Governance

Bottled water as daily drinking water Thirty five years after Bisleri launched India's first bottled water, urban India is filled with numerous bottled water brands, some known, and some unknown. There are more then 250 brands and 2000 plus bottling plants across the country. The market for packaged drinking water is around Rs 10 billion and is growing at the rate of 40 percent per annum.

According to David Foster, it is the cost of 'free' water :

Some video clippings of the Arkavathy Janadesh Yatra, a river walk along the entire length of the Arkavathy river outside Bangalore, to draw attention to this dying river.

Two press releases on the work being done by the National Disaster Management Authority regarding early warning systems for flooding, guidelines for management of urban flooding and more : http://www.pibmumbai.gov.in/scripts/detail.asp?releaseId=E2008PR58

There is a spurt of gastro-enteritis in the city today. Residents think that it is the contaminated mains supply from the BWSSB that is the source of the gastroenteritis. The Bangalore water supply and Sewerage Board thinks it is water bought by residents from the private water tankers that is the cause but then seems to change its mind.

Its an obviously useful thing for India Water Portal to have a photo repository with a free-use-with-acknowledgement license of some sort. But we have not had the opportunity to think through all the details on this. What is the best way to create this (Google Picasa, Flickr or some other tool) ? What are the details of the copyright that we would use. How would users upload their photos ?

The Bagmati Calling : I am reporting from the south bank of the Bagmati near Benipur in Muzaffarpur district of Bihar.

As the Indian economy grows at a rapid 9 per cent, the use of water by industries will also grow at 9 per cent. While agricultural use of water will continue to remain the largest consumer, it is expected that the demand from industries will show a rapid increase. Industries demand water at a point and also discharge water at a point and therefore sustainable management of water by industries is not only crucial to the industry itself but to the neighbourhood where the ind ustry is located. The Confederation of Indian Industries , CII , recently organised its National Award for Excellence in Water Management 2007 competition in the Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre in Hyderabad (http://www.ciionline.org/, www.ciigbc.org) . A range of industries participated in the competition organised in two categories - 'Within the fence' and 'Beyond the fence'. The way many industries highlighted their projects was an indication on how serious they consider the management of water resources. That it is identified as one of the key resources, apart from energy to be looked at as a critical input for sustaining growth, doesn't come as a surprise. Source to sink

The latest issue of SANDRP's newsletter contains the following: Solar Power Boom Bihar Floods 2007: Some lessons for everyone Power Options: New Look Required 11th Five Year Plan: Why it may not a

Not much was expected of the UN Climate Change Conference that took place in Bali, Indonesia, since developed and developing nations have been at loggerheads over a range of interrelated issues since the earlier Kyoto Conference: setting hard targets for greenhouse gas emission reductions, funding afforestation efforts in the developing world, deciding who should cut back more or pay more for damage repair , historical offenders in the developed world or newly emerging villains in the developing and so on. Besides, the Bali meet was only going to consider the idea of negotiating further on these issues.