Safe and clean drinking water and sanitation is a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life and all other human rights, the General Assembly declared today, voicing deep concern that almost 900 million people worldwide do not have access to clean water. The 192-member Assembly also called on United Nations Member States and international organizations to offer funding, technology and other resources to help poorer countries scale up...

Seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have plunged into a government effort to clean the Ganga, promising to recommend a slew of river management and technology strategies to improve its ecological health. The 2500km Ganga is one of the country’s most polluted rivers laced with Sewage and city waste although the government has spent about Rs 900 crore over the past two decades on a clean-up plan initiated in the late-1980s. An...

Pollution contents were 300 to 1,000 per cent more than the norms The Gujarat Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti, a voluntary organisation working for environmental protection, has come out with startling facts on how the badly treated industrial effluents are being dumped in the major rivers in the State and in the sea. The rivers include the Narmada, Mahisagar, Sabamarti and Damanganga and the sea outlet is in the Gulf of Cambay. Samiti convener...

So you think the ‘fresh-from-villages’ fruits and vegetables are actually safe and healthy to eat? However, there is more to what meets the eye. With groundwater having receded as much as 300 feet, farmers in the area have resorted to growing vegetables and seasonal crops using sewerage water laced with industrial pollutants. The primary source of surface water is a 150-km long rivulet that flows from Mohali to Ratia in Haryana...

Dalit women lead unhygienic lives for wages of Rs.15 a month  Caste hierarchy prevents women from doing any other job The Railways and municipalities are the biggest employers Each morning a group of Dalit women step outside their homes to “fulfil their social role” of cleaning dry latrines with their brooms and bare hands. They then carry human excrement in pots and baskets on their heads. Braving the worst possible form of caste...