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water crisis

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The Hindu

Conflict/Dispossession

Ahead of ‘Day Zero’, Delhi’s water crisis is about to turn into a water war

4th February 2020

From ABC News: Delhi is one of 21 Indian cities that could run out of groundwater, according to a 2018 government thinktank report. Disputes over water often lead to violence, especially in the city’s unauthorised settlements. The state government and the local “water mafia” are drilling bores, further depleting groundwater and exacerbating the larger problem….

ALTERNATIVES

Mihir Shah: India’s water crisis has a simple solution

18th December 2019

“This plan has multiple win-wins: Improvement in soil and water quality, higher incomes for farmers, reduced malnutrition and obesity, and a simple solution to India’s water problem by drastically reducing use of water in agriculture.” Also watch: ‘Bringing the Science Back Into Water: A New Paradigm for 21st Century India,’ a talk by Mihir Shah….

Conserve/Resist

Shashi Shekhar: “We are not allowing sub-soil water to recharge”

9th August 2019

The irony couldn’t be crueler. Even as large parts of India battle floods, a new report has ranked the country 13th among “extremely highly water-stressed” nations. Alarming news, since India has “three times the population of the other 17 combined”. Former Water Resources chief Shashi Shekhar casts a knowing eye on India’s ballooning water crisis….

CLIMATE CRISIS

P. Sainath: How a patch of Anantapur came to be a desert

28th July 2019

From The Wire: This specific patch of some 1,000 acres near Dargah Honnur village in Anantapur district –once covered by millet cultivation– has over many decades become more and more a desert. That has been driven by often paradoxical factors –and created the kind of space that filmmakers send out location scouts to look for….

Consumerism/Lifestyle

We have drought-proofed our cities, and left farms and farmers to die

1st July 2019

Devinder Sharma writes: This year, nearly 82% of Karnataka is reeling under drought. But in Bangalore, you won’t get even a hint of the terrible human suffering that continues to be inflicted year after year. Karnataka has suffered drought for 12 out of the past 18 years. But life in Bangalore has never been affected….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Indian villages lie empty as drought forces thousands to flee

13th June 2019

From The Guardian: With over 43% of India reeling under drought, hundreds of villages have been evacuated and homes abandoned after wells, handpumps ran dry in a 45C heatwave. Estimates suggest that in villages 250 miles from Mumbai, up to 90% of the population has fled, leaving the sick and elderly to fend for themselves….

Consumerism/Lifestyle

The Age of Peaking Resources: A Personal Take

2nd July 2018

During my first encounter with resource depletion issues I thought re-localisation would be a strategy to defy the odds. One relocates to a resource abundant small geography and maintains it through a community driven process. But then, I never pursued it. However, the recent news of India’s looming water crisis has got me thinking again….

Development/Growth

A zero sum game: The rail projects that spell doom for the Cauvery

21st February 2018

The fracas over water sharing has obscured the fact that the Cauvery itself is facing a major threat: two railway lines to be constructed through Kodagu, the forested hill district where the river originates. A river’s fate – and those of the millions that depend on it – now hangs in balance, writes Chirag Chinnappa….

Conserve/Resist

Cape Town is running out of water. Guess who’s next?

16th February 2018

From BBC: Cape Town is in the unenviable situation of being the first major city in the modern era to face the threat of running out of drinking water. But Cape Town is just the tip of the iceberg. Here are the 11 other cities worldwide that are most likely to run out of water….

Development/Growth

Why the BJP lost rural Gujarat

23rd December 2017

From Rediff.com: In the recent elections, the Congress made stunning gains over rivals BJP in rural Gujarat, winning 62 of 109 seats. According to food policy analyst and activist Devinder Sharma, this is a direct result of Gujarat’s prolonged and acute agrarian crisis being ignored by the ruling party, the urban-centric media and pollsters alike….

ALTERNATIVES

Yogendra Yadav: The Indian farmer’s what-the-hell moment has truly arrived

11th December 2017

From The Indian Express: Yogendra Yadav, who is part of a platform of over 180 farmers’ organisations that have come together to raise key demands, says: “(One of the things) I have seen, which cuts across all farmers, is anger against government. This all-round disenchantment is more so against the current government at the Centre.”…

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ALTERNATIVES

Paani Foundation is creating a new paradigm for fighting drought

30th October 2017

Moin Qazi writes: The Indian film celebrity Aamir Khan is shepherding a very revolutionary campaign–making Maharashtra drought-free in five years. Khan’s Paani Foundation is galvanising the rural population to go back to fundamental lessons of water management taught by their ancestors. Many Maharashtra villages are seeing water in their parched lands after consecutive dry years….

A truck leaves an illegal sand mine by the Yamuna in Greater Noida

http://ismenvis.nic.in

Conflict/Dispossession

Sand mining: the global environmental crisis you’ve probably never heard of

12th September 2017

From The Guardian: Cities are expanding at a pace and scale far greater than at any time in history. The global urbanisation boom is devouring colossal amounts of sand–the key ingredient of concrete and asphalt. In the past few years, China alone has used more cement than the US used in the entire 20th century….

ALTERNATIVES

Module 3: Water – Scarcity, Contamination, Conservation

3rd August 2017

Ecologise has consistently driven home that humanity needs to prepare for unprecedented environmental, economic and socio-political upheaval and uncertainty in the 21st century. In this new series, we showcase free short-duration online courses that focus on these various emerging crises and possible responses. Created by the world’s leading universities, they offer a good starting point to explore these complex challenges….

Development/Growth

From Bangalore to Srinagar, India’s lakes are dead in the water

18th July 2017

From Hindustan Times: The NGT has repeatedly criticised Bengaluru’s civic authorities this year for letting the city’s water bodies become toxic waste dumps. The central body could find similarly mistreated lakes in countless Indian cities, where wetlands are being lost due to urbanisation, changes in land use and pollution. What lakes have survived are shrinking….

Untreated effluents dumped into Sabarmati downstream of Vasna barrage, which is the dead-end of Sabarmati Riverfont

Amruta Pradhan/SANDRP

Conflict/Dispossession

Sabarmati riverfront, inland waterways, Mahanadi dispute, are all newer forms of onslaught on rivers

11th July 2017

From Counterview.org: The Sabarmati River Front has been in the news lately as a model of “river beautification”. When in reality, it is a dead river, filled with effluents and sewage. It was “rejuvenated” with Narmada water, which came at a great cost of the displacement of lakhs of people and destruction of the environment….

Conserve/Resist

Branding the farmer agitations ‘political’ betrays a lack of understanding

10th July 2017

From The Indian Express: It’s a dark satire to tell a farmer that the Minimum Support Price (MSP), CPI and WPI changes reflect farmer incomes are doubling and farmer suicides are declining. The trigger for the recent farm agitation remains the depressed farm gate price compared to previous years —that’s what matters on the ground….

Conflict/Dispossession

Demonetisation has failed: Farmers’ anger is the final piece of evidence

18th June 2017

R. Jagannathan, Editor, Swarajya Magazine, writes: It is time for a mea culpa on demonetisation. This writer has been largely positive on the medium-to-long-term benefits of notebandi, as opposed to its short-term downsides. Now, especially after the farmer agitations for loan waivers, I believe the negative side is larger than the positive. It has failed….

Conflict/Dispossession

P. Sainath: Why are our farmers angry?

17th June 2017

From People’s Archive of Rural India: From farmers being shot dead in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, to those across Maharashtra out on the streets, to those from Tamil Nadu on hunger strike in New Delhi not so long ago, this has been a season of agrarian discontent. Why is this happening, which way will it go?…

A scene after violent clashes between farmers and the police at Pipliya in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh

PTI

Conflict/Dispossession

Ground Report: How demonetisation brought MP farmers onto streets

13th June 2017

This series of timely reports from Hindustan Times surveys the explosive situation in Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur district, epicenter of the violent protests that left six farmers dead from police bullets. The lead article looks at the impact of demonetisation in creating the crisis, while another report examines the role of social media in organising farmers….