-The Hindu Haryana pollution board told to file report within a month The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has directed the Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB) to furnish a report on a plea which alleged that waste water being discharged had damaged crops and contaminated Groundwater. Taking note of a November 2019 report furnished by the pollution control board, a Bench headed by NGT chief Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel said, “Let further action...

-IdeasforIndia.in Usharmukti, a project of the Government of West Bengal, is being carried out in collaboration with civil society organisations in the western part of the state, to carry out watershed activities under MNREGA to conserve soil and water. In this note, Ashwini Kulkarni describes the main idea behind and working of the innovative project from her visit to the project area. When a farmer says that with potato in Rabi season...

-Economic and Political Weekly In Tamil Nadu, the extreme variation in rainfall had reduced the availability of water to agriculture and caused the Groundwater table to fall by 37%. The production of rice, an important crop, had became particularly precarious. A well-designed upscaling strategy boosted and sustained the production of rice; it also helped the build-up of organic matter and improved soil fertility. This experience shows that the System of Rice...

-The Hindu In the absence of scientific planning and implementation, measures like Jal Shakti Abhiyan may not be successful Following the massive water crisis across India in the summer of 2019, the Central government hurriedly launched the Jal Shakti Abhiyan (JSA), a time-bound, mission-mode water conservation campaign to be carried out in two phases, across the 255 districts having critical and over-exploited Groundwater levels. This campaign, however, was not intended to be...

-The Indian Express At current rates of depletion, Punjab’s entire subsurface water resource could be exhausted in a little over two decades. Jalandhar: As the discussion around Punjab’s massive Groundwater crisis becomes more urgent, there is an increasingly stronger accent on diversification of crops, and a move away from water-guzzling paddy. At a meeting over the weekend, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana, decided to strengthen maize — the most important alternative to...