Divya N

Vanajakshi, a 21 year old girl from Gondipakalu in Chintapalle Mandal, Andhra Pradesh, recalls that, growing up, she was often late to school. It wasn’t because she was having trouble waking up. It was because she had to accompany her mother to fetch water, and that took up around 2.5 hours every morning.

Vanajakshi's reason wasn’t unique to her.

Aims of the report:

The word 'Theertham' literally means ‘water’ but in Hindu mythology, it is usually the physical holy water body associated with a temple or deity.

Chitradurga district in Karnataka receives the lowest rainfall in the state. According to the Drought Monitoring Board, most borewells are dry and where there is water, its quality is poor. According to Chitradurga-based Devaraja Reddy who is a hydrogeologist,150-200 borewells were drilled in 2013, with an unfortunate success rate of 2%.

Thipramahadevi Pudhur is a village in Erumapatti Block, Namakkal District with 115 households. In July this year, this village was declared as ‘open-defecation free’ (ODF), something that was aided by Leaf Society, an organization based in Namakkal and their effective strategy of awareness generation, and leveraging of government loans to communities via convergence. 

Mettur, a lush green valley town near Salem in Tamil Nadu, is most famous for the Mettur Dam and the Cauvery river, which originates at Talakaveri, in Kodagu, Karnataka. A largely agricultural town, Mettur's move to industrialisation happened in 1936 when Mettur Chemicals set up India’s first caustic-chlorine factory above the Stanley Reservoir. 

Chitradurga district in southern Karnataka is infamous for drought. People here constantly suffer from water shortage and in the last few years, the problem has escalated due to poor rainfall. 

Cheyyur, a town 100 km from Chennai in Kanchipuram, has been identified as the site for a 4000 MW Ultra Mega Power Plant (UMPP) by the Government of Tamil Nadu.

If one takes a walk on the coastal towns of Neelankarai and Marina in Chennai between December and April, distinct tracks in the sand will be visible from the beach till the shore. These are the unmistakeable tracks of the Olive Ridley sea turtles that nest on these beaches.

Chennai's Fort St.George, built in 1644, was the first English fortress to be built in India. It laid the foundation for further settlements around it and the city of Madras gradually expanded around the fort over the years.