News and Articles

Toilet under the open sky for 73% of rural India

The Planning commission has found that 73% of rural India practices open defecation despite many sanitation programmes encouraged by the government. The main reason for this is the unavailability of toilets.

Sarakki Lake is one of the bigger stand-alone lakes in Bangalore, and was once a great year-round recharge area for Sarakki, Jaraganahalli, Puttenahalli, Chunchagatta and Kothanur. It is now a cesspool of sewage, and is polluting the air, water and land around it. India Water Portal volunteer Sucheta Ramprakash covered

Oasis Breeze and Mana Sarovar Apartments are two apartment complexes like any other in Bangalore. They have a huge water problem. Residents use water without realising how much they are wasting and depend on water tankers without realising how much they are using. To monitor better usage, individual water meters were set up in each household of the apartments.

If you thought that Uttarakhand was a land populated solely by tourists, I wouldn’t blame you. After all, that’s been the focus of the media in relation to who’s been affected by the recent floods – pilgrims at the Char Dhams and at Hemkund Sahib. The numbers are staggering, no doubt.

The monsoon brings with it water-borne diseases like diarrhoea, cholera and dysentery, which cause suffering and death. Although this is a recurring theme annually, not enough measures are taken to prevent this. The state of Assam decided to take some action in May of this year.

Sanitation is a familiar term but is often misunderstood to mean the building and using of toilets but this isn’t true. It covers a whole range of thought and action both pre and post latrine use, which includes cleanliness, personal hygiene and the safe disposal of the urine and faeces.

Havoc in the hills

Environmentalist Robert Swan, the first person to walk the North and South Pole, was in Delhi last year. He launched phase IV of Project Search, which aimed to promote environmental awareness and sustainable lifestyles among students. Swan noted that not many Delhiites scored highly on topics of environmental awareness.

We await a future that could be hotter and drier because of climate change. This is increasingly recognised as a global concern, and available data suggests that it is increasing the frequency and severity of weather-related hazards in South Asia.

This short note is a sequel to my earlier article which analysed the functioning and performance of my Roof-top Rainwater System using Rainy filter. While the earlier article narrated my initial observations on using the Rainy FL-100 filt