Health

In a corner of the Kathagada locality in the Parhatiya Sahi slum of Dhenkanal stands a small neat house. Surrounded by a well-tended garden that is planted with fruit trees, flowers and grass, this is Reena Rani Singh’s home. She is a multi-purpose local leader, self help group (SHG) member, Mahila Arogya Samiti Member and Slum Sanitation Committee (SSC) member. Reena is a motivated woman who keeps her home and garden well-tended. The lanes around her house are clean with narrow drains to carry away wastewater from houses. There is no garbage scattered in corners.

India has seen large scale rural-urban migration of people trying to escape rural distress in the last few decades. “The urban areas are looked at as the centre of India's development trajectory and urbanism has become synonymous with development, as rural masses drift into the glitter and grind of the urban life,” said Prof RS Deshpande, an honorary visiting professor at the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore.

A large section of the population living in the Ganga river basin still depends on the river for daily use activities and livelihood. Hence, the cleaning of the Ganga river’s water and making it safe for use remains a major goal for policymakers. Towards this end, the Namami Gange Clean-up programme was launched with a budget of Rs 20,000 crore during the period 2015–2020. However, the National Green Tribunal stated in 2017 that “not a single drop of river Ganga has been cleaned so far.”

Rivers are revered and considered holy since times immemorial in India and mass bathing in some rivers is an age-old ritual. A holy dip and a holy sip of the river waters are considered to be a highly purifying. But is the dip really cleansing at all when almost all the rivers in India are known to be highly polluted?

Panchayats have been the core of India's rural governance even before they received the constitutional mandate through the 73rd constitutional amendment in 1992, forming the basis of decentralization in the country. There are 2.5 lakh gram panchayats; over 6 lakhs villages; around 4500 urban local bodies and 4000 census towns in the country.

India is the second largest tea producer in the world, with production at 1.2 million metric tons in 2014.

The Amphan cyclone that struck the Sundarbans in the month of May this year has wreaked havoc in the area destroying lives and livelihood. A lot of the locals living in the Sundarbans depend on animal husbandry and fishing to earn a living. The cyclone destroyed animal rearing shelters and swept away most of the cattle and domestic animals. The saline water that entered ponds and lakes resulted in locals having to dispose of fish which could have earned these people income.

Urban India, in the grip of the pandemic

An estimated 58,000 babies die in India every year from superbug infections passed on from their mothers, whilst drug-resistant pathogens cause between 28,000 to 38,000 extra deaths in the European Union every year.

A research project called AMRflows, which involves experts from Newcastle University, has received £1.2 million of UK and Indian funding to explore the role played by India’s rivers in increasing antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

Come monsoons and vector borne diseases start making headlines every year in many parts of India, especially mosquito borne diseases like dengue, malaria, chikungunya and Japanese encephalitis.

What are vector borne diseases