A survey of 71 cities across the country conducted by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has shown that officially 82 per cent of all the water that municipalities of these cities supply comes from surface water resources, and the rest comes from groundwater resources. But of these 71 cities, 11 depend almost completely on groundwater for public water supply. In the remaining, agencies supply water from surface sources by...

-PTI Anna Hazare on Sunday returned to his favourite mode of protest -- hunger strike -- in Delhi after his flop show in Mumbai three months ago, this time protesting against the "deaf and dumb" government which is "not doing anything" to protect whistleblowers fighting corruption. Hazare, after his usual visit to Rajghat before any such protest in Delhi, came to the capital's dharna Hotspot Jantar Mantar at around 11am to loud...

-AFP Water problems in many parts of the world are chronic and without a crackdown on waste will worsen as demand for food rises and climate change intensifies, the UN warned on Sunday.  Issued on the eve of a six-day gathering on world water issues, the United Nations, in a massive report, said many daunting challenges lie ahead.  They include providing clean water and sanitation to the poor, feeding a world population set...

-The Hindustan Times    Poor households of urban India are emerging Hotspots for hunger and ill-health and children there live in worse conditions than in rural areas, says a new UN report released on Wednesday.   The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) report -- state of the world’s children 2012 -- say that like most parts of the world, children living in around 49,000 slums in India are "invisible". Half of these slums are in...

On August 26, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan resigned, taking responsibility for the disastrous meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was caused by the March 2011 undersea earthquake and ensuing tsunami.  In India, on the other hand, the deliberate contamination of a drinking water tank with radioactive waste in the Kaiga nuclear power plant in Western Ghats in the state of Karnataka has gone unpunished for two whole...