Amita Bhaduri

Here's some good news for the people of Delhi. If the Centre is to be believed, Delhi is going the Kochi way and Yamuna waters will keep the traffic burden off the road much like Kochi’s backwaters and rivers.

At just 24 years of age, Abhinav Vats has learnt a lot as the chief minister’s Good Governance Associate (CMGGA) posted in Palwal district of Haryana. An economics graduate from Delhi University, he worked as a research analyst with McKinsey and Company at Gurgaon for two-and-a-half years before deciding to be a CMGGA.

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.

Despite making sanitation a national priority with Swachh Bharat Mission, 50 percent of India defecated in the open till 2014. The goal to make India open defecation free by 2019 seemed ambitious. The government provided funding but it also sought active participation from the corporate sector.

India’s sanitation crisis involves huge cost. Transforming the country’s sanitation and waste management by 2019 is tall order.

Eight-year-old Meera (name changed) got ill after eating filthy food remains from a dump at Mansarovar park in Delhi. Children like her work in filthy environments, rummaging through hazardous waste with bare hands and feet. They play in these dumping ground strewn with syringes, scrap iron, rotting waste, solid and liquid household waste.  

According to the local legend, Mangar Bani, a green patch between Faridabad and Gurgaon, was home to a Baba (a holy man), Gudariya Das Maharaj around 500 years ago. Popular among the local Gujjar herdsmen, the dominant community of the area, the Baba asked them to treat this forest as a sacred grove, the forested abode of a local deity.

As per the biennial State of Forest Report (SFR) 2017 by the Forest Survey of India (FSI), the total forest and tree cover in India increased during the period 2015 to 2017 by 0.94 percent. The increase in the forest cover has been of the order of 6,778 sq km and that of tree cover was about 1,243 sq km.  

Located in the Hauz Khas urban village in the busy metropolis of Delhi is an exquisitely landscaped lush green patch. This deer park, with spotted deer, peacocks and numerous birds, leads to an incredibly beautiful lake. As per a plaque at the site, the lake is a part of the medieval (13^th century) city of Delhi Sultanate.

GoI allocations for the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation is Rs. 22,357 crores