Diehard devotees may not believe this. But it's true that the water of the holiest among holy rivers -- the Ganga -- fails to meet the drinking and bathing standards after it leaves Garhmukteshwar and is most polluted in Kanpur. The national river meets all three standard parameters -- Bio-Oxygen Demand (BOD), Dissolved Oxygen and total coliform -- only at Rishikesh. For a river water to be fit for bathing...

With five years to go before the deadline for halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) warn in a report released today that without stepped-up efforts, nearly one billion people will be overlooked. “We all recognize the vital importance of water and sanitation to human health and well-being and their role...

Twenty-five years after the Bhopal gas tragedy, one of the biggest industrial disasters in history, the country’s pollution watchdog has found huge quantities of chemicals in underground water and soil in a 2.4-km radius of the Union Carbide factory.  During a study of 390 tonnes of toxins abandoned in the now-closed factory, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) discovered high levels of chloroform and benzene in underground water, mostly near...

A FEW SLEEPY villages in the hills, about an hour’s drive from Pune, are suddenly buzzing with activity. Lavasa Corporation, a subsidiary of the Hindustan Construction Company (HCC), is spending Rs 140,000 crore to ‘clean out’ these villages (read tribals and marginal farmers) and build a world-class city in its place. Those pushing the project argue that urban India, bursting at its seams, just cannot cope with the large-scale migration from...

Each night, as temperatures continue to plunge and Delhi shivers through its coldest winter in the last decade, a few more people lose their lives on its streets. The people who succumb to the cold include rickshaw-pullers, balloon-sellers and casual workers, the footloose underclass of dispossessed people who build and service the capital city of the country and yet are forced to sleep under the open sky. They die because...