Hydropower

Recently, Delhi saw an urban Chipko movement of sorts with the people coming out in large numbers with a single agenda—save the last of the trees left in the city. In the famous Chipko movement of 1973, local communities in Tehri Garhwal, Uttarakhand emblematically embraced trees to demand an end to deforestation through forest exploiting contractors.

The redevelopment project

The interstate dispute between Odisha and Chhattisgarh over the Mahanadi's water is an ongoing one and it looks like both the state governments have no interest in finding a long-term solution.

In India, although we have approximately four months of monsoon (which is basically 45 days of effective rainfall), in drought prone areas, there are only 10-15 days of harvestable rain in the entire season. If you don't get enough rain during those days, it's a cause for worry.

A growing demand for water implies the need for an improved understanding of our resources, and the ability to manage that demand in an equitable and sustainable way.

Wells, not dams, have been the temples of modern India

India is a groundwater economy. At 260 cubic km per year, our country is the highest user of groundwater in the world - we use 25 percent of all groundwater extracted globally, ahead of USA and China.

Maharashtra mulls exemption on 'certain' plastic items following crackdown on plastic

Tired from the Baidyanath dhamyatra (pilgrimage) in the nearby town of Deoghar, Nunlal Kamath is stealing a quick nap on a charpoy outside his house. His house is right on the western bank of Kosi, north Bihar’s river of sorrow, in a particularly flood-prone area where there are no high grounds or flood platforms nearby.  

Much of the district floods every year during the monsoon season. In August 2017, Kamath’s village at Basipatti in Madhepur block of Madhubani district saw the worst flooding after the 2007 deluge.

Supin, a tributary of river Tons and a part of river Yamuna gushes through the hilly tracts of Uttarkashi district. Like all rivers meandering through the lush terrains and forests of Uttarakhand, Supin too is being aggressively tapped for hydropower generation by the government.

River Teesta originates at Tso Lamo, Sikkim, flows through West Bengal and then enters the Rangpur division in Bangladesh. It is the fourth largest among 54 rivers shared by India and Bangladesh. The river basin is populated with over 30 million people who depend on the river water for drinking and domestic use, irrigation, industry and religious activities. Besides fishing, agriculture is one of the important sources of livelihood in the basin and sustains more than 90 percent of the rural population. 

Delhi’s Jor Bagh metro station is the site of an ongoing photographic exhibition with thought-provoking images and narratives exploring escalating water crises Indian and Nepal Himalayas face. Titled “Pani, Pahar: Waters of the Himalayas”, the exhibition combines contemporary work by photojournalist Toby Smith with academic research led by Dr Bhaskar Vira and Dr Eszter Kovacs at Cambridge University’s department of geography, in association with collaborators in India and Nepal.