-PTI ‘The decline of groundwater inflow is also impacting the health of the river’ Kolkata: Ganga, the 2,600-km-long trans-boundary river of Asia, has witnessed “unprecedented low levels of water in several lower reaches” in the last few summer seasons, a study undertaken by a professor of IIT-Kharagpur has said. The study, published recently in Scientific Reports magazine by Nature Publishing Group, used a combination of satellite images of groundwater levels of Ganga, numerical...

-Livemint.com The capricious nature of groundwater has resulted in so much exploitation and overuse that we now have a consistent crisis. Presenting a roadmap for groundwater governance and information transparency using technology India is a groundwater civilization. Almost all Indians use groundwater, directly or indirectly, each day. This tradition goes back more than 2,000 years. India is criss-crossed with the most elegant wells that tap into the shallow aquifer. The oldest wells...

-The Hindu The court-ordered clean-up in the textile town has managed to mitigate ill-effects of industrial pollution to a large extent. A similar remediation effort, involving the government and stakeholders, is needed in other parts of Tamil Nadu, where groundwater has been so contaminated that farming is not possible anymore On a sunny June morning, two men are spotted fishing close to the Orathupalayam dam in Erode district. A rather ordinary act in...

-TheSundayGuardianLive.com Delhi’s problem of being covered by smoke started right after the Punjab Preservation of Subsoil Water Act in 2009, which delayed the burning of crops till late October, was implemented for the first time. Until a few years ago, when farmers in Punjab burnt the remnants of the rice crops in their fields in preparation for sowing wheat, the smoke from such fires was confined to Punjab. Back then, farmers burnt...

-ThePrint.in The central government’s policy of not allowing Punjab to diversify is causing damage to the health of people in faraway Delhi. Crop stubble burning is a nuisance for both humans and the ecosystem as a whole. And the farmer needs a systematic support system to tide over the problem. The support can come in many ways: central government policy intervention being the most important. Through its current policy, the central government is...