Voluntary Citizen or Civil Society Sector

Farmer Ravikant Deshmukh (40) is a much worried man. He lives in Kudari Dalli in Balod district in Chhattisgarh, a village that would get affected adversely if Mohar reservoir project takes off. The project, once realised, is estimated to submerge the agricultural land and houses of 1200 villagers in Kudari Dalli.

As part of its efforts to promote rural sanitation, the government, under the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), promises a subsidy of Rs 12,000 for the construction of individual household toilets. Households that fall in the below poverty line (BPL) category and select households such as those belonging to SCs/STs and the ones headed by women can avail of this subsidy amount.

Summer temperatures soar to a gruelling 50^ocelsius in Rapar, a little known block in Gujarat’s Kutch district. Land here is dry, saline and arid; the monsoon is erratic. Many a times, the entire year’s rain falls in a short span of two or three days, doing more harm than good.

At sunrise, everything is luminous but not clear. 

― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

Floods grip many parts of the country

Originally a darya (creek), locally known as Nizammuddin darya, Barapullah is a key drain of Delhi today. Barapullah gets its name from a pul (bridge) built across it by the then emperor Jahangir's chief eunuch, Mihir Banu Agha.

The cracks on the parched land of Bundelkhand are waiting for the monsoon to quench the thirst of its arid landscape. Despite the wide-spread drought here, Pipara, one of the villages in the region, stands apart as the only one that has not run completely dry. 

Bhagirath Prayaas Samman was constituted in 2014 as an award to recognise efforts and initiatives for river conservation, in the first India Rivers Week jointly organised by Peace Institute, INTACH, Toxics Link, SANDRP and WWF-India. In India, numerous awards are given for excellent initiatives around water conservation, ut none on rivers.

Vikram Patel, a 71-year-old farmer in Chidavad village of Dewas district in Madhya Pradesh is one of the first farmers to have embraced the idea of farm ponds to increase the groundwater level in his farm.

Ramesh Mali, a farmer in his late thirties, looks at his farmland nervously. It has been 13 days since the Simhastha Maha Kumbh festival, 2016, concluded. The district administration had acquired his four bigha land (approximately 0.64 hectares) for the festival. The barricades and the concrete left on his land give us the idea that the land is not fit for farming this season.