Research Papers

‘A potato peel, a piece of paper and a plastic packet’: The story of garbage

Let’s begin with a story of the journey of our junk, in a typical Indian city.

Given the many problems associated with flush toilets and the sewerage system, pit toilets offer a viable solution in India. However, the use of soakpits raises the question of groundwater contamination. This paper assesses the impact of pit toilet leachate on groundwater quality in Mulbagal town (pop ~ 60,000) in Karnataka relies on pit toilets, and uses groundwater for drinking.

The paper informs that groundwater accounts for about 50%-80% of domestic water use and 45%-50% of the irrigation in the country.

The briefing papers include the following:

This article published in the Bharatiya Vaigyanik evam Audyogik Anusandhan Patrika (BVAAP) informs that understanding the soil and water resources is the first step towards carrying out agriculture in a sustainable manner.

The commentary in Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) begins by discussing the policy shift in solid waste management that involves the privatisation of certain aspects of the system, such as the incineration of waste, but more importantly, it represents a comprehensive and holistic transformation in which the entire system becomes in

Published in the Economic and Political Weekly, this article sheds light on the issue of privatising the natural resources, which are commonly shared by the rural people. These resources include  forests, pasturelands, wastelands, coasts, lakes and rivers.

Published by the National Institute of Disaster Management, Ministry of Home Affairs and being the first of its kind, the reports hopes to stimulate better collection of data and research that can identify gaps in the management of disasters and be helpful to deal with them in the future.

This paper by Manthan Adhyayan Kendra is a case study on the role of public private partnership in industrial water supply in a industrial town of Dewas in Madhya Pradesh.