-The Indian Express Wells dry up across 8 districts, storage down to less than 8%, residents trudge long distances, officials brace for worst drinking water crisis in 40 years. Beed/ Parbhani (Maharashtra): Seventy-year-old Parobai Shinde, carrying an aluminium pot that has seen better days, is briskly walking the 2-km stretch from her home in Manyarwadi village in Georai taluka in Beed district to Bharat Sonmali’s field. Sonmali is reploughing his 30...

-The Indian Express The big question in the minds of everyone who can recall is: Will 2015 for Marathwada turn out worse than the worst-ever drought of 1972? Parbhani (Maharashtra): Sadashiv Kathurappa Gajmal, 44, has long stopped introducing himself as a farmer. “I am a labourer,” says this father of four and owner of 2.5 acres of land in Charthana village of Parbhani’s Jintur taluka. Unfortunately, he has had little or no...

-The Times of India PUNE: The water situation is grim as the total storage in 91 main reservoirs across the country has gone below the last 10-year average, says the report of the Central Water Commission (CWC). The reservoirs currently hold 91 billion cubic metre (BCM) water, which is 58% of their total live storage capacity. During the same period last year, these reservoirs had 103.5 BCM water. The current storage is...

-Economic and Political Weekly While insufficient sanitation facilities often get represented in statistics and are reported in the literature on urban infrastructure planning and contested urban spaces, what is often left out is the everyday practice and experience of going to dysfunctional toilets, particularly by women. By analysing the practices and problems associated with toilet use from a phenomenological perspective, this article aims to situate the issue in the everyday lives...

-Frontline As rural Karnataka reels under an unprecedented wave of suicides by farmers, the State administration looks on, unwilling to address the reasons that have rendered rural livelihoods fragile. DEATH stalks rural Karnataka. In the 41 days between July 1 and August 10, as many as 245 farmers committed suicide, an average of six a day; since April 1, 284 farmers have taken their lives. As a bewildered State government gropes...