Amita Bhaduri

The scenic sublimity of the Meenachil river is immortalised by Arundhati Roy in her Booker prize-winning novel, The God of Small Things. Roy skilfully presents the river flowing through the Aymanam village as a victim of human greed and callousness. The river is described in the book as a beautiful one that turns an ugly waste dump into which anything could be flung.

The fields are silvery white with raw salt crusts in the vicinity of Nawa, a small town on the northwestern banks of Sambhar lake, India’s largest inland lake. Nawa lies about 90 kilometres east of Jaipur. Also an extensive saline wetland and a Ramsar site, the blinding white salt flats stretch as far as one can see.

A seasonal river in Pali, Rajasthan, the Bandi is nothing short of a sewer. The textile town has witnessed rampant industrial growth, raw sewage discharges and toxic contamination of its waters. The river, which is devoid of lean season flow, is polluted up to 55 km downstream. The river water is unfit for drinking as well as irrigation.

In her mid-30s, Lino Lameko works as an assistant at the office of the national women’s council in Funafuti, the capital of Tuvalu. She has come all the way from the Polynesian island nation located in the Pacific Ocean to Tilonia, a small village located in Ajmer in Rajasthan to become a “barefoot solar engineer”.

Urmila Devi lives in Chaitabazaar village which is barely five kilometres from the eastern bank of the Burhi Gandak river. It is located in a particularly flood-prone area of East Champaran in north Bihar. The drinking water quality in this area is poor. The recurrent floods only make it worse.

Solawata, a small village in Jaipur district is barely 10 kilometers away from Sambhar, India's largest saline lake which is a major centre of salt production that produces about two lakh tonnes of salt a year. On our way to the village from Sambhar, we see caravans packed with bright coloured camel saddles parked on the road.

Here’s some news for nature lovers. A dirty drain in Delhi could well be on its way to becoming a bird sanctuary. The Najafgarh drain or nallah that flows through the northwest part of Gurugram is becoming a new habitat for the strikingly tall Greater flamingos, a rosy-white pink billed migratory bird as it passes through southwest Delhi.  

Vrindavan, the small dusty twin town of Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, has a special place in the Hindu mythology. This is where Lord Krishna is believed to have spent most of his childhood and adolescence. The river Yamuna straddles through the town, a hot destination for thousands of devotees lining up for a dip in it every day.

India is a pioneer among developing countries in establishing a “green court” to deal with environment-related litigations. Established through an Act by the government of India, the National Green Tribunal (NGT), a quasi-judicial body has ensured speedy justice on several green cases.

In the afternoons these days, Basai wears a deserted look. Known as a bird’s delight and privileged by the protected status of a national park, the wetland is located just eight kilometres from Sultanpur bird sanctuary in Gurugram in Haryana. No birds can be spotted foraging the soil of the Basai wetland or its waters.