Equity

Recent permission granted to the Art of Living to hold the World Culture Festival in the Yamuna floodplains points fingers yet again at the fact that not much has been done to assure its safety. The rapid encroachment of the Yamuna floodplain has raised a few questions. Can the river sustain the rampant commercialisation of its floodplains?

With the budget 2016-17 round the corner what are the asks from the standpoint of food security? This year’s budget is being prepared in the wake of many parts of the country being affected by drought resulting in greater distress, hunger and starvation for a large number of people.

Per a report by the Planning Commission, India’s burden of water borne diseases remains grossly underestimated. The improvements in access to drinking water has not been matched by a proportionate decline in deaths and illnesses from waterborne diseases.

Growth and development indicators at the policy level many a times demand the need for factual data that is often standardised and expressed as numbers in order to make each local context comparable to other and allow data to be aggregated to higher geographical scales.

While the WatSan sector has been prioritised in the country’s policy agenda through the launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission, last year’s budgetary outlay was way below desired levels.

Delhi, home to 16.75 million people, is in the grip of a major water crisis. Statistics by the Delhi Jal Board for the year 2011 suggest that the water deficit stands at about 250 million gallons per day with the supply being 830 million gallons per day.

Maharashtra is the fourth state following Karnataka, Chattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh to seek out relief from the Union government thanks to more than 15,000 of its villages across Marathwada and parts of Western Maharashtra reeling under drought in 2015 [1].

Although the state of Uttarakhand is rich in water and forest resources, its watersheds are under threat of wasting and erosion due to decreased forest cover, faulty agricultural practices, hydrologic imbalances and natural calamities. The growing population is further increasing the pressure on natural resources.

Paraswani village in Balodabazar district, Chhattisgarh contains vast reserves of limestone, a sedimentary rock that is a primary ingredient in the cement manufacturing process. Since 1992, Ultratech Cement Ltd. (UTCL) followed by four other similar companies, have begun excavating this rock within a 30 km radius of the village.

The epic voyage--Nadisutra--along the Ganga may have been the high point of Emmanuel Theophilus’s recent work, but there have been many more peaks and valleys for this fervent mountaineer cum ecologist. Theo lives in a remote village near Munsiyari in Uttarakhand.