-TheThirdPole.net Over two-thirds of traditional water sources in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh are dead; experts blame climate change and human activities The population of Mundaghat village in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh has come down to half of what it was a decade ago. There were nearly 500 people living in the village in 2010, now the number is reduced to 250, claimed Sita Ram, a retired water board...
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Water is not a commodity and financial asset to be exploited, says UN human rights expert
--Press release by Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights dated 20th October, 2021 GENEVA (20 October 2021) – Water is increasingly being treated as a mere commodity and even as a financial asset, a UN human rights expert told the UN General Assembly today, undermining the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation and the sustainability of the environment. Pedro Arrojo Agudo, the Special Rapporteur on the...
More »Are we witnessing depeasantisation in Indian agriculture?
The newly released Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India (NSS 77th Round) establishes the fact that the farm households are more and more relying on wage incomes instead of 'net incomes from crop cultivation' for their livelihoods. In Marxian lexicon, proletarisation (a term that we can loosely use for depeasantisation) refers to the process in which the farmers/ tillers are...
More »Tanks in Karnataka: Sharing land, water at a time of scarcity -Vishwanath S
-Down to Earth Tanks have fallen into disrepair for lack of a clear community ownership; but farmers, mostly women, are now being paid for its upkeep There is a reason why tanks — water bodies that store rainwater for irrigation — are in abundance in Karnataka. The state does not have many rivers; nor does it receive a lot of rainfall. Karnataka’s Kolar district is dotted by these tanks, which have assumed...
More »Buxwaha diamond mining project will make Bundelkhand’s Water Scarcity worse: Experts -Tejprakash Bhardwaj
-Down to Earth The water requirement for the Bunder mine and ore processing plant is about 5.9 million cubic meters in a year The proposed diamond mine in the Buxwaha protected forest region in Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh may have a greater ecological impact on the region than projected so far. The project threatens to further deplete the already scarce water reserve of the drought-prone Bundelkhand region to excavate about five million...
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