-Frontline.in Four years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement of the Namami Gange project, the river remains as dirty as ever. WHILE in Varanasi to file his nomination papers for the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Narendra Modi, then the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial nominee, had declared with his characteristic bravado, “I have not come here on my own. I have been invited by mother Ganga.” He said it was his...

-Livemint.com Ecologist Madhav Gadgil, whose report on Western Ghats was rejected by the Kerala government, on what caused the Kerala floods and how the rebuilding process should be carried out Ernakulam (Kerala): Submitted seven years ago on 31 August 2011, ecologist Madhav Gadgil’s report on the biodiverse Western Ghats—a portion of which falls in Kerala—had warned that the combination of massive ecological destruction and extreme weather events trigger disaster. His words proved...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Kerala did not have inundation maps or emergency action plans when waterworks engineers, responding to rising water levels, released the shutters of dams last week, but other states may be similarly vulnerable, a 2017 government audit report suggests. In the absence of detailed inundation maps or action plans, district authorities can warn local communities about an impending rise in water levels but without a clear idea of how...

-IANS New Delhi: The CAG has picked several holes in the National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) saying lack of planning and funds management resulted in incomplete works for providing safe drinking water to rural habitations, schools and anganwadis. In its audit report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) said only 44 per cent of rural habitations, 85 per cent of schools and anganwadis were provided with...

-TheWire.in Despite the agrarian crisis that India is reeling under, the parliamentary standing committee noted that the government’s efforts in implementing irrigation projects has been ‘lethargic’. New Delhi: A report of the parliamentary standing committee on rural development has revealed that only 10% of the projects taken up under the watershed development component of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY) have been completed. The report outlines that given that a majority...