Water
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Missing Links: Innovations In Sanitation Sector in India
As we delve deeper into the story of sanitation promotion over the last 60+ years in India, we hardly see well-developed and sustainable infrastructure on this front. On closely observing processes and progress, one will realize that agencies working in rural sanitation promotion are more fascinated by playing with available data to prepare presentations and…
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Poor Leadership-Counting Numbers, Still!
Another day for recognizing toilets or boasting ourselves! And by the way, by whom? Are they not in a race to promote, recognize, and prove that their perks are worth the spend, and asking for more? They range from corporations and businesses to NGOs and international agencies! All of them today are vouching for their…
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Kedarnath Disaster-‘A Scientific & Administrative Failure’
In various reports on the Kedarnath disaster, it is stated that unplanned development in Kedarnath city led to a huge death toll. However, none of the scientific reports, such as those from WIHG (Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, based in Dehradun, India), said that it was also a scientific failure, as they could not inform…
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Patwari’ Reaches to Disaster Hit Population
Patwari’ Reaches to Disaster Hit Population in Uttarakhand Mountain State of India After almost 20 days, since flash flood disaster hit Kedarnath valley in Uttarakhand, the lowest state level government functionary, responsible for maintaining land, population and other records in revenue villages, could finally reach to the areas assigned to thim. It is supposed that…
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Water Of Disasters In India
Officially, 22000 people died during various flood, landslide and cyclone related disasters in India during 2001-2010, lost about 10,0000 cattle, damage to 1.5 crore houses, and lost 425 lakh hectares agriculture land. In a year, on an average Indian economic loss is estimated of Rs. 800 crores due to flood, while 35 crore Indian were…
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Poorly Researched Height and Sanitation Link Study
I was going through an article published in The Hindu, an Indian national daily, based on the study by a researcher from Princeton University’s, titled ‘The long and short of open defecation‘, that correlates height of Indian children with poor sanitation. I have a few quick reflections on this article of Dean Spears, the researcher…
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Livelihood Links to Poor Water Quality in India: Alternates
“We had 200 vacancies, but we could not even fill even 50% of the posts,” said Group Captain T K Singha, Chief Public Relations Officer, Ministry Of Defense. “Most of the students failed the basic medical test because of defects in bone structure,” said an officer. “This was not visible by the naked eye, nor…
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Misleading Facts: Still We Can Celebrate World Toilet Day
Today it’s world toilet day. The monitoring of sanitation facilities globally remained a challenge to the country governments and International agencies. It is sometime said that the cursory assessment reports (e.g. JMP-Joint Monitoring Programme) of the facts about the rural and urban sanitation scenario may lead to pressure on country governments to expedite the process…
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Reassuring Guarantee For The People Of India
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (MNREGA 2005) enacted by the Government of India in 34 Indian States and Union Territories aimed at enhancing the livelihood security of people in rural areas by guaranteeing 100 days of wage-employment annually to an adult member of a rural household to do unskilled manual work.…
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Monitoring Challenges: In Water and Sanitation Sector
We are facing a number of monitoring challenges in drinking water supply and rural sanitation in India. This generally is hampering the overall pace of water sanitation infrastructure development to achieve the targets in access to safe water and availability of sustainable sanitation. In this article I will discuss the developmental processes and monitoring systems…
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Mountain Perspective and India’s Water Policy
In this article suggestions have been given to the government of India in context to its draft National Water Policy 2012 towards water resource planning, development and management in the Mountains of India. This policy document talks about national level water related issues like; legal, usage, climate change adaptation, availability, management, pricing, infrastructure, planning, R…
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Poor Water Governance and Scarce Water: A Status Quo in Indian Himalayas
This discourse questions the concept of the reform in water sector as described in the constitution of India and the status of drinking water in its eleven Himalayan Mountain states. It talks about the village level governance, their capacity and institutional arrangement that leads to sustainable water supply models to serve the needs of communities…
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Re-Viewing JMP On MDGs
This article discusses the present Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) that tells us about Drinking Water and Sanitation Status in a particular country. It has been observed that the estimation methodology or monitoring strategy of JMP needs to be thoroughly reviewed, given that there are no exclusive surveys carried out for Water and Sanitation purpose in…
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Almighty Ganges-Can We!
In south Asian region over 75 percent of the people live in rural areas, those have little access to safe potable water systems. Until, recently, people depended more on surface water which was exposed to microbial contamination resulting in water related disease like gastroenteritis, typhoid, dysentery, cholera, infectious hepatitis, infant diarrhoeas, and skin diseases and…
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Tender the gender…
This is the story of consistent and persistent efforts and strategic envisioning of a women group that lead from grim situation of water and sanitation to pride and livelihood opportunities to the poor tribal villagers in one of the remote district of central India. The Bhogaikhapa is a tribal village in one of the central…