Storage and Supply

Every year, thousands of villages in Maharashtra get affected by droughts. Experts say that the reasons for recurrent droughts include a lack of policy framework, technical knowledge and community participation as well as poor implementation of government programmes.

Alternative Futures: India Unshackled is a book that brings together scenarios of an India that is politically and socially egalitarian, radically democratic, economically sustainable and equitable, and socio-culturally diverse and harmonious. Edited by KJ Joy and Ashish Kothari, with a foreword by Shiv Vishwanathan, Alternative Futures: India Unshackled covers a wide range of issues, organized under four sections.

Widespread use of digital devices--mobile phones, tablets, computers, smart watches and more--has made electronic waste a new environmental problem. Discarded gadgets result in massive piles of e-waste, which is contaminating soil and groundwater in the national capital, a new study has pointed out. 

The results of the study, published in the journal Current Science, have indicated that soil and water contamination is likely to find its way into the human body resulting in health hazards.

Located at Shamakhunta block of Mayurbhanj district, around 28 kilometers from Baripada town in Odisha, Baldiha dam was constructed during the rule of Maharaja Shri Ramchandra Bhanjdeo in 1912. The dam was built by the then state engineer Jarnold Martin Loe on river Palpala.  

Rathnakar Salian is a traditional catamaran fisherman from Sasihitlu village in Mangaluru district of Karnataka. He learned how to throw the net, how to pull it out, and how to look for fish in the sea from his father and uncles. Using small catamarans that can carry four persons and their limited gear, he fishes by the coastline, not going deeper than one nautical mile.

More than 50 percent districts yet to be declared open defecation free

“Sometimes I go for open defecation, sometimes I use the toilet. It’s not like I always have to use the toilet. When I go for work here and there, I defecate in the jungle,” says Renu from one of the remote villages in Tehri Garwal district of Uttarakhand when asked why she does not use latrines every day.

Although there is a government-constructed latrine with a water tap that she and her family use when they are at home, she sees no point in coming back home to use the toilet when she goes out to graze animals or to collect firewood a long way into the jungle.

In the early hours, the villagers of Khalabari, a tribal-dominated village in the Dumuripadar gram panchayat of Koraput district in Odisha step out of their houses for bringing wood and drinking water. The road to the forest where the water is available is rocky. Both women and men walk a few kilometres on the harsh terrain to bring essential commodities needed for their survival. Khalabari, with a population of 186, has 45 households.