Amita Bhaduri

According to a report by WaterAid, a water and sanitation nonprofit, released in 2016, India has the highest number (75.8 million) of people in the world without access to safe water.

It may come as a surprise to many that Delhi, a bustling metropolis and home to a population of over 18.6 million, has one of the largest stretches of forests in the country bang in the middle of the city.

At a time when the government’s attention is steered towards the concerns of the northern rivers like the Ganga and the Yamuna, it is seldom that the polluted rivers of the south India come up for discussion.

Shalu’s household was evicted from Koyla Basti of the Yamuna pushta (embankment), a massive slum cluster on the banks of the Yamuna river in the year 2004. Earthmoving machines bulldozed thousands of homes at the site which was to host the Commonwealth Games of 2010.

On a 29 sq km tract of land in Bharatpur, Rajasthan lies the wildlife reserve, Keoladeo national park, locally known as Ghana. Birds enjoy the open water while wildlife roams freely in this montage of wetland, grassland and forest. The wetland, which is man-made, has a diversity of open water, trees and grasses.

Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand, has gained disrepute for the plummeting groundwater level and water shortage in its dams. Once a settlement of the indigenous communities of Munda and Oraon, the city, located in the coal-steel belt of India, witnessed unprecedented growth since 1869.

“Agriculture is a highly risky venture,” says Nagi Reddy, a farmer in Anantapur. Reddy is a small farmer affected by uncertainty in crop production stemming from unpredictable weather events and pest attacks, especially in his cotton crop. He works on his 2.5-acre farm and the rest of the time, he clocks in as a tenant farmer at an adjacent farm.

“The gravity of the Kedarnath disaster in June 2013, which killed thousands of people, shocked the public almost to the point of numbness”... begins the forward by Bill Aitken in Hridayesh Joshi’s account of the disaster Rage of the river: The untold story of the Kedarnath disaster. It’s a sentence which will whirl in your mind while you read Joshi’s book.

Set in India-ka-dil, Madhya Pradesh, is the unending expanse of Panna.

Phaguni Ho hails from East Singhbhum district in Jharkhand. Come March, Phaguni’s husband will migrate to Chennai to work as a daily wager at a construction site. Unable to handle the small farm in Singhbhum alone, she has given it on lease to another farmer. “I have to look after my four children and livestock.