Sustainability

Despite making sanitation a national priority with Swachh Bharat Mission, 50 percent of India defecated in the open till 2014. The goal to make India open defecation free by 2019 seemed ambitious. The government provided funding but it also sought active participation from the corporate sector.

Alternative Futures: India Unshackled is a new book that dares to imagine what India could be.

Gopal Nishad, a fisherman in his early 40s, is frustrated that there is hardly any fish left in the Mahanadi’s basin at Pitaibandh due to the lack of water in the basin. This basin is located near Rajim-Nawapara in Chhattisgarh, the proposed site for the fourth anicut on the Mahanadi.

Lokesh Verma, a farmer from Nainital’s Chanfi village, says this is the third year in a row that he is bearing losses in agriculture. “I have lost around Rs 2 lakh and there’s a debt of Rs 70,000 to pay off. I grow strawberries, guavas and peas in my 15 bighas of land, but there is not enough water in the hills to irrigate crops properly,” he says.

KSPCB says Cauvery water can be used for drinking after conventional treatment

Agriculture is of central importance to India’s economy with more than half of the workforce in the country depending on it for their livelihoods. However, it is increasingly being threatened due to climate-change-induced changing rainfall patterns and water scarcity having a negative impact on production.

Korba in Chhattisgarh is an industrial area which has a significant number of coal mines and thermal power plants. Fly ash is a byproduct of the thermal power plants and has become a significant problem for the residents of Korba now.

A recent BBC report projected that Bengaluru will run out of water soon.

Indian scientists have developed a remote sensing technique that uses satellite data to delineate between various coastal landforms like beaches, mangroves and marshes. This method can help monitor and understand impacts of natural disasters as well as human activities on coastal ecosystem.

Tamil Nadu seeks contempt action against the Centre for not constituting the Cauvery Management Board