Industrial and other Manmade Disasters

The Renuka Dam Project proposed over the river Giri Ganga (a tributary of the Yamuna) located some 300km away from Delhi, is a joint project of the governments of Himachal Pradesh (HP) and Delhi, to be constructed by the Himachal Pradesh Power Corporation Limited (HPPCL) in Sirmaur district of HP.

During conflicts and wars, many die as a consequence of bombings and battles. To the death toll, many more zeroes get added in the days and months to follow! Poor hygiene and sanitation takes several hundred lives in the refugee settlements.

In the debate over global warming, many a time, there is an attempt to indicate that human contribution to the Greenhouse effect is on a very minuscule scale and is negligible when compared to the scale at which GHGs as a whole work.

Villagers and townsfolk of Lalkuan, Bindukhatta, Pantnagar, Kichha, Bazpur and Kashipur in Uttaranchal's terai belt are beset by water and air pollution, and have picked up a struggle against a number of red-category (most polluting) paper and pulp units and distilleries in the districts of Nainital, Udham Singh Nagar and Hardwar, which are polluting the Uttarakhand hills with impunity.

This report by the Panchayati Raj and Rural Development Department, Government of Andhra Pradesh,  provides information on Neeru Meeru, a water conservation and poverty alleviation inititaive undertaken by the governemnt of  Andhra Pradesh.

Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, hundreds of students of several schools along with senior citizens cleaned up Poiya Ghat Sunday morning, picking up rags and used polythene bags, to focus attention on river pollution which candidates of various political parties have chosen to ignore.

Brij Khandelwal, programme convener of the Yamuna Foundation and Rivers of the World Foundation, said apart from students involved in the My Clean Agra initiative, a large number of other voluntary groups and organisations were involved in Sunday's programme which specifically targeted the politicians for failing to clean up the cities and the rivers of India.

"No political party has bothered to say a word about how they would save a dying river and rejuvenate it or restore its original glory," said Subhash Jha and Haridutt Sharma of the Yamuna Foundation for Blue Water.