Sustainability

Uncertainty - the pervasive feeling that all of us have been living with from the middle of March 2020. It's the same in our partner villages in Odisha and Jharkhand. Communities we work with have been facing and overcoming uncertainties all through their lives. But this time, the crisis has put unusual stress on their abilities to cope.

The Covid-19 pandemic has reinforced the need to create jobs locally. This intersects with the water sector's need for local management. How do we create meaningful opportunities to address the aspirations of the local talent pool and make them discoverable?

Drought conditions are not new to Bundelkhand. The acute situation now is a convergence of three types of droughts – meteorological, agricultural and hydrological - cumulatively coinciding as witnessed in Nunagar village in Panna district, Madhya Pradesh. We saw hundreds of vessels queuing up at the panchayat well.

India is likely to face stark water scarcity in the coming decades as a result of excessive use, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI)’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas - a tool to visualise and assess water stress and drought and flood risk covering

India has the highest population of any country in the world without access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. According to WaterAid and the World Health Organisation (WHO), 163 million people still lack access to safe water and millions still defecate in the open.

Water, for India, has profound impacts on the health and wellbeing of our citizens; perhaps more so, considering how intertwined it is with various facets of our life, be they social, economic, gender-based, political, or even religious.

The Steering Committee (SC) of the Forum for Policy Dialogues on Water Conflicts in India (Water Conflict Forum in short) has carried out a detailed and critical review of the extant Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) governance system since 1994 in the country, with specific reference to the draft EIA 2020 notification which is up for public comments. 

Punjab, a small state in northwest India, derives its name from the Persian words panj (five) and ?b (water), meaning the "land of five rivers". Ironically, this state is now regularly in the news for its rapidly depleting groundwater levels.

India’s national lockdown to curb the fast-expanding community transmission of coronavirus led to life coming to a standstill across the country. The long pause of over three months is starting to ease, and the new shift towards “normal” gives health and hygiene ultimate attention.

Jharkhand is a state dominated by tribal communities located in eastern part of India. Agriculture, NTFP (Non-timber forest produce) collection and daily wage laborers are the prime source of income for rural Jharkhand.