive awards from the President. The fact that the President went to the village himself to honour it is a remarkable thing in itself. It is …
it was an event the villagers of Alwar district will not forget in a hurry. Four helicopters, numerous vehicles, a posse of policemen and 30,000-odd villagers had gathered in Hamirpura village in Thanagazi block of Alwar to welcome India's first citizen. And savour the fruits of their hard labour. The …
There was a time when people from other villagers were not interested in getting their daughters married to men from Guraiya village. They had a reason. During summer, the women were forced to carry drinking water from the river Bebas, three kilometres away. Now, it is the other way round. …
A tale of two villages There are about 600,000 villages in India. And perhaps as many kinds of environmental problems they face. It is easy to accept defeat. But Bhaonta-Kolyala did not it's an unusual ritual the villages of Bhaonta-Kolyala follow. Every year, they pour water into a johad - …
"The forest was dense till the 1960s," recalls Suryabhan Khorbade of Sayagata village in Maharashtra's Chandrapur district. During the British rule, people were allowed to enter the forests at their own will. But after Independence, when the forest department stepped in, there was a ban on access to the forests. …
Obensao Kikon (63) belongs to Wokha district in Nagaland. An :rdent jungle burner' at one time, his stint as the chairperson of the Market Federation of Nagaland changed his outlook. Thereafter, there has been no looking back. His 615-ha land in Wokha is full of teak and bamboo trees. He …
It is an oft-repeated story of dense forests being reduced to shrubs and coppice. In the case of Melaghar village in Sonmara subdivision, the 1971 Bangladesh war responsible for the wanton felling of the then abundant sal, teak and bamboo forests. A large number of refugees from across the border …
for years, Dewas district in the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh, has been facing the grim prospect of desertification following the unregulated use of groundwater in the region. But it seems a people's movement launched by M Mohan Rao, district magistrate, may yet manage to avert such a fate. Say …
The wisdom of harvesting rainwater to meet growing demands and augment depleting water resources has perhaps at long last caught the attention of the Delhi government. In his address to the Delhi Assembly on the first day of the Budget session, Lieutenant-Governor Vijai Kapoor said the government was planning to …
THE reds are being forced to turn green in the Nizamabad, Adilabad and Warangal districts of the Telangana region where the people have embraced the Andhra Pradesh government's joint forest management (JFM) programme in a big way. What is unusual is that forest officials move around freely in the remote …
Recently, a group of social activists visited the Telangana region to probe police atrocities against the Naxalites. What they were shown by the extremists as their concern for poor villagers was amazing: check dams, boulder-filled dams and water harvesting structures. That the Naxalites are getting involved in water conservation is …
with the Yamuna dead, Delhi's aquifers almost empty and the watertable having fallen more than 7.5 metres in less than 20 years, the state government is considering three proposals for water harvesting in the capital. All of them deal with traditional water harvesting methods, reviving the Yamuna and its ancient …
For British historians and administrators, Indian villages were self-sustaining units and they termed these units as village republics. Later, this terminology was done away with by historians and sociologists. Although utopian, villages situated along the Arvari river in Alwar district, Rajasthan, have retained the basic essence of a "self-sustaining republic,'
an ardent follower of Gandhian principles, Narayan Hazary's work reflects the magnanimity and vision of his mentor. Born in Kesharpur, a small village situated in the foothills of Binhagiri in Nayagarh district, Orissa, Hazary, 63, has been working since his late teens to restore prosperity in his village. Today, thanks …
Compare Southeast Asia with South Asia. The land area of Southeast Asia is 435 million hectares (mha). In South Asia, India is 327 mha and all other countries included would probably add up to the land area of Southeast Asia or a little less. The total population of Southeast Asia …
At least three farmers, who died recently in Falla village 28 kilometres from Jamnagar town, felt this way. They were not alone. With them were almost half a thousand others. The farmers were unhappy because the authorities had taken a decision to tap a water source, in this case the …
The story echoes the fable of the industrious ant that stocks foodstuff for winter and the lazy grasshopper that is left without food. Women and children dig the dry bed of the Sukhi river near Dahod town of Gujarat. Sitting aside one-metre-deep holes, they wait for life to seep into …
The people of this small village of Bhil tribals in Dahod district had been facing a serious water crisis. About 78 per cent of them used to migrate for at least 10 months. There were no wells in the village. The farmlands were of no use; there was no water. …
