/regions/india
India
IRC international water and sanitation centre : Source South Asia: Issue 15 (13 Feb 09)
Posted on 16 Feb, 2009 10:24 AMSince its foundation in 1968, the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC) has facilitated the sharing, promotion and use of knowledge so that governments, professionals and organisations can better support poor men, women and children in developing countries to obtain water and sanitation services they will use and maintain The Source Water and Sanitation News Service from IRC provides news in English, French and Spanish with an emphasis on rural and peri-urban areas in developing countries. The current Source South Asia Water & Sanitation News edition has a wide range of articles. Some highlights are: Asia: Unilever to replicate Project Shakti on other international markets - http://www.irc.nl/page/46761 Afghanistan: OCHA Humanitarian Action Plan's Appeal for water and sanitation - http://www.irc.nl/page/46636
Bookshelf: Groundwater Management and Policies
Posted on 07 Feb, 2009 08:35 AM
Author(s):Dr K Palanisami, Dr C Ramasamy, Dr Chieko Umetsu
ISBN:9780230634916
Imprint:Macmillan Publishers India
Copyright:2008
Trim Size:8.5"x11"
Pages:300
Binding:Paperback
List Price:Rs. 750.00
Language:English
One of the impressive developments that have taken place in Indian agriculture after independence is groundwater development and management. India is among the foremost countries in the world practicing large scale irrigation. However the gaps between potential and utilization has been increasing over the years. Groundwater Management and Policies consists of contributions grouped under four themes viz., six research articles on Increasing Water Efficiency / Productivity, three on CPR in Recharging Groundwater, six papers on Groundwater Management and Coping Mechanisms and six on Water Policy Issues.
Agricultural Wiki : Agropedia!
Posted on 07 Feb, 2009 08:25 AMAgropedia is a comprehensive, seamlessly integrated model of digital content organization in the agricultural domain. It aims to bring together a community of practice through an ICT mediated knowledge creating and organising platform with an effort to leverage the existing agricultural extension system. Agropedia is envisioned to be a one stop shop for all kinds of information related to Indian agriculture. The practice of crop knowledge models has been defined and developed for the first time worldwide to create architecture for accumulating known codified and approved information about crops, with the support of Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Rome. These KMs are the structural representation of knowledge by using symbols to represent pieces of knowledge and relationships between them, which can be used to connect seamlessly to the knowledge base in agropedia using semantic tools. KMs have been represented using Concept Map (C-Map) Tools .
Book Review: Empires of the Indus
Posted on 29 Jan, 2009 10:56 AMEMPIRES OF THE INDUS : THE STORY OF A RIVER - by Alice Albinia
Pages: 366 ISBN-978-0-7195-6003-3 (978-0-7195-6004-0)
Format: hardback / trade paperback
Price: £20 / Rs. 550
Publisher: John Murray, U.K. Empires of the Indus is a comprehensive study of how the river Indus and its waterways have changed the history of the Indian sub-continent. Water is potent: it trickles through human dreams, permeates lives, dictates agriculture, religion and warfare. Ever since Homo sapiens first migrated out of Africa, the Indus has drawn thirsty conquerors to its banks. Some of the world's first cities were built here; India's earliest Sanskrit literature was written about the river; Islam's holy preachers wandered beside these waters. This perhaps captures the essence of this Guardian First Book 2008 awardee, Empires of the Indus , The Story of a River, by Alice Albinia.
Should IMD give away meteorological data for free ?
Posted on 22 Jan, 2009 04:21 AMIndia Water Portal has a meteorological data tool (https://www.indiawaterportal.org/data/metdata) that gives rainfall data (and 10 other meteorological parameters) for each district of India for 100 years from 1901 to 2002. Over the past couple of years, many many people have expressed that they found this data useful and requested us to enhance it. The data on our meteorological data tool is from a research dataset put out by the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research in the University of East Anglia, UK. The reason we got the data from them, is that IMD, India Meteorological Department, which is the chief source of official meteorological data in India, sells this data. To get the kind of all India data above, would be prohibitively expensive. Further, they would not allow this data to be made publicly available, as they sell the same.
Sing a song
Posted on 09 Jan, 2009 10:51 PMJingles and Songs
Some are short,
some are long. The message is strong, So come hum along.
Play time - street play scripts
Posted on 09 Jan, 2009 10:23 PMStreet plays are fun. With minimal props and a stress on action and sounds, they can be enacted in a quadrangle, a classroom, a playground and ofcourse, a street.Here are complete scripts of two street plays and a mini-script that starts you off and lets you design your own play
Press Release by SANDRP: Why does our Govt have no value for rivers ?
Posted on 08 Jan, 2009 10:32 AMA two day National Workshop on need for policy and legal norms for allowing freshwater flows in Rivers in India on January 3-4, 2009 at Bangalore ended with a unanimous demand that governments must allow continuous, sustained freshwater flows in all perennial rivers of India, whenever, a dam, diversion or hydropower project is planned, constructed or operated. Inaugurating the workshop on the morning of January 3, 2009, Shri L C Jain, former member, planning commission of India (and many other important posts), expressed his pain and anguish on the state of India's Rivers, "It is very disturbing that the acts of commissions and omissions of the authorities have ruthlessly, blindly, heartlessly lead todestruction of almost every major rivers of India. The hearts of the officials and ministers should throb for the millions depending for their needs and livelihoods on the rivers, but it seems that the stones of the South and North block buildings have entered their hearts." Quoting Gandhiji's agenda for the economic independence of India from what he wrote in the Young India on November 29, 1929, Jain said, Land, Water and Air cannot be subject of commerce, but the planners lock up the pain, hunger, malnutrition in the paragraphs of their five year plan documents and do not ensure their inclusion in their actual plans and programmes. He expressed his deep anguish that even the recommendations of the official policies and committees on ensuring freshwater flows in the rivers remain unimplemented.