Citizens' Rights and Duties

Surya Ganga, a film directed by Valli Bindana takes an all embracing view of the energy sector, especially the social and environmental consequences of big energy projects in India. The film was released in India recently. The story begins with an inquisitive six-year-old girl along with her mother and uncle setting out on a journey across the length and breadth of India to seek answers to the adverse impacts of dams on the river Ganga.

Urban India needs to take air pollution more seriously than it does now. The Centre for Science and Environment’s report, State of India's Environment 2019 has come up with startling facts on the state of air in the country. “Air pollution is responsible for 12.5 percent of all deaths in India. Its impact on children is equally worrying. Over 100,000 children below the age of five die due to bad air in the country.”

Sarla Yadav, a resident of Yamuna Ghat 24 is a treasure trove of stories on the river Yamuna. She runs a boat business with her son Shyam who provides a nuanced personal account of living by the river and of eking out a meagre livelihood by plying boats. They are among a few families who have not sold their boats so far.

A citizen science project led by UNSW engineers in Sydney, Australia is leveraging thousands of crowd-sourced photos from social media, helping create new insights into how beaches respond to changing weather and wave conditions, and extreme storms – and now a new study has shown the program to be nearly as accurate and effective as professional shoreline monitoring equipment.

Mahakali, also known as Sharda in India, gushes through the hilly tracts of Nepal and Uttarakhand, collecting its water from the numerous streams it receives on the way. Like all rivers meandering through the lush terrains and forests of Uttarakhand, Mahakali too has become a cause of disagreement between the state and the people due to the widespread community opposition to the proposed dam on it at Pancheshwar.

Hydropower dams in the region

A recent study by Toxics Link, an environmental research and advocacy organisation on batteries titled Dead and buried: A situational analysis of battery waste management in India estimates that 2.7 billion pieces of dry cell batteries are being consumed annually in India. The report talks about their use in a variety of products and devices ranging from cars to mobiles, laptops, watches, television remotes, toys, medical devices and inverters.

Life is getting back to normal after an ‘extremely severe’ cyclonic storm Fani hit India’s eastern coastline. It ripped through several districts of Odisha and West Bengal and brought in torrential rains and winds of up to 200 km/hr. But improved responses to the disaster by way of timely warning, advance planning, evacuation, rescue and restoration operations helped mitigate casualties and damage to the region.

Cyclone Fani, strongest to hit India in 20 years, causes widespread destruction in Odisha

The Yamuna was considered a nurturing and life-enhancing goddess in the past. Legend has it that bathing in the sacred waters of the Yamuna, the sister of Yama, the god of death, frees one from the ordeal of death. The 1376-km river is a tributary of the Ganga and originates in the Yamunotri glacier in the lower Himalayas. It passes through several states in north India including Uttarakhand, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi where the river was once its lifeline.