-The Hindu How private wells and paddy are drying up the southern State. Chennai: Tamil Nadu is water deficit. A structural deficit and not a seasonal one. The total assessed water resources in the State amount to 1,587 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) while the State government's demand estimate is 1,894 TMC. Demand exceeds supply by 19.3 per cent; this happens when rainfall is "normal". Consider what gets reported as normal: the aggregate...
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Monsoon deficit grows to 10% on poor August rains, raises drought fears -Amit Bhattacharya & Vishwa Mohan
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Below-par rainfall across India for more than two weeks has pushed the monsoon deficit to 10% below normal, increasing worries of a second successive drought year in the country. Average all-India rainfall was 5% below normal at the beginning of August but had doubled by Independence Day due to rains remaining consistently below average during the fortnight. August so far has seen 17% below-normal rain. A shortfall...
More »Falling Sick, Paying the Price: NSS 71st Round on Morbidity and Costs of Healthcare -T Sundararaman and VR Muraleedharan
-Economic and Political Weekly The decennial National Sample Survey on health and education provides useful information on the health and education of the population. The summary report on health from the 71st round conducted in 2014 allows us to make an initial assessment of three sets of issues. One, the trends in morbidity rates and patterns of morbidity, two, the effectiveness of the public sector in ensuring access to healthcare, and...
More »Push irrigation, not dams -Mihir Shah
-The Indian Express We can add millions of hectares to irrigated land without building a single new dam. We just need to adopt a different method of managing the water already stored in them. One of the drivers of India’s irrigation sector has been the construction of large dams on our rivers, which Jawaharlal Nehru famously described as “the temples of modern India”. While these dams have helped increase India’s irrigated...
More »Where Will The Girls Go? -Archana Mishra
-Tehelka Last year’s Red Fort rhetoric has not been matched by action on the ground, with separate toilets for students remaining elusive as ever One part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech on Independence Day this year can safely be predicted: the reeling out of statistics to prove that the Swachh Bharat campaign is sweeping the nation. The cleanliness drive launched on 2 October, 2014, was announced from the ramparts of the...
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