Wells and Step-wells

The problem of Bengaluru’s water is well known.

The annual droughts in Maharashtra have put tremendous pressure on the available water resources in the state.

In the last few decades, India has seen an increasing number of people migrating from rural areas to urban cities in search of work and better living. These migrants often get employed in the informal sector as construction workers, vendors, domestic servants, etc. They also live in informal settlements, generally known as slums.

Glacial lakes pose flood risk to 441 hydel projects in Himalayan region

Despite all the hype around Swachh Bharat Mission, the situation on the ground remains dismal. The city of Ujjain is located on the western part of Madhya Pradesh on the Malwa Plateau and is primarily a religious tourism centre due to the Mahakal temple.

"Jatene dekho utene bawri" (wherever you look, there’s a stepwell). This is how the woman standing on the threshold of her house, in the walled city of Jodhpur, told us when we asked where we could find stepwells in her neighbourhood. 

Temples in India have always had a water body near its premises. Whether it is a natural pond, a free-flowing river or a man-made tank, the water inside them seem to imbibe the sacredness associated with the temples, thereby becoming an integral part of the cultural, social and religious landscape of that area. 

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.

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.