Varanasi, which is known as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha constituency during 2014, has hit the headlines recently due to people's struggle for water rights. Altogether 18 village councils (Gram Panchayats) of Varanasi have written recently to Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board to stop overexploitation of groundwater by the Coca-Cola bottling plant, which is situated in Mehdiganj (please click here to access their letters).   The village councils, which have...

-The Hindu 2015’s El Niño on course to being the strongest ever. The highest daily rainfall in a century. Freak weather conditions on one day. The hottest-ever Indian Ocean. The strongest-ever El Niño. The hottest year on record. The bad news is that a perfect storm of meteorological conditions combined to create Chennai’s worst-ever deluge last week, exacerbated in no small part by civic infrastructure pushed to its limit and systemic dysfunction. The...

Agricultural insurance is supposed to protect farmers from financial hardships and risks when crop losses and damage takes place due to extreme weather events such as drought, cyclone, hailstorms, flood etc. However, in reality this does not hold true in India. Due to the failure of crop insurance schemes in India, there has been a deepening of agrarian crisis and rural distress in the recent times, particularly in the backdrop of...

-FirstPost.com More than a year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet Swachh Bharat campaign was launched across the country, statistics appear to be making it increasingly clear that the focus of the campaign needs to be more than merely constructing toilets. A survey conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) has revealed that not even half the toilets built as part of the campaign are being used, according to a...

-The New Indian Express KASARGOD: A good number of the tribespeople in the district still depend on springs, streams, ponds and rivulets for drinking water. But a ‘live-in’ study of their lives reveals they are the relatively luckier ones. For those who depend on wells, borewells, and public taps often struggle for water, especially during the harsh months. Volunteers of Kudumbashree Mission, as part of a poverty alleviation initiative, visited and lived...