Himachal Pradesh

Effects of climate change have aggravated the vulnerability of agricultural systems in all the parts of the country but people have found their own solutions and methods to deal with it. These have come from age-old knowledge practices of local farmers and communities, who depend on natural resources and who interact with the local ecosystems on a day-to-day basis.

As Hari Singh led me towards his fields, I wondered if he was trying to play a joke on me. Large rocks were scattered in the area and there was no sight of any arable land, neither was there any clue of the irrigation channel which Singh claimed ran through his farm.

Ranjit Singh is elated that someone has come to his village enquiring about his work. He says not many people recognise the worth of traditional occupations like his. “This is especially true of government officials and policy makers who feel everything old is useless”, he points out.

Ranjit is the kohli of Mjately village in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh.

Forest clearance granted to the proposed Renuka Dam

Pro-dam lobby has long praised the small or micro hydropower projects, especially run-of-the-river units as least damaging. But both the developer/s of such projects and the government seem to have overlooked an important aspect: its impact on Kuhls, the traditional irrigation system of Himachal Pradesh.

I could just about see a small makeshift shelter with a yellow canopy. As I made my way through the small stream and climbed uphill, I saw a JCB machine trying to clear a path. Further up the road, female voices speaking the local dialect started to emerge. A small hearth surrounded by utensils and jars of tea, sugar and lentils greeted me at the entrance.

Now in a dismantled state, the 4.8 MW Aleo II hydro project, situated between Aleo and Prini in Kullu, Himachal Pradesh made it to the news recently, but for the wrong reasons. The reservoir of the newly built Aleo II hydro project on the Aleo nallah, a tributary of the Beas river, collapsed during its very first trial run on January 12, 2014.

Impact study demands for a no-go zone for hydel projects in Sutlej

India receives only 85.8 mm of rain this June

Twenty four students were washed away in the Beas river in Himachal Pradesh earlier this month. The students, all from an engineering college in Hyderabad, were picknicking in the river on their way back from the tourist town of Manali. While cooling their heels in the knee deep water and clicking photographs, they missed the rising wall of water that engulfed them in minutes.