Research Papers

The author gives a brief history of tank irrigation in South India. The number of irrigation tanks in India were 208,000, of which 120,000 were in the three Southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. These tanks irrigated 1.8 million hectares. The author uses graphs to point out to the decline in tank irrigation.

A civil society consultation was held on “Regenerating natural resources and rural livelihoods in rainfed areas of India” by WASSAN at Hyderabad in December 2010 to discuss priorities for the twelfth five year plan. The Planning Commission, Government of India has been steering the process of development in India by conceptualizing five year plans and had sought inputs from civil society organizations, activists groups, networks of CBOs / NGOs, donors and others for preparing an approach paper for twelfth plan.

The objective of the consultation workshop was to contribute to the process of defining broad contours of twelfth plan with a focus on rural livelihoods the thrust area being policy framework, funding support, institutional arrangements etc., by -

• Consolidating the lessons from good practices in promoting and protecting rural livelihoods in the country, that could be integrated in twelfth five year plan.
• Systematically articulating issues and concerns (bottlenecks) in promoting and protecting rural livelihoods, which could be addressed in the twelfth five year plan.

 .  In-situ bioremediation is an attractive alternative for this purpose. To achieve this objective, bacterial strains were isolated and enriched from the contaminated site of Tamil Nadu Chromates and Chemicals Limited (TCCL) premises, Ranipet, Tamil Nadu, India.

It also attempted to examine how policy interventions threatened this knowledge base and the sustainable practices it supported.

It warns that groundwater quantity as well as quality are the two major problems that the country has been facing.

The rate of withdrawal of groundwater has reached “unsafe” levels in 31% of the districts, covering 33% of the land area and 35% of the population. The situation has dramatically worsened within a short span of nine years, between the assessments done in 1995 and 2004.

Taking the quantitative and qualitative aspects together, data indicates that a total of 347 districts (59% of all districts in India) are vulnerable in terms of safe drinking water in India. This is a matter of serious concern, requiring a new approach.

The 24^th National Convention of Institution of Public Health Engineers (India) on the theme “Water & Sanitation Utility Services in India and their health implications” will be organised by IPHE(I), Regional Centre, Bhubaneswar during 12^th -13^th  February,2011.

This pollution has been caused by a paper factory that was set up 16 years ago.  The noise, air, land and water pollution that are a direct result of the factory have changed a beautiful and peaceful rural area into one where farmers’ land and crops have been destroyed, the air is full of fine, crystalline ash, the local river is an evil-smelling, stagnant mire of foam-encrusted sludge and the water table has fallen by over 70 feet.

Dear all,

IUCN, with Zoo Outreach Organisation, have today published a new report, 'The status and distribution of freshwater biodiversity in the Eastern Himalaya', which is available online here

India’s Groundwater Challenge and the Way Forward
P S Vijay Shankar , Himanshu Kulkarni , Sunderrajan Krishnan

The groundwater crisis is acquiring alarming proportions in many parts of the country. Strategies to respond to groundwater overuse and deteriorating water quality must be based on a new approach involving typologising the resource problems and redefining the institutional structure governing groundwater. This approach is based on the notion of groundwater as common property.

The scarcity value of natural resources has risen due to rising pressure of human population and demands made by modern economics progress. As such managing these resources has become very important.