As the Ganga emerges from the glaciers and glides along the foothills of the mighty Himalayas through the towns and cities with their sprawling ghats, engineered embankments, hydroelectric dams, and interrupted flows at barrages, the icy chilliness of its waters is lost. Pilgrims swarm its bank to pay obeisance to the holy river but the river continues to be treated as a dump yard for human waste, dirt and rubbish. Civilisations have developed along its banks but cities and villages today dispose of industrial and municipal waste making it the second most polluted river in the world.

The river serves over 500 million people in over a hundred cities and towns and thousands of villages, more than any other river in the world. The source of the river today is diminishing. The rate of retreat of Gaumukh, the snout of the Gangotri glacier has increased sharply since 1971. The rise in rainfall, heightened temperature and dwindling snowfall in the area has led to the melting of the glacier. Small glacial lakes like the one in Chorabari that led to the June 2013 flood in Kedarnath have formed on top of the glacier.

The Knightlabs storymap 'Ganga in trouble' can be viewed here  

Barrages built on the Ganga through colonial times such as at Haridwar, Bijnor, Narora and Kanpur to serve the irrigation requirements of vast tracts of the area have diminished the river flow, reducing its ability to assimilate waste. Downstream of these, the Farakka barrage, originally built to divert fresh water into the Hooghly river to maintain the Kolkata port, is a cause of tension between Bangladesh and India. 

Hydel projects cause harm to the living ecosystem

As per reports, 300 dams are planned on the Ganges and its tributaries in the near future. This, despite a government-commissioned green panel report’s (2012) recommendation on scrapping 34  dams citing environmental concerns. Expressing doubts about plans to expand hydropower generating capacity in Uttarakhand, a report commissioned by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) too had recommended in 2013 that the dams planned on the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi rivers, the two main tributaries of the Ganga in Uttarakhand, should not be allowed as they will cause irretrievable harm to the river by submerging substantial areas and tampering its ecology. Dams and the ensuing fragmentation of rivers pose a threat to fish species, in both mountain areas and plains.

As it passes through the Gangetic plains, the river collects untreated municipal sewage water and industrial effluents from countless tanneries, chemical plants, textile mills, distilleries, coal plants, slaughterhouses, and hospitals. Though industrial effluents constitute only 12 percent of the total volume of effluent reaching the river, they are a cause of concern because they are toxic and non-biodegradable. The stretch from Kanpur to Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh) and from Dakshineshwar to Uluberia (West Bengal) show very high pollution levels.  

Ganga rejuvenation flawed: From GAP to Namami Gange

The Ganga Action Plan or GAP was first launched in 1985 and saw two extensions. Thousands of crores of rupees were spent on the world’s most ambitious river cleaning programme in over 30 years but the river continued to get dirtier. Sewage accounts for 85 percent of its pollution load while 500 million litres of untreated industrial waste is added to the river daily. These pose a significant risk to the people and the environment. The flow of the river is hardly maintained and hence, dealing with pollutants is impossible.

Sewage treatment plants, the mainstay of GAPs, were rendered dysfunctional due to faulty planning and execution, frequent power cuts and inadequate capacity of treatment plants to handle sewage. The sewage treatment plant at Kanpur lay idle owing to design issues and the gravity sewers were unable to carry the treated discharge to the Ganga.

In 2009, a new body called the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA) was set up. It was allocated Rs 7,000 crore for Ganga clean up. The Ganga was accorded the status of a national river and for the first time, the entire river basin formed the basis for planning and implementation. The ecological flow of the river was also taken into account. The goal? By 2020, no untreated municipal sewage or industrial effluent will flow into the Ganga.

A Parliamentary Committee on Environment and Forests in 2015 noted that the project was a failure as “the water quality of the Ganga has not shown any significant improvement either and it is deteriorating day by day. The quality of Ganga water downstream at several important locations, such as Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi and Patna continues to be a major concern for the environmentalist as well as the common man”.

A report of the consortium of Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) responsible for drawing up the Ganga River Basin Management Plan (GRBMP) suggests that at least 30-35 percent of the total volume of the waters of the Ganga needs to maintain a minimum flow. This flow was never maintained nor was the cleaning up of the river anywhere in sight, even with the Prime Minister swearing to clean up the river. The Supreme Court, meanwhile, rebuked the government for not being proactive on the issue. It would take 200 years to clean up the river at the current pace, the court noted.

The government in 2016 finalised the Namami Gange plan with much fanfare and an allocation of Rs 20,000 crore was made for the next five years. This is five times the total expenditure made so far under all the GAPs. It submitted a blueprint to the apex court outlining its plan to clean up the polluted river within 18 years. This comprised short, medium and long-term measures to clean the Ganga. A proper mechanism was to be put in place for the river in three years.

A performance audit of Namami Gange by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has revealed “underutilisation” of funds and “delays” in project approvals between 2014-15 and 2016-17. The National Mission on Clean Ganga (NMCG) was unable to finalise the long-term action plan even after more than six-and-a-half years of the signing of an agreement with the consortium of the IIT. “It is because of the lack of action plan that the NMCG does not have a river basin management plan, even after a lapse of more than eight years of the National Ganga River Basin Authority notification,” the CAG report notes.

Government’s new interest and its dreadful impact

There has been a shift in government investments—from expensive sewerage infrastructure in towns and cities to that on the waterway. A key thrust of the government is to convert the Ganga into a navigational channel with a series of barrages (every 100 km) and uniformly dredge the river to a depth of three to five metres. Barges can then ply coal, bauxite and even hazardous cargo from Varanasi to Haldia port. 

Such tampering with the ecology of the river through dredging, channelisation, river straightening, building of barrages, locks, gates, terminals and concretising is unjustified. The project is continuing without environment clearances from the MoEFCC as it is not mandatory for the maintenance dredging of navigation channels in inland waterways.

These projects will be counterproductive for the Namami Gange programme. The IIT consortium which had prepared a detailed report for the government on how the Ganga could be cleaned up to restore its continuous and unpolluted flow has also objected to this. Steps for restoring the river’s ecology include restricting riverbed farming, stopping the plying of noisy vessels and dredging and also ending bank modifications as per the consortium report. There is a need to maintain the river’s ecological flow, tighten industrial pollution norms and rethink conventional sewage networks.   

Polluted river stretches increases to 351, as against 302 in 2015

According to a recent assessment by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), there are 351 polluted river stretches in the country  with 45 of them being critically polluted. Although a greater focus is given to the Ganga river clean-up due to its cultural significance, the assessment revealed that there are far more polluted rivers than the Ganga in the country. Nearly one-third of the polluted river stretches are in Maharashtra, Assam and Gujarat. The assessment has highlighted four significant stretches of pollution which includes the Mithi river—Powai to Dharavi; the Godavari—Someshwar to Rahed; the Sabarmati—Kheroj to Vautha; and the Hindon—Saharanpur to Ghaziabad.

Country's overall rainfall deficit stands at eight percent

Despite floods in several parts of the country in recent weeks, India is reeling under a cumulative rainfall deficiency of eight percent. With a 23 percent rainfall deficit, the north and the northeast regions are the worst hit. Although, the overall water storage in the 91 major reservoirs across the country is 11 percent, which is more than the average of the last 10 years, there are wide regional discrepancies. While the reservoirs in the southern, central and eastern regions have better water storage than the 10-year average, the reservoirs in the northern and the western regions have less water storage. 

Repeated floods cause havoc in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh

Incessant rains in Arunachal Pradesh have caused a fresh wave of floods in both Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. This is the third flash flood to have hit Assam during this monsoon season affecting six districts in the state—Dhemaji, Lakhimpur, Biswanath, Barpeta, Majuli and Dibrugarh. Although there are no deaths reported during these recent floods yet, the last two floods had claimed 52 victims and affected eight lakh people across two districts in the state. Nearly two lakh hectares of cropland have also been submerged in Assam this year. 

Delhi to fund 90 percent of power component for Renuka project

The Delhi government has agreed to fund 90 percent of the power component for Renuka project over Giri river while Himachal Pradesh will enjoy the exclusive rights over the power generation. As per the 2015 price level, the total cost of the project is Rs 4,600 crore, out of which the cost of water component is Rs 4,325 crore while the power component is worth Rs 275 crore. The Centre will bear 90 percent cost of the water component and the remaining 10 percent cost would be shared by the beneficiary states as per their respective water allocations. The Centre has also agreed to pay all land acquisition costs of the project. 

Mumbai’s Metro-3 project comes up at the cost of Aarey tribals’ land and livelihood

The tribal families at Prajapur Pada in Aarey Colony have alleged that the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC) has breached the National Green Tribunal's 2015 order that restricts the corporation to carry out several activities—debris dumping, land reclamation or tree felling—for its Metro-3 project until further hearing. The tribals have claimed that upon refusing to leave their land for the project, they are being forcefully evicted. However, the corporation has rubbished the tribals' claims of farming being done on the site and accused them of misrepresenting to the high court that they were cultivating any land in the project-affected area.

This is a roundup of important news published between September 12 - 18, 2018. Also read policy matters this week.

The family of Somesh Manikpuri of Amasivani colony in Raipur is still in shock of his sudden demise from jaundice in May this year. Six similar deaths have been reported from Raipur since April 2018. Memsingh Chandrakar, a resident of Naharpara, another locality in Raipur, was also affected by jaundice in May. He says, “We did not have an epidemic like this in Naharpara till a decade ago. The quality of drinking water was far better then than it is now and we lived a healthy life. But since the year 2014, the drinking water quality has deteriorated to such an extent that epidemics like jaundice, diarrhoea and typhoid have become very common. More than 100 residents in Naharpara alone have been affected by jaundice in the last few months.” 

On May 1, the high court termed jaundice at Naharpara locality a “disaster” and directed the Raipur Municipal Corporation (RMC) to shift the entire population of the area to makeshift camps within 48 hours till sanitation was restored. “But RMC appealed and assured to fix the issue and the court withheld its order,” says the mayor of RMC, Pramod Dubey. 

Jaundice-related deaths on the rise

As per the data provided by Raipur district health authorities, in the last five years, more than 70 deaths have been registered in Raipur government hospitals due to jaundice alone. The most affected area in Raipur is Mowa. As per Dr I. Rehman, senior consultant and physician, more than 50 positive cases were identified from Mowa area in March. The elected member (ward parshad) from Mowa area, Anwar Hussain says that the old, faulty pipeline network is the primary reason for the rise in the epidemic in the city. Many leading newspapers in the area also reported that the primary cause of the epidemic was the faulty pipeline and the piped water distribution system. 

Status of Jaundice deaths in Raipur city government hospitals

Source: Data compiled from Raipur district hospital inpatient records from 2014-2018 and AIIMS-Raipur

According to water expert and coordinator of the Chhattisgarh Action Research Team (CART), a leading NGO in Raipur working on water sector issues, Gautam Bandhopadhya, the defective pipeline is not the only reason for the continuous rise in the epidemic. “The more significant problem in Raipur is the contamination of the overall water resources from untreated sewage network,” he says. 

The primary source of drinking water in Raipur is Kharun river and the groundwater. The stand posts and hand pumps in most of the areas are located very close to the open drains, causing contamination of drinking water, says a study conducted by non-profit organisation Ecosan Services Foundation (ESF) in April. According to the study, only 11 percent of the urban poor in Raipur is connected to the city sewer network while the remaining 89 percent resorts to open drains or open areas for wastewater disposal. At the city level, about 43 percent of the population lacks any system of disposal of the sewage generated. It goes on to say that the existing sewage treatment system in Raipur consisting of seven oxidation ponds is defunct and the total sewage generated in the city is untreated. The ESF has now been empanelled as a Key Resource Centre (KRC) and a leading knowledge hub in sustainable sanitation and water management by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (MDWS). 

The study also reports that roughly 54 percent of the properties in Raipur is connected to unscientifically designed septic tanks which do not adhere to the Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organisation (CPHEEO) guidelines and therefore overflow into the open drainage channels ultimately draining into natural water bodies and polluting the groundwater.

As per senior RMC officials who do not want to be named, the domestic sewage network of Raipur is linked to the Kharun river through eight big canals and almost all the sewage flows directly into the river without any treatment being done. Before supplying drinking water to the residents, the RMC officials say that though the water is treated, bacterial and viral contamination cannot be ruled out completely.

“We had conducted an independent survey of the condition of slums in Raipur in 2014 in collaboration with the Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA), Mumbai and Oxfam India, the non-profit organisations working in the development and water sector,” says Bandhopadhaya. The study found that out of the 8151 houses surveyed, only three percent of temporary houses, 30 percent of the semi-permanent houses and 67 percent of the permanent houses had toilet facilities. Four percent of the temporary houses, 24 percent of the semi-permanent houses and 72 percent of the permanent houses had drinking water facilities. In the last four years, on the ground, the condition of water and sanitation has improved only negligibly. More than 35 percent of the households living in slums still defecate in the open and are exposed to various health hazards due to poor maintenance of toilets and lack of water facilities. 

In just two decades, a self-sustaining city like Raipur that once had more than 100 lakes and a clean river has become one of the most polluted hubs in the state, and it has adversely affected the overall public health of the city. "Everybody agrees that our living condition should improve, but none of the individuals, politicians or officers have done anything significant to improve basic services in our area,” says 55-year-old Rohit Vishwakarma of Shivaji Nagar slum in Raipur.

If the district administration and the government had taken adequate measures to restore the lakes and the Kharun river, the residents of Raipur could have led a healthier life. The restoration of water bodies is limited to beautification.  

So far, there hasn’t been much effort from the government towards containing the epidemic in the area though Dubey says that they have been “organising health camps since April 2018 for the patients and have been continuously working on changing the defective pipelines”. 

Better infrastructure as solution

The basic cause of the epidemic in Raipur is the lack of proper infrastructure like functional sewage treatment plants, machinery for cleaning water bodies, etc. There is also a need for better research in the area and manpower in RMC. “Just monitoring the water quality and health status of the people will not help the RMC to address the problem fully. The broader issues of public health could only be addressed when we deploy people and fill the gap of infrastructure and trained manpower. We also have to design and ensure proper monitoring mechanisms to keep a check on the quality of water resources, water distribution network and other basic services like health, hygiene and sanitation that need urgent attention,” says Dr Kamlesh Jain, a senior urban health consultant and a public health expert. 

There is a need to simplify government procedures for fixing basic services like water and sanitation at the ground level. “For example, more than 50 percent of the water supply pipelines run through the drainage lines. It takes RMC months to act on a problem due to the lengthy procedure involved. Similar is the case with other departments like Public Health Engineering (PHE) and town and country planning department of Raipur. If we can simplify the government processes, then it would become easier for the staff to fix the problems at the earliest,” says Anurag Gupta, state head of WaterAid, a non-profit organisation.

Additional funds of over Rs 1,300 crore allocated to dam safety project

The Centre has approved the revision of the cost estimate for the ongoing Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project (DRIP) from Rs 2,100 crore to Rs 3,466 crore. The project has also got a two-year extension and now it is scheduled for completion in June 2020. The aim of the nationwide project is to improve safety and operational performance of 198 large dams in Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand. The finance ministry has also given its go-ahead to DRIP-II which is to be implemented after the completion of phase-I. DRIP-II plans to cover an additional 700 dams across 18 states with an estimated cost of Rs 7,000 crore.

Bombay HC bans destruction and cutting of mangroves in Maharashtra

Calling mangroves destruction a violation of the fundamental rights of citizens, the Bombay high court has completely banned destruction and cutting of mangroves in Maharashtra. The new order seeks to declare the privately-owned mangrove land, which was excluded from the earlier notification, to be declared protected or reserved forest area. The court has also directed the state government to constitute a committee that shall be responsible for the preservation and conservation of mangroves and restoration of mangrove areas which are illegally reclaimed. 

Polavaram project: CAG says 2019 deadline appears improbable 

As per the audit conducted by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), the completion of Polavaram multi-purpose project on the Godavari river by the target date of 2019 "appears improbable". The delay has been attributed to improper planning, delays in finalisation of designs, land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement. Moreover, despite being declared a national project four years ago, the Andhra Pradesh government has been unable to conclude a memorandum of understanding with the Centre as per the national project guidelines. The state government has also been unable to sort out submergence issues with neighbouring states. 

Gujarat, Uttarakhand ODF status a sham: CAG

As per a recent report by CAG on the state of toilets in Gujarat and Uttarakhand, both states have received open defecation free (ODF) status despite many toilets in these states existing just on papers or are defunct. In Gujarat, out of the 120 villages surveyed, 41 villages have toilets which are unusable due to lack of water connections and other 15 villages do not have toilets at all. In Uttarakhand, over 70 percent toilets were constructed without any expert guidance rendering them unfit for use. The report has posed questions on the ODF verification process for villages. 

CAG reveals Odisha's slow pace in providing household water connection

The CAG has revealed that the Odisha government has been able to provide household water connections to just 3.7 percent households as against 35 percent which was the state’s target. The piped water supply is also found to be behind its target as only 25 percent of the targeted habitations have been covered during the period. The state government has been unable to transfer funds for maintenance to Panchayati Raj Institutions which are responsible for the operation and maintenance of 60 percent of rural drinking water sources. 

This is a roundup of important policy matters from September 19 - 25, 2018. Also, read news this week.

Cyclone causes rain in 18 states; floods, landslides reported in North India

A cyclonic storm Daye made its landfall in Odisha on September 21. Although the tropical storm had weakened into a deep depression soon after making landfall, the wind pattern has changed triggering rainfall in Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi-NCR. The untimely rainfall coincides with the harvesting time of paddy crops in the states. The fear of a large-scale crop damage looms large in Punjab and Haryana. The incessant rain is also causing havoc in Himachal Pradesh. The water level in the Himachal’s Pong dam is nearing the danger mark and the administration has decided to release 49,000 cusecs of water from the dam. 

Expert committee identifies 11 hotspots of silt deposit in Bihar

The expert committee constituted by the Centre has identified 11 hotspots with alarming silt deposits in the Ganga river in Bihar. The committee has highlighted the need to remove the silt so as to minimise flood risk in the region and clear way for the national waterway project. The report, which has been submitted to the central water resource department, has stressed for a more in-depth study of morphological changes in the Ganga from Buxar in Bihar to Farakka in West Bengal. The report findings have come as a good news to the Bihar government which has been repeatedly pressurising the central government to deal with the issue over the past three years. 

UP proposes to denotify turtle sanctuary for inland waterways

The state government has submitted the proposal to the National Board For Wildlife to denotify the entire ‘Kachhua’ or Turtle Wildlife Sanctuary in Varanasi. The Wildlife Institute of India has prepared the report for denotifying the 210-hectare-area of the sanctuary. The report has used the presence of fewer species of turtles in the sanctuary as a justification to denotify it. However, the underlying reason for this destruction is that the sanctuary is coming in the way of the Centre's mega plan of a 1,620-km-long national waterways project. If the Centre agrees to the proposal, this will be the first time since the inception of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 that a sanctuary is getting wiped off the map of India completely. 

First community-based early warning system for landslides in Darjeeling

The Geological Survey of India in partnership with the Darjeeling district administration has deployed the People-centric Landslide Early Warning System (L-EWS) in the landslide-prone Giddapahar, a small hamlet in the Darjeeling Himalayas. The system relies on monitoring of rainfall and analysis of rainfall threshold value and exceedance by community members that are then shared with the administration for timely action. The low-cost system has been launched on an experimental basis and empowers the community to manage landslide hazards.

Gujarat farmers against Mumbai-Ahmedabad Bullet train 

Over 1,000 Gujarat farmers have written to the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) requesting to withhold disbursal of funds for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad Bullet train. Nearly, 1,400 hectares of land will be acquired in Gujarat and Maharashtra for the project, of which 1,120 hectares is privately owned. The farmers have alleged violation of guidelines in the agreement signed between the Japan and Indian governments. As per the farmers, no committee has been formed for the environmental and social impact assessment of the project and the assessment reports for the project date back to 2010. 

This is a roundup of important news published between September 19 - 25, 2018. Also read policy matters this week.

Every time there is a huge flood in India with massive loss of lives and extensive physical damage, there is a hue and cry. Especially, if this takes place in an area not normally prone to such floods. Assam and Bihar, for instance, are regularly laid waste by floods and so, there is not much agitation over that anymore. But when there were unprecedented floods in Uttarakhand, Kashmir, Chennai and Mumbai a few years back and now recently in Kerala, they invited massive outpouring of wrath followed by a blame game.

In the instance of Kerala, one particular allegation was that the many dams in the state were almost full to capacity even before the torrential rains began in late August and so they did not have much of a flood cushion to absorb the higher runoff coming into them. This led to the release of excess water downstream creating havoc. Stung to the quick by this allegation, the usually reticent Central Water Commission (CWC) decided to at least partially reveal the data.

The CWC has published a report in which it has analysed the data regarding the various river basins of Kerala and the impact of dams on floods. The crucial data that needs to be understood is that of the river flows at major dams and hydrological stations in the plains close to the sea where the floods mostly had a devastating effect in the urban areas.

The CWC, however, has given this data only for the biggest river Periyar which also has 47 percent of the live storage capacity of all the dams in Kerala. Even though there is data regarding the total runoff and the total flow in the river along with the amounts impounded in the dams, for all the basins that have been analysed by the CWC, this does not give us an understanding of the force of the floods at their peak. Therefore, the CWC's report falls short of this information.

Dams and their effect on floods

The Periyar basin has three major dams—the Mullaperiyar, followed by the Idukki on the main stem of the river and another on the Idamalayar tributary. The peak flood discharge in the river at the Neeleshwaram measuring site of the CWC in the plains near the sea during the height of the flood was 8800 cubic metres per second (cumecs). The outflow at the Idukki dam then was 1500 cumecs. The flood cushion that was there in the dam resulted in about 1000 cumecs being absorbed. However, if a greater flood cushion had been created by releasing water from the dam in phases earlier in the month, then another 1000 cumecs could have been absorbed. The Idamalayar dam on the tributary of the Periyar released another 1500 cumecs at its peak despite being a smaller dam as it had very little flood cushion. Being a smaller dam it could have absorbed another 500 cumecs if there had been more free live storage space in the dam.

In other words, the flood flow at Neeleshwaram would have been 7300 cumecs if these dams had been properly operated. This is more or less the case with the other smaller basins also as even if they had kept a flood cushion, given their much smaller live storage capacity as compared to the huge runoffs coming into them, they would not have been able to absorb much of this. The CWC, of course, goes overboard with this data and says that the lack of a designed flood cushion resulted in only a "miniscule" increase in the flood impact even though the increase is actually about 20 percent which is quite significant.

The important conclusion that comes from this analysis is that the dams, in general, have limited flood protection capacities, especially when faced with rainfall of such huge proportions ranging from 100 to 250 percent more than the normal for the month occurring in just three days. Even with proper operation of the dams by following the rule curve which prescribes the level of water to be kept at the reservoir at different times of the year for adequate flood cushion the disaster couldn’t have been averted though it would have reduced the flood impact. Actually, the need for hydropower, which is the primary aim of the biggest Idukki dam and most other dams in Kerala, led the dam operators to keep the reservoir levels high which eventually failed to provide a substantial flood cushion.

The main reason why the floods in Kerala were devastating is deforestation that has taken place in the Western Ghats along with quarrying for stones and minerals as is evident from the graph below.

This is compounded by the construction in paddy fields whose area has gone down from 8.5 lakh hectares earlier to just two lakh hectares now. The wetlands and the floodplains of rivers have also been encroached on. All these have together increased the runoff and also decreased the water holding capacity of the hills and the plains. The Vembanad Lake, which is a protected Ramsar site, into which several rivers drain has been encroached on and its capacity to hold water has been drastically reduced because of the huge urbanisation that has taken place around it. Consequently, it did not have the capacity to hold the huge runoff coming into it and overflowed and submerged the urban areas around it.

This massive deforestation and mining combined with indiscriminate construction on floodplains and fields is indeed the reason for floods in the Himalayas and their foothills. It is no different in the plains also whenever there is an extreme weather event resulting in concentrated precipitation in a short period of time.

Need for appropriate flood control measures

Flood control, not only in Kerala but throughout the country, thus, has to be brought about by greater soil and water conservation measures to increase artificial recharge and stabilisation of steep hill slopes and afforestation to increase natural recharge and reduce runoff. This will also have the benefit of sequestering carbon and preventing global warming and increase the availability of groundwater.

In the aftermath of floods, Kerala is facing a drinking water crisis because many of the wells and tubewells have been packed with mud and debris. Even though repeated floods over the past few years in various places have shown that business, as usual, will not do, we do not seem to learn. Four years ago, the Madhav Gadgil-headed Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel had specifically said that the Western Ghats and especially the steeper section in Kerala and Tamil Nadu should be conserved as an ecologically-sensitive zone by banning construction activity. Their recommendations were vehemently opposed by all and sundry and the report was consigned to the wastepaper basket. The consequences of that are there for all to see.

The CWC, in its report, concentrates only on dams. It exonerates these dams by saying that they, even by design, did not have the capacity to mitigate floods resulting from such a heavy downpour. It takes a blinkered approach to suggest that some more dams should be built solely for the purpose of flood control. It completely ignores the need for augmenting artificial and natural recharge as it has in other areas also. For instance, in the Brahmaputra basin, the flow from the Tsangpo in China contributes only five percent of the total flow in the basin. So, if intensive soil and water conservation measures and afforestation are undertaken in the catchments of the rivers, then flood control, maintenance of environmental flow and drought proofing can easily be done. However, the CWC creates the false bogey of China either withholding and diverting or releasing excess water from the Tsangpo to create droughts and floods in India. Massive decentralised soil, water and afforestation programmes conducted through local governance bodies will also provide huge employment and create a flourishing natural resource base for sustainable development.

Rahul Banerjee is an Indore-based social activist and development researcher who works with Bhil Adivasis and Dalits.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of India Water Portal.

Wildlife Board clears Lower Demwe hydel project despite flaws in report

Despite non-completion of the rapid impact assessment of wildlife, the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) has cleared the 1,750 MW Lower Demwe hydel project on the Lohit River, Arunachal Pradesh. The two-year wildlife impact study will now be carried out parallel to the project dam construction. Activists have slammed this move as the project is just 50 metres from the Kamlang sanctuary and will submerge parts of its forests and riverine habitats. 

National action plan for conservation of migratory birds and their habitat out

The environment ministry has come up with a National Action Plan (NAP)  for the conservation of migratory birds flying in from Eurasia during winters and to protect their habitats. The four broad components of the plan include species conservation, habitat conservation and sustainable management, capacity development and communication outreach. As per the plan, a national inventory of the stop-over and wintering sites of migratory birds will be created and published in a year's time along with the population of the birds. Also, in order to identify risks to migratory birds from development projects, the NAP proposes the need for a decision support system.

High court seeks action plan for Ganga, Yamuna rivers clean up

The Uttarakhand high court has issued notices to the Centre, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Haryana governments concerning the pollution in the Ganga and Yamuna rivers. The move has been taken following a petition that claimed that the water in both the rivers is not even fit for performing religious rituals. The court has sought replies from the Centre and state governments regarding the measures they plan to take to stop the dumping of garbage, sewerage and industrial effluents in the two rivers to keep them clean. 

Centre okays pollution abatement project for two rivers in Udhampur, Jammu & Kashmir

Under the National River Conservation Plan (NRCP), the environment ministry has sanctioned Rs 186.74 crore for the pollution abatement project of the Devika and Tawi rivers in Udhampur, Jammu & Kashmir. The project cost will be shared between the Centre and state governments on a 90:10 cost-sharing basis. The project envisages laying of 129.27 km of sewer lines, setting up of three sewage pumping stations and construction of three sewage treatment plants (STPs) of 13.60 million litres per day (mld) capacity along with non-sewerage works relating to riverfront development.

Special assistance of Rs 835 crore sought for relining Srihind and Rajasthan feeder projects

The water ministry has sought a central assistance of Rs 835 crore as a special case for relining the Sirhind and Rajasthan feeder projects, the twin canals that flow through Punjab and Rajasthan. As both the projects are not eligible for inclusion under the latest guidelines of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana-Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme (PMKSY-AIBP), a special case is needed for them. Moreover, apart from addressing the waterlogging issues in South West Punjab, the relining of the canals will also help improve irrigation in the region. 

This is a roundup of important policy matters from September 25 - October 1, 2018. Also, read news this week.

Lead image source: Shantanu via Wikipedia Commons

We have just a year to go for Swachh Bharat Mission’s (SBM) deadline of making India open-defecation free (ODF). In the last four years, the government has built 86.08 million toilets (as on September 26, 2018) throughout the country as a part of this flagship programme on providing safe sanitation to all by October 2019.

As per the government estimates, sanitation coverage in rural India has increased from 38.7 percent on October 2, 2014, to over 94.01 percent on September 26, 2018. Over 4.73 lakh villages and more than 472 districts have been declared ODF. A large-scale survey by the World Bank on the usage of toilets pegs it at above 90 percent.

As per a report by the United Nations, SBM has played a key role in reducing under-five mortality rates by four points in just a year. Close to 200,000 children under the age of five in India, who would have otherwise lost their lives to treatable diseases like diarrhoea, have been saved in two years, says the report. Access to safe drinking water and insisting on hand washing, food safety, and the use of toilets to stop open defecation are all factors that have lowered diarrhoeal deaths, as per the report.

Pursuing targets with many slip backs

A recent Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report on SBM points out that the claims of Uttarakhand and Gujarat, which have declared themselves ODF are not true. The CAG picked holes in SBM by citing how both the states have reported nonexistent toilets on paper.

The survey of 120 villages in Gujarat’s eight districts—Dahod, Banaskantha, Chhotaudepur, Dang, Patan, Valsad, Jamnagar and Junagadh—during 2014-17 reveals that toilets constructed under the SBM in 41 villages cannot be used as they have no water connection while 15 villages have no toilets at all, says the CAG report. Yet, Gujarat was declared ODF in October 2017. Defunct toilets were tagged as newly constructed ones.

The CAG report goes on to say that in Uttarakhand, which was declared ODF in May 2017, “more than 70 percent of the toilets were built without any expert guidance and in several areas, they were unusable owing to either a lack of water connection or because they were built within household premises”. 

Is it just about counting toilets?

A recent study conducted by Accountability Initiative, a research group of the Centre for Policy Research, a public policy think tank based in New Delhi, too brings into question the hurry in declaring villages ODF and the authenticity of the verification process.

This study done in nine gram panchayats declared ODF in Udaipur, Rajasthan points to improper access to toilets, incomplete toilet construction and rampant open defecation among households with a toilet. Of the nine gram panchayats, only one had 100 percent access to toilets. The study also notes that 38 percent of toilet owners defecated in the open on the day of the survey.

According to the study, “despite the importance given to behaviour change in the Swachh Bharat Mission guidelines and to demand generation in the community, it wasn’t always implemented on the field”. Coercive tactics such as removal of names from public distribution system and threats by administration and gram panchayats were common.

At certain places, toilets in households have increased the drudgery of village women as they have to fetch water from faraway sources for toilet use.

Safe disposal of faecal matter neglected

Contamination of surface soil, groundwater and surface water is rampant across ODF villages, defeating the objective of the Mission. A recent study supported by Arghyam points to emerging evidence of groundwater contamination, highlighting linkages between groundwater quality and sanitation systems. Adequate attention ought to have been paid to the type, design and construction of toilets and containment systems and their maintenance as per standards. The focus was on meeting targets and as a result, enough attention was not paid to operations and management.

Burden on manual scavengers

The SBM is being widely criticised as it fails to address the issue of manual scavenging and its silence on the link between caste and waste disposal which is highlighted in the study by Accountability Initiative. As much as 86 percent of respondents said they would call manual scavengers to empty their pits when required. Given the preference for septic tanks and unavailability of mechanised suction machines in rural India, villagers either stop using the toilets or employ manual scavengers.  

The recent incidents of septic tank deaths has taken the sheen off the SBM and has highlighted the need to break the link between caste and occupation. These deaths took place because the provisions of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, were not followed. The employer did not ensure safety precautions by providing protective gear and cleaning equipment to the person cleaning the sewer.

There is a four-tier setup for enforcement of the Act, but as per a Centre for Policy Research brief, the capacity and associated institutions for implementing this process appear to be lacking even in the national capital. It is pointless to set to achieve the Swachh Bharat Mission without tackling this issue.

Sustaining the progress

The statistics from the 2021 census and the next round of National Family and Health Survey may provide a better picture of the SBM’s performance. Though a great start, just creating physical infrastructure by setting up toilets instead of focusing on behaviour change may not be a solution.

Even if the country makes significant gains in sanitation, the sewage, faecal and septage sludge management would still be a challenge. It is absolutely necessary to include these as part of SBM’s core initiatives to sustain the gains and transition from open-defecation free to open-defecation free plus.

New coastal projects to ignore Olive Ridley turtles

The expert panel of the environment ministry has recommended green nod to two industrial projects--the development of a multipurpose Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and a Free Trade Warehousing Zone (FTWZ) in Kutch, Gujarat and the mining of heavy minerals in Ganjam, Odisha--near turtle nesting sites. The clearance to the SEZ was deferred earlier but was given the nod after the project proponent informed the committee about its action plan towards the conservation of sea turtles and other marine biodiversity conservation works. In the case of the second project that involves diversion of forest area including the nesting site of the turtles, the committee has given a conditional recommendation.

Forest land to be diverted for Adani power plant

The Maharashtra government has given its go-ahead to divert 142 hectares of forest land for country’s third largest power plant, Adani Power Maharashtra Limited (APML), in Tiroda in Gondia district. The land is barely eight-to-nine km from Navegaon-Nagzira Tiger Reserve (NNTR). Moreover, out of the 142 hectares land, 24.06 hectares is protected forest (PF) and 117.93 hectares is a zudpi jungle. The forest land to be diverted acts as a cushion for wild animals dispersing from Nagzira and its buffer zone and as per conservationist Prafulla Bhamburkar, the diversion will reduce space for wildlife and will cause huge pollution in the area. 

Implement Maharashtra's watershed management campaign: UP to officials

The Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has instructed officials to study and implement Maharashtra's 'Sujalam Sufalam' campaign in Mahoba and Hamirpur districts of parched Bundelkhand. The scheme envisages identifying dams, ponds, minor irrigation tanks, percolation ponds and farm ponds followed by digging works to deepen them. Also, under the scheme, the silt from dams and water bodies will be cleaned and drains will get widened and deepened. After observing the results of the campaign in both the districts, it will be implemented everywhere in Bundelkhand. 

ADB to provide $240 million loan for safe drinking water in West Bengal

A $240 million loan agreement has been signed between India and Asian Development Bank (ADB) for providing safe drinking water to nearly 1.65 million people in Bankura, North 24 Parganas and Purba Medinipur of West Bengal. All the three districts have been affected by arsenic, fluoride and salinity. Under the project, the government aims to mitigate the risk of fluoride and arsenic contamination through the provision of continuous potable water via metred connections to about 390,000 individual households in the three districts.

HC seeks status report on repairs of old Delhi Sub Branch Canal

The Delhi high court has sought from the Haryana government the status of repair works on the old Delhi Sub Branch Canal (DSBC) that carries water to the national capital. The direction has come following a petition filed regarding the delay in repair works which is affecting the water supply to Delhi. Despite receiving a payment of Rs 28.16 crore for the work, the Haryana government has not even encashed the cheques and floating of tenders is still pending. The repair works were to be started in June this year and expected to be completed in four months thereafter.

This is a roundup of important policy matters from October 2 - 9, 2018. Also, read news this week.

Lead image source: Pawar Pooja  via Wikipedia commons 

On March 16, 2017, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India began a performance audit of the National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) by discussing with the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation the scope and methodology of the performance audit. Records relating to the implementation of the programme in 27 states for the five-year period (2012 to 2017) were examined. The performance audit report for India got tabled in the Parliament on August 7, 2018.

In this article, we pick up Rajasthan state to present the performance audit findings which are contained in a recently tabled CAG audit report on Rajasthan (General and Social Sector). This performance audit takes a close look at the state of drinking water supply in Rajasthan and the functioning of the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED). This article offers a quick analysis of major audit findings.

No plans, no performance

Rajasthan adopted a State Water Policy (SWP) in the year 2010, following which a State Water Resources Planning Department was constituted for its implementation envisaging convergence of 17 departments including the PHED. The PHED was also tasked with evolving long-term and perspective plans from drinking water supply management. Further as per paragraphs 14 and 15.1 of the guidelines of the NRDWP, the state was also required to prepare a State Specific Sector Policy Framework and a five-year comprehensive water security plan. The CAG auditors found during the audit scrutiny that neither did the PHED prepare comprehensive plans nor did it prepare perspective plans. The CAG observes that “as a result, the SWP couldn’t get translated into actionable goals and targets”. The performance audit of the NRDWP states that “in Rajasthan, though the State Specific Water Sector Policy Framework was stated to have been prepared, it was not made available to CAG auditors” (p. 07).

Such hurdles in access to records and information during the course of the audit by constitutional audit agency is a major concern. It is ironic that what any citizen in Rajasthan could demand under the Right to Information Act was kept hidden from the CAG auditors’ scrutiny.

Similarly, the CAG auditors state that in compliance with the Asian Development Bank loan agreement executed for policy reform matrix, the state was supposed to prepare an Urban Water Policy. Audit scrutiny revealed that while draft Urban Water Policy was prepared by Rajasthan Urban Infrastructure Development Project (RUIDP) in 2015, this draft policy was not finalised by the PHED as of June 2017. Thus the CAG observes that “no drinking water policy was in place for the urban population living in 297 towns/cities of the state”.

Lack of available information a challenge

The CAG auditors criticised the director (Water and Sanitation Support Organisation) and the chief engineer (CE-Rural) for failing to cooperate with the audit since they failed to provide any details about the number of Village Water Security Plans (VWSPs) prepared by four consultancy firms. During the audit scrutiny, the CAG officials had come across the information that in August 2010, CE (Rural) had awarded work for the preparation of VWSPs including Detailed Project Reports (DPR) for 5455 villages to four consultancy firms for Rs 12.74 crores and these consultancy firms had to hand over VWSPs and DPRs in three months’ time. However, during the field audit in eight test-checked districts, auditors didn’t come across any VWSPs. The CAG auditors have also raised concern that even after the lapse of seven years, District Water and Sanitation Missions (DWSM) and Block Resource Centres (BRC) were not formed. They remarked that in the absence of Village Water and Sanitation Committees, BRCs and DWSMs, community participation in preparing Annual Action Plan was not achieved.

The CAG auditors also indicted the state for having failed to make State Water and Sanitation Mission (SWSM) operational. They observed that only one meeting of the executive committee of the SWSM was held on August 8, 2016, which didn’t discuss any issues related to the implementation of the NRDWP.

The CAG auditors were also shocked to observe that the database of urban and rural areas was not updated as per Census 2011, leading to incorrect demand projections. They also observed that the PHED didn’t have a consolidated data of current and future demand of drinking water supply for the entire state.

Incomplete drinking water schemes

The CAG auditors observed that as of March 2017, there were 54 major drinking water supply projects and 437 rural water supply schemes that were at various stages of completion. The audit scrutiny revealed various deficiencies in the implementation of the schemes (for details see page 63 to 72 of the audit report). The CAG auditors found out that 37 out of 54 major drinking water supply projects and 119 out of 437 rural water supply schemes could not be completed within the stipulated time. Various reasons plagued the timely completion of water supply schemes including the delay in taking possession of the land, delay in obtaining necessary approvals from the authorities, slow progress of contractors, delays by the PHED in giving contracts etc.

The CAG auditors pointed out that Rajasthan accounted for the highest amount of cuts and reduced central share (Rs 398.53 crores) imposed by the union ministry for reasons such as late receipt of the proposal, less release of state’s share and excess expenditure on operation and maintenance. The audit scrutiny also found substantial unutilised funds under the Desert Development Programme in Rajasthan (Rs 105.17 crore) as on March 2017.  

The CAG auditors also highlighted that “urban water supply projects were not designed to meet the requirements of 30 years period after their completion”.

To address such implementation deficiencies, the CAG auditors recommended the PHED to evolve a separate system to coordinate and monitor with various external ministries/ departments/ authorities so that the process of obtaining land clearances/ titles and statutory clearances is streamlined and expedited.

The CAG auditors observed that Rajasthan has 20643 habitations (27.63 percent of the country figure) where the quality of drinking water is a major concern. Auditors were shocked to learn that 57 Reverse Osmosis plants installed at the cost of Rs 15.45 crore in several quality-affected habitations in Jaisalmer and Bikaner districts were not functional due to the absence of maintenance, though the terms of the contract included maintenance for seven years.

The CAG auditors also termed the state government’s Jalamani programme, which aimed to provide quality drinking water to schools, as unsuccessful. They observed that the programme had resulted in the wasteful expenditure of Rs 0.95 crore besides non-utilisation of the allocated Rs 5.93 crore. Auditors noticed that in 10 selected districts, drinking water facility was available in only 1049 out of 2903 schools as of April 2012 leaving 1854 schools uncovered as of March 2017. CAG auditors also shockingly observed that no school was covered under this programme during 2015-17 in four test-checked districts, despite 866 schools not having drinking water facilities as of April 2015.

Field audit and joint inspections revealed that the state and district laboratories were not equipped with the required capability/ equipment/ manpower to conduct all the prescribed tests. Audit scrutiny of records showed that during 2014-17, in 65.31 percent habitations not a single water source was tested. Another shocking revelation was that the number of habitations where all water sources were tested was a meager 1.17 percent.

The CAG indicted the PHED for failing to provide the required space and infrastructure facilities for Block Level Laboratories in time, which resulted in delays ranging from eight to 18 months in the establishment of 165 laboratories and remaining 68 laboratories not being established.

The CAG indicted the PHED sharply by reminding that “the position of inadequacy in laboratory infrastructure, insufficient testing of water samples and shortfall in conducting sanitary survey for water sources continued despite being pointed out in a previous performance audit by the CAG (Audit report on Rajasthan (General and Social Sector) for the year ending March 2014) and the recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee in its 169th report of 14th Vidhan Sabha”.

If a performance audit by the constitutional auditors and recommendations by the Public Accounts Committee get ignored with such impunity, what would ensure the course correction? For example, during the course of this performance audit, it was revealed that contracts for 165 block level laboratories expired in March 2016, but the tendering process for a new contract for running these laboratories had not been finalised as of March 2017. This meant the facility of water testing at the block level has not been available in these 165 blocks since March 2016!

Having observed minutely how the PHED failed to provide effective testing of the biological and chemical contamination of drinking water, CAG auditors concluded, “Because of such persistent non-performance and deficiencies, the quality of drinking water couldn’t be ensured and this resulted in exposing the population of the state to serious public health hazard”.

The CAG auditors also raised concern that Information, Education and Communication (IEC) funds for village-level activities were not utilised as envisaged in the programme guidelines. While the NRDWP guidelines provided for 60 percent of IEC funds to be spent on village-level activities, in Rajasthan merely 22.95 percent IEC funds got utilised for it. CAG auditors were also shocked to observe that during 2015-17, no district, block and village-level activities were taken up.

The author is a faculty at Azim Premji University.   

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of India Water Portal.

The Kerala flood of 2018 was 30 percent less intense than that of 1924 deluge, the biggest in Kerala’s history. Yet it caused a huge loss of lives, property and infrastructure. Swollen rivers ruptured their banks and floodwaters gushed through houses built on the floodplains. One reason for the unprecedented flood of such magnitude is unplanned construction and encroachment on riverbeds that have reduced the capacity of rivers to carry flood waters.

The lack of regulation and enforcement of land use in the floodplains added to the severity of the damage. “Yet the recent report by the Central Water Commission on Kerala floods does not say a word about rampant riverbed and floodplain encroachments,” says Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of South Asia Network on Dams River and People (SANDRP), New Delhi.

Basing his argument on an analysis of the Central Water Commission data, Rahul Banerjee, an Indore-based social activist and development researcher, says, “It confirms my hypothesis that much greater damage has been done by deforestation and quarrying in the Western Ghats and construction on the floodplains of the rivers and in paddy fields and wetlands than by the mismanagement of dams. Given that the dams in Kerala are in the upper reaches of the basin, their capacity for flood control is limited. Going forward, increasing artificial recharge through soil and water conservation works and afforestation in the hilly catchment areas and the freeing up of the river channels and floodplains should be the strategy (to avoid floods).”

Preservation of floodplains is crucial for protection from floods

What is a floodplain? Floodplain is a flat area along the river which normally overflows seasonally. Floodplains can be small, large, and at times huge. They often create good agricultural land as they get sediment carrying floodwaters that enrich the soil. In fact, floodplains are lands built up from soil left by floods.

Floodplains provide the space for rivers to spread their waters. When this space is missing due to encroachments, the river surges up and creates destruction.

“The lack of protection of river floodplains from damaging impacts like encroachment and diversion for ‘developmental projects’ is a tragedy that affects both the river as well as those who encroach it adversely. The river suffers as it is unable to occupy and transport flood waters downstream during high rainfall events (monsoon in particular). It is unable to recharge aquifers, wet the lands along its banks or provide life-sustaining conditions to plant and animal habitats along the river margins and banks. It cannot also cut and deposit soil on its banks in a natural fashion or maintain its oxbow and floodplain wetlands,” says Manoj Misra, forestry and river expert and head of Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan.

Damage to floodplains harms the riverine ecosystem, lessens groundwater recharge capacity and poses threats of flash floods. “People too suffer an immense loss of life and property, including loss of public infrastructure like bridges, roads, schools etc., during high floods,” says Misra.

Lack of floodplain regulation in India

“It is indeed a shame that despite a series of disastrous floods in recent times such as in Mumbai (2005), Kedarnath (2013), Srinagar (2014), Chennai (2015) and Kerala (2018) resulting from human occupation of river floodplains, the nation is still without a legally mandated prohibition on such ingress into and violation of river's integrity,” says Misra. 

The Kerala floods are a tragic reminder of the cost that the nation is paying for its inability to enact a river regulation zone (RRZ).

“Since the constitution lists 'land' as a state preserve and states see river floodplains as "developable lands", states are reluctant to admit the overriding need for its legal protection against occupation and conversion. Also, once a disastrous event has diminished in the public memory, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MOEFCC) also forgets its obligation towards protecting nation's natural resources (including rivers) and the relevant file goes back to a state of hibernation,” says Misra. 

Why is a policy on river regulation/ floodplain zone important?

“In India, there is a lack of a clear definition of space for the river or for the floodplain,” says Thakkar. This leaves a lot of ambiguity. In urban India in particular, the floodplains have been encroached due to rapid urbanisation.

Since 1975, when the union water resources ministry had circulated a model Bill on the subject to the states, there have been talks of regulating construction activities on floodplains, yet it is far from a “no-go” zone. The model Bill was ignored by states. States also ignored all talks of demarcating floodplains or the area adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.  

Cities get ravaged by floods or face drainage congestion time and again, yet the MoEFCC has failed to implement the RRZ policy draft (2002) authored by civil society representatives headed by Prof. Brij Gopal, a leading river ecologist. This policy draft looks at dividing the area of the river floodplain into zones, the one closest to the river channel to be called "no-development zone". 

Rivers which have undamaged floodplain are considered to be in good health. The RRZ policy draft defines the area for protection from further encroachments as the “active flood plain”, which will be marked by the high flood line. This, in entrenched stretches shall be the available space in the valley. In embanked stretches, this would be the area between two embankments or roads along a river acting as an embankment. In other stretches of the river, the active flood plain shall be the 100-year flood line, the land which gets flooded during a 100-year storm. The idea is to establish a no-development zone not less (in area) than the active floodplain, the draft states. 

The draft remained a work in progress even though Prof. Brij Gopal had looked at the option of defining the high flood levels at shorter return periods of once in 50 years, to make the notification implementable.

“The closest that we came to a notification was in 2016 when the MoEFCC draft RRZ was circulated for comments to the states and Prakash Javadekar, the then minister of MoEFCC committed in response to a specific query on the floor of the house in Parliament that such a regulation was in the offing. Nothing has materialised till date though,” says Misra.

The MoEFCC continues to sit over the RRZ policy as it is worried that water as well as land along the riverbank are a state subject. Existing constructions on riverbanks may get destabilised should there be a regulation. Thakkar finds the “lack of sincerity of the central and state governments and their agencies, the judiciary, the media and the larger civil society on the issue of protecting floodplains disturbing.”

He says that the Centre’s stand on floodplain violations is evident in the case of Delhi, where even central government controlled bodies like MoEFCC and Delhi Development Authority have taken stands that are clearly permissive and encouraging rather than being restrictive, regulatory or protective of the river or its floodplains. “The value of the land and the lack of value for rivers is the major force working against river zone and floodplain protection. Even the Ministry of Water Resources is least sincere about this,” he adds.

The MoEFCC formed committees and quite a few states, including Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, took part in consultations. Manoj Misra was a part of a committee on RRZ. “Nothing actually came of the MOEFCC committee on RRZ that I was a member of as with the change of guard at the ministry, officials lost their sense of urgency and interest in the matter,” says Misra.

The National Disaster Management Authority’s (NDMA) guideline on ‘management of floods’ has a section on enforcement and regulation related to floodplain zoning. But it is just a guideline and has not been enforced. The NDMA guideline admits that “zoning cannot remedy existing situations, although, it will definitely help in minimising flood damage in new developments.” The NDMA’s guidelines are a good start and provide for categorisation and prioritisation of structures in floodplains zoning.

What is the way forward?

The situation may change as the Centre is now considering a new Bill on creating floodplain zones that could alter the way we contend with annual floods. The Bill is expected to talk about flood zoning authorities, surveys and delineation of floodplain area, notification of limits of floodplains, prohibition or restriction of the use of the floodplains, compensation and power to remove obstructions. Lack of surveillance by authorities and even connivance with the construction lobby are common. Not just regulation, enforcement is very important, too which needs to be encouraged through incentives.

Dr G.D. Agrawal passed away on October 11, 2018. He was 86 years old. But he didn’t die of old age. After 111 days of fasting, he died of a heart attack. Why was he fasting? We will come to that in a while. 

I knew him as G.D. Sir. A man who taught me concepts and practice of environmental science. G.D. Sir was born in Kandhla, a small town near Delhi. He was raised by his aunt. He began his career as an irrigation engineer. He went on to do his PhD in Berkeley and later became a professor of environmental engineering at IIT-Kanpur. G.D. Sir also had a short stint at the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). He was the first member secretary of the CPCB. Following his retirement from IIT-Kanpur, G.D. Sir started living in Chitrakoot. He also taught at the Mahatma Gandhi Chitrakoot Gramodaya Vishwavidyalaya as an honorary professor. During a long career as a teacher, G.D. Sir supervised and mentored many students.

I met G.D. Sir at the People’s Science Institute (PSI), a voluntary organisation based out of Dehradun. We had an awkward first meeting. G.D. Sir was an advisor at the PSI. It was my first job. I was presenting a set of research findings. He was asking a series of conceptual questions and I had no clue how to answer them. A senior colleague of mine came to the rescue. He answered on my behalf and bailed me out. 

I began to meet G.D. Sir often. Sometimes to discuss the design of a wastewater treatment plant and sometimes to discuss studies related to water or air pollution. I became assertive and confident. Our relationship grew during a feasibility study of Ken-Betwa river interlinking project. G.D. Sir was supervising the study. I was one of the project leaders. We spent a lot of time together. Beneath the veneer of a tough exterior, G.D. Sir had a kind heart. I became very fond of him and he was deeply affectionate towards me, too. 

During a trip to Uttarakhand in 2006, G.D. Sir and a couple of us from the PSI discovered that large stretches of river Ganga were running dry. The hydroelectric projects were literally destroying the river—creating pond-like storage structures and connecting them via tunnels. The Ganga as we knew it, would have ceased to exist. G.D. Sir was deeply disturbed. He was a devout Hindu. The river’s plight affected his sense of reverence. It had also stirred his scientific soul. G.D. Sir took some time to think through his response. A few months later, he announced that he will fast for the Ganga. He sought immediate abandonment of the hydroelectric projects. He also demanded that the upper stretch of the river (from Gangotri to Uttarkashi) should be left untouched.  

I was not very happy that G.D. Sir chose to fast. I remember having long arguments with him. But G.D. Sir was unrelenting. He believed that the Ganga represented the soul of our cultural and religious identity. That soul needed cleansing. And fasting was the only way to capture popular imagination and influence necessary action from the society and the state. I was worried about his health. But G.D. Sir seemed determined. His belief overcame the fear of death.

Around this time, G.D. Sir became a sanyasi. He came to be known as Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand. G.D. Sir did four fasts for the Ganga. Some of these fasts prompted action from the erstwhile UPA government but the efforts were not serious enough. A basin authority was set up, a temporary moratorium on the hydropower projects was ordered. G.D. Sir bought into some of these promises but the execution belied the promise. His fasts continued. Twelve years and four fasts later, G.D. Sir began his final fast on June 22, 2018. His demands to the government included:

• Introduction of a comprehensive Bill in the Parliament and enacting a law for conserving and protecting the Ganga.
• Put a stop to all under construction or proposed hydroelectric projects in the upper reaches of the Ganga and its major tributaries.
• Ban sand mining in the main channel of the river Ganga.
• Form an autonomous people’s body capable of managing the river and ensuring its well-being. 

G.D. Sir sought assurance from Prime Minister Modi that until the Bill is presented in the Parliament, construction of all hydroelectric projects and the National Shipping Waterway, will be suspended. G.D. Sir wrote three letters to Prime Minister but he received no response. The situation took a turn for the worse. 

On October 10, 2018, G.D. Sir stopped drinking water. He was forcibly moved from Matri Sadan, Haridwar where he was fasting to All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Hrishikesh. When a group of policemen came to move him to AIIMS, G.D. Sir resisted. But he was too frail to stave them off. A protest note is all he could manage. At 1.11 pm on Thursday, after 111 days of fast, G. D. Sir had a heart attack. He was no more.

G.D. Sir died to protect the river Ganga. Dying for a river may sound absurd to a lot of us but not to G.D. Sir. He was a believer. He firmly believed that the Ganga was his mother. G.D. Sir also believed in the power of sacrifice. On the contrary, I have been a non-believer. In fact, I have had arguments with G.D. Sir about the importance of scientific temper vis-à-vis the power of beliefs. But G.D. Sir’s death has shaken me. Amidst the apathy and utter hopelessness, it is my belief that sustains me. I am beginning to believe, too—that G.D. Sir’s death will not be wasted; that the times will change; that the Ganga will flow, unfettered. 

Ayan Biswas is a consultant development practitioner who works on water management, disaster mitigation, air quality, natural resource management and governance issues. He can be reached at ayanbiswas2003@gmail.com.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of India Water Portal.

The Department of Science and Technology (DST) has established a centre of excellence on climate change research for plant protection at the Hyderabad-based International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). Its objective will be to help make agriculture more resilient to vagaries of climate change. 

The centre will focus on a real-time structured surveillance for insect-pests and diseases using GPS-tagging techniques. It will also develop a model to alert policymakers and farmers of any changes in the pattern of plant diseases and insect pests. In addition, it will work on the prediction of future climate scenarios and develop GIS-based risk maps for diseases and insect-pests at zonal, regional and state levels. 

The centre was formally launched by Dr Akhilesh Gupta, adviser and head of the Climate Change Programme of DST.

“Providing advanced information and tools is important to strengthen the resilience of smallholder farmers,” said Dr Peter Carberry, acting director general of ICRISAT.

“Research on changing patterns in plant diseases and insect-pests will induce shifts in the regional priority, strengthen location-specific crop breeding programmes under climate stress conditions and help us identify climate-smart and pest-resistant crop cultivars,” said Dr P.M. Gaur, Research Programme Director-Asia at ICRISAT.

The centre will operate as a consortium.  Its partners include Indian Institute of Rice Research, University of Agricultural Sciences, Raichur, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Punjab Agriculture University, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and centres of CGIAR, the global network of research institutions working in the area of agriculture. 

Current estimates of climate change indicate possible increases in global mean annual temperatures in the order of one degree C by 2025 and three degree C by 2100. Coupled with variability in rainfall pattern and an increase in global precipitation levels, this could result in new diseases and insect-pests, and increased risk of invasion by migrant diseases and insect pests. Climate change, plant diseases and insect-pests are estimated to cost an annual loss of USD 8.6 billion. (India Science Wire)

Anil (40) died on September 14, 2018 while clearing a block in a sewage line at Dabri, a locality in north-west Delhi. Cleaners hired by state governments and civic bodies are supposed to be provided safety equipment like gas masks, goggles, gumshoes, gloves, safety belt etc. Yet, Anil was unprotected when he died of asphyxiation due to the presence of poisonous gas in the gutter. Delhi saw a wave of anger around official apathy on the issue despite 10 similar deaths were reported in the capital before this.

Anil had lost his youngest child, a four-month-old baby to fever just a week before he died. His wife Rani who is just 35 years old has been left devastated after the sudden death of her husband. Left with domestic work as a means of livelihood, she has three children to look after. It’s a great loss for her but she realises that this is not the time for grieving.

The family is yet to receive the compensation of Rs 10 lakh from the government as mandated by the Supreme Court in 2014. She is being supported by the Safai Karmachari Andolan, an organisation fighting for the eradication of manual scavenging. The Andolan which had fought a protracted legal battle in the Supreme Court for the dignity of countless people trapped in the inhuman profession is demanding a job for Rani. The judgement directs the government to identify manual scavengers and rehabilitate them with alternative jobs after imparting skills training. The SC/ST commission too has demanded immediate compensation from the Delhi government.

As per estimates of the Safai Karmachari Andolan, there are around 25 lakh manual scavengers in India, of which almost 1.6 lakh are women.

The Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993 and the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act 2013 are in place, yet deploying services of people for cleaning drainage and septic tanks continues unabated despite the ban. Several court orders have failed to stop these practices and even policies for rehabilitation and compensation of the workers have not succeeded.

"Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is bent on turning sanitation into a business and does not address the issue of manual scavengers,” adds Bezwada Wilson, convenor, Safai Karmachari Andolan who has won Raman Magsaysay Prize for his work. Manual scavenging is illegal in India yet sewer line deaths are taking place regularly. “No other country bears such indignity due to the most hideous form of caste bias,” says Jayati Ghosh, a development economist who teaches at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Who is accountable for these deaths? Why should any person be pushed into doing this sort of work? “Cleaning of sewers and septic tanks is not just a sanitation issue but also a human rights issue,” says Bhasha Singh, an independent journalist and writer, who has written a book on manual scavenging, Adrishya Bharat (Unseen India).

Instead of waiting for public investment in mechanised cleaning of septic tanks and sewers, the Andolan is assisting sanitation workers in going hi-tech and setting up enterprises.

Enabling tech solutions to clean sewers

Barely a month after Anil’s death, Rani is attending the India SaniTech Forum, which is deliberating on the need to adopt technologically advanced products for sewer cleaning to stop losing men to these “death traps”. Several women and men like Rani who have lost family members while manually cleaning sewers and septic tanks have set up Safai Karamchari Enterprises as a business to provide end-to-end services in this field.

It is set up as limited liability partnership companies in Delhi and Hyderabad and plans to seek contracts from civic bodies to maintain sewers safely. They plan to use technologies that have been innovated by scientists and technologists while working with the Safai Karmachari community. “It’s heartening to see that the initiative to provide alternatives is from within the community and they have brought scientists and technologists together onto this platform,” says Usha Ramanathan, a board member of Safai Karmachari Andolan and an expert on law and poverty. The Safai Karamchari Andolan is helping other groups register companies in Haryana, Uttarakhand and Punjab.

Technical solutions can ensure that the tasks are performed with dignity and there are no deaths in a sewer. Almost every speaker at the India SaniTech Forum points out how science and technology had been kept insulated from this area in the last 70 years by the state and the intelligentsia. “These are not deaths but institutional killings,” says Wilson.

Sewer cleaning robots can clean the muck

Wilson says we lack the political will; the government is constructing millions of toilets under Swachh Bharat Mission, but is completely silent about those who clean them. “The Swachhta Hi Seva campaign, at the bottom, is about letting people die in the sewers doing the ‘seva’. It’s a national shame that the government has not yet provided adequate equipment like sucking-cum-jetting machines to clean sewage lines and septic tanks,” says Wilson.

Despite the government’s professed efforts to end it, the practice continues. “The government could have put money in mechanisation to clean sewers rather than watch people die in gutters, considering that it can develop a Mangalyan,” says Prof Sunil Agnihotri, IIT, Mumbai who, along with his students, is working on developing automation to deal with the problem.

“In many cases, municipalities do not take the initiative, so we are now working on giving loans to self-help groups and Safai Karmachari Enterprises to buy equipment and machines,” says National Backward Classes Finance and Development Corporation managing director K. Narayan. With these efforts, let’s hope that manual scavenging will end someday soon.

Fund approved to boost climate resilience in coastal communities

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) has allocated $43.4 million to enhance climate resilience among people living in coastal communities in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha. The GCF is supported by the United Nations as part of its efforts to combat the extreme impacts of climate change. Not just India, the grant will be providing support to 19 developing countries for tackling climate change. Apart from enhancing resilience and adaptability, the new project will also help reduce emissions and support local communities in their livelihood support. The project is expected to benefit over 1.7 million people directly and another 10 million indirectly. 

Maharashtra all set to promote low-cost water conservation techniques

In the wake of a severe drought situation in the state, the Maharashtra government has allocated Rs 1,000 crore to revive 40,000 water structures which include old KT weirs, farm ponds, cement nulla bunds, irrigation wells and river canals. The aim is to increase the water storage capacity in the state and also to create jobs under MGNREGA. As per the scheme, the cost of reviving a water structure would be borne by both the state government and the concerned gram panchayat in a 50:50 ratio.  

Water conservation Act by Punjab, Haryana leads to stubble burning menace

In a bid to save water, the government of Punjab and Haryana enforced the Punjab\Haryana Preservation of Sub-Soil Water Act, 2009. The Act prohibits farmers from sowing paddy before notified dates resulting in a very short window, just two to three weeks, for preparing the farms for the next sowing operation. Earlier, the farmers used to get nearly 40-45 days of post-harvest time. The strict implementation of the groundwater legislation led to farmers resorting to stubble burning in big numbers as the alternative straw management practices are expensive. However, in order to promote in-situ management of paddy straw, the Centre has approved over Rs 1,151 crore for Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi for two years from 2018-20. 

Maharashtra forms panel to review messages received for the proposed groundwater Act

The Maharashtra government has constituted an expert committee to review the 4,100 suggestions and objections received from the public for the proposed Maharashtra Groundwater (Development and Management) Act. The committee is headed by I.I. Shah, additional director, Groundwater Survey and Development Agency (GSDA). Post the implementation of the Act, Maharashtra will become the first state in the country to have adopted stringent measures against misuse of groundwater along with monitoring of the groundwater quality, fix permissible depth for borewells and introduce mandatory registration for these wells.

Haryana agrees to sign MoU for Kishua and Renuka dams

The Haryana government has approved the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for Kishua and Renuka dams on the Tons and Giri rivers respectively. The Kishua dam would have a storage capacity of 1.04 MAF and is a joint venture of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. The dam will lead to the submergence of nearly 2,950 hectares of land in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. The Renuka dam will have a storage capacity of 0.404 MAF and envisages generation of 40 MW of power. Despite the earlier claims of allocating the entire release from Renuka dam to Delhi, it has now been clarified that only the additional water available in the dam would be provided to the capital.

This is a roundup of important policy matters from October 16 - 22, 2018. Also, read news this week.

Sectoral focus: Water resource management and supply

Regional Focus: Central India

Theme: Building cross-sectoral collaborations to understand the dynamic interactions across the water-energy-food nexus

Venue: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India

Dates: GFES will run from 25th February – 27th February 2019

            UEI will run from 28th February - 2nd March 2019

The India-UK Water Centre is inviting applications for either one or both of the events. Applicants must be members of the Open Network of India-UK Water Scientists, which is open to any Indian-based or UK-based water scientist to join. 

The events would be of particular interest to practitioners in the fields ranging from water supply, agricultural sciences, energy, water resource management and policy, social sciences, irrigation, hydrology, meteorology and geology, amongst others. The type of event you would be interested in depends on the type of interactions that you feel you are most experienced to contribute to and/or benefit from. We encourage applications from scientists and stakeholders at all career stages.

For further details including scope of the event, please click here. 

Also, download the brochures of the event from below.

On March 16, 2017, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India began a performance audit of the National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) by discussing with the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation the scope and methodology of the performance audit. Records relating to the implementation of the programme in 27 states for the five-year period (2012 to 2017) were examined. The performance audit report for India got tabled in the Parliament on August 7, 2018. 

In this article, we choose Odisha state to present the performance audit findings contained in a recently tabled CAG audit report on Odisha (General and Social Sector) for the year ending March 31, 2017 (see pages 88-99).

A CAG audit that was tabled on September 20 in the state Assembly points to the ineffective implementation of the NRDWP in Odisha. Audit findings indicate that due priority was not given to the least covered and quality affected habitations, though required as per the NRDWP guidelines. The performance review of the implementation of this centrally-sponsored schemes for the five-year period (2012-2017) also revealed that the data relating to the coverage of habitations, the habitation-wise quantum of water supply and existence of facilities was distorted.

Targets fixed under the Strategic Plan to be achieved by 2017 were not achieved and water quality monitoring and surveillance were inadequate, stated the CAG audit. As per the department’s database, 1809 habitations having a population of 5.22 lakh were receiving chemically contaminated water as of May 2017, stated the CAG report. 

Faulty fund management by the state

Audit scrutiny brought out inefficient funds management and instances of delay in the release of the state’s component by the Government of Odisha. Auditors also criticised low utilisation of funds due to the slow pace of execution of works. Auditors also indicted the state for failing to transfer O&M (Operation and Maintenance) funds to Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI), although the O&M of water supply schemes was being managed by PRIs since October 2006. In September 2017, in a reply on this audit objection, the state government stated that funds were not transferred to PRIs due to lack of manpower and expertise at the panchayat level! 

The CAG auditors found that the department had undertaken digging of tube wells without conducting proper scientific surveys, which led to dry wells thereby depriving habitations of drinking water and expenditure incurred on them becoming wasteful. 

Deficiencies in planning

Performance audit revealed several deficiencies in the planning stage. While Annual Action Plans (AAP) were prepared by the department, the scrutiny of these plans brought out a shocking fact that AAPs didn’t include the ongoing works. As a consequence, a schedule for completion of ongoing works was not prepared, which led to the delay in the completion of works.

While the NRDWP envisaged the preparation of Village Water Security Plan (VWSP) and District Water Security Plan (DWSP), the CAG auditors noticed that in the test checked districts (eight out of 30 districts), neither VWSP nor DWSP got prepared. The department had also failed to prepare five-year Comprehensive Water Security Action Plan to ensure all time availability of water to all.

There were also instances of deviations from the programme guidelines framed by the central government. While the guidelines expected prioritisation of habitations where 0-50 percent population was in receipt of fewer than 40 litres per capita per day (lpcd) water, performance audit revealed that department had not prioritised implementation of rural water supply schemes in 5446 habitations of the State, wherein 0-50 percent of the population received less than 40 LPCD water as of April 2017.

In reply to this audit observation, Odisha government stated in October 2017 that “the state had adopted the strategy of covering all gram panchayats and highest populous villages and therefore they couldn’t prioritise those habitations”. The CAG auditors state that the reply confirmed the fact that the state government had deviated from the programme guidelines.

Deficiencies in water quality monitoring and surveillance

As per the Uniform Drinking Water Quality Monitoring Protocol issued by the Union Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation in February 2013, annual analysis load for each district and sub-district level water quality monitoring laboratory was 3000 water samples. Considering the workload specified in the protocol, Odisha required 317 laboratories for 9.5 lakh water sources. As against this, CAG auditors found only 77 laboratories in the state.

The protocol also expected the laboratories at all levels strive to get National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) accreditation in a phased manner. Audit scrutiny showed that only state-level laboratory could obtain NABL accreditation. Odisha State Water Security Mission (OSWSM) had not taken any steps to obtain NABL accreditation for the remaining 76 district and sub-district level laboratories.

The audit scrutiny also led to a shocking revelation that divisional officers failed to test water samples for at least 13 basic water quality parameters as envisaged in the protocol. Audit scrutiny of the records of districts and sub-districts laboratories showed that they were testing water samples only for iron, fluoride, chloride, pH and hardness; they were not carrying out tests for other mandatory parameters such as nitrate, arsenic, alkalinity etc.

This is all the more shocking in the background of a Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) report that found 28 out of 30 districts as contaminated with nitrates (i.e. having more than 45 mg/litre)!

Out of 26 laboratories test checked in the audit, 13 were found to be functioning with only one staff, 10 laboratories were found to be functioning with only two staff and the remaining three were functioning with only three staff, as against the requirement of eight staff members as per protocol. The audit scrutiny also found that no microbiologist/ bacteriologist was posted in any of the laboratories and no chemists were posted in eight laboratories, out of 26 test checked during the audit in eight districts.

Test check of records in six selected divisions and information furnished to audit also revealed significant shortfall in the infrastructure. The shortfall in equipment, glassware and chemicals ranged between 28 and 95 percent in 26 districts/sub-districts level laboratories.    

Social audits not conducted

The NRDWP guidelines expected that there should be a social audit every six months, on a fixed date by the community-based organisation in order to ensure that the works undertaken by the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) and PRIs were as per the specification and funds utilised were proper. The audit scrutiny revealed that the Panchayati Raj and the drinking water department had not made any arrangements for conducting social audits during 2012-17. As a result, there was no community-based assessment of the quality and quantity of water provided to habitations, hours of supply and distances covered by people to collect drinking water. During a conference held at the end of the performance audit (i.e. September 2017), joint secretary, PR&DW department assured that steps would be taken for conducting social audits.

While the scheme guidelines required that the State Level Scheme Sanctioning Committee shall meet at least twice a year, performance review revealed that the SLSSC meetings were held only once during 2012-’13, 2015-’16 and 2016-’17 and twice during the years 2013-’14 and 2014-’15.

As per the NRDWP guidelines, State Technical Agency (STA) was to ensure that rural water supply schemes were well designed and cost effective by undertaking an in-depth scrutiny of Detailed Project Reports, performance review pointed out that the divisional offices had failed to send DPRs and estimates of Piped Water Supply Schemes to STA for scrutiny. Auditors also found that divisional office in Keonjhar had sent only the design of overhead tanks at post tender stage, which resulted in the delay in the completion of four works in Keonjhar division by 21 to 32 months.

The author is a faculty at Azim Premji University.   

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of India Water Portal.

Also read NRDWP implementation in Rajasthan.

In a drought-prone region like Vidarbha in Maharashtra, mostly in the news for water scarcity and farmer suicide, it is not every day that you hear the success story of a farmer. That's why the story of Savi Thangavel, 69, a resident of Mohegaon village which is just 22 km from Nagpur, is special. He took up date farming when nobody even thought about it and became the first successful date farmer in the region.

In 2009, Thangavel retired from his government job and was interested in farming. He purchased the land, made a house and started regular farming like soybean, wheat, etc. Initially, it was not easy as Mohegaon's soil was laterite and contained rocks. To improve agricultural production, he put the pond soil from the nearby pond on his land but whatever he produced became food for wild animals like wild boars and deer.

He was looking for an alternative and after doing some research and talking to some farmers in Tamil Nadu, he decided to do date farming. In 2009, he bought 130 tissue culture date plants and planted them in his two-acre land. He took good care of his plants and in the fourth year, the plant began to bear fruit. According to Thangavel, he chose date farming because there was no danger to the date saplings from wild animals and it required less water as compared to other crops.

Initially, the harvest per tree was 25-30 kg but gradually it increased to 100 kg. “In the first harvest itself, I got my investment back”, says Thangavel.

In less than a decade, he has purchased 25 acres of land and planted 300 date plants. Each tree now produces around 100 kg of dates. He sells dates at a price of Rs 200 per kg to local customers.

The total investment for date farming in an acre of land is approximately Rs 4 lakh. This video “Thangavel finds success in date farming” shows how Thangavel became a successful farmer in a drought-prone region.

Human activities are taking a heavy toll on country's resilience to drought

According to a recent study by the Indian Institute of Technology, Indore (IITI), out of the 634 districts in the country, only 241, that is 38 percent of the districts, are resilient to drought or dry conditions. The study also noted that the districts with predominant forest cover had better resilience than those districts that were cropland dominated. As the forest-dominated region is present in the northeast and north India, these areas were found to be either resilient or slightly non-resilient while the western part of India dominated by arid and semi-arid regions was non-resilient.

Following Maharashtra, Karnataka declares drought

The Karnataka government has declared drought in 86 taluks across 23 districts, mostly in the north Karnataka region. Owing to the drought, Rs 8000 crore crop loss has been estimated in the state. While Karnataka is drought hit, Odisha is struggling with excess rain and drought at the same time. The paddy crops in western Odisha is facing moisture-stress due to deficient rain. In contrast, the coastal Odisha, which received heavy rain, thanks to cyclonic storm Titli, is expected to get more rains in the coming days. 

NRIs and PIOs making no contribution to the Clean Ganga Fund

As per the government data, the government entities have contributed more than 85 percent to the Clean Ganga Fund (CGF), while the non-resident Indians (NRIs) and person of Indian origin (PIOs) have pitched in with a meager two percent. The Clean Ganga Fund was set up in January 2015 for the government's flagship scheme, Namami Gange for the Ganga river rejuvenation. Till September 30, the Clean Ganga Fund (CGF) had a total of Rs 234.98 crore available for spending, out of which NRIs and PIOs donated only Rs 3.76 crore while 'private organisations' contributed Rs 19.54 crore.

Chennai gets a flood warning system with ward-level detail

The National Centre for Coastal Research (NCCR), Chennai, along with various IITs, has built a flood warning system called C-FLOW designed to be used in Chennai. C-FLOW or the Chennai Flood Warning System is a six-module ensemble that can predict flooding due to heavy rainfall, sea-level rise and increase in water levels of three rivers near the city--the Cooum, the Adyar and the Kosasthalaiyar. Using the forecast from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), the system can also predict locations at risk of flooding as well as the depth of flooding.

Coastal Kerala under threat from sand mining

Since the 1960s, extensive mineral beach sand mining has been happening in the coastal stretch from Chavara and Alappad in the Kollam district of Kerala. From the time mining started in the region, several villages have got abandoned and thousands displaced due to forced eviction, loss of drinking water, fish stock depletion and erosion. The region is rich in minerals like ilmenite, rutile, zircon, monazite, leucoxene (brown ilmenite), sillimanite and garnet. Two public sector companies, Indian Rare Earth and Kerala Minerals and Metals Limited, have been mining the area extensively since 1968. Despite protests from the locals, mining still continues in the region. 

This is a roundup of important news published between October 23 - 29, 2018. Also read policy matters this week.

Wind energy, considered a clean source of energy, does have a carbon footprint and is also known to disturb bird life. Now a new study done in the Western Ghats has found that wind farms in biodiversity-rich areas can have deeper ecological consequences beyond already known impacts. 

The study has found that wind farms reduce the number as well as the activity of predatory birds, which in turn, results in an increase in the density of vertebrates like the lizard on the ground. And since lizards have less fear of being preyed by birds, they are becoming less stressful. It means that wind turbines are acting as new apex predators in the food chain in the local ecosystem, says the study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution on Monday.

The predatory bird species affected include Buteo, Butastur and Elanus and the density of lizard that showed an increase in numbers is Sarada superba, a fan-throated lizard endemic to the area.

More predatory birds in areas without wind turbines

The study was done in the Chalkewadi plateau in Satara district in the northern Western Ghats which is the site of one of the largest and longest-running wind farms in the region. Large parts of the plateau and the adjacent valley are in the Sahyadri Tiger Reserve and Koyna Wildlife Sanctuary. These protected areas do not have wind turbines and were chosen for comparison. Researchers found almost four times more predatory birds in areas without wind turbines than around wind farms. They found more lizards around wind farms. This, researchers said, can be attributed to there being fewer predatory bird attacks near wind farms.

In order to record changes in the physiology of lizards, researchers measured hormonal stress reactivity. They captured lizards and took blood samples, and quantified the level of stress hormone, corticosterone. Blood samples were collected from lizards picked up from both sites—areas with wind farm and areas without wind farms. The lizards picked up in the wind farm region had lower levels of the stress hormone and allowed humans to get closer before fleeing, indicating that they experience less predation.

“Our central discovery is that wind turbines can act as top predators by reducing the density and activity of birds. Their prey are now released from the typical level of predation. This release causes a range of changes in lizards,” explained Dr Maria Thaker of Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore who led the research, while speaking to India Science Wire.

The ecological findings from our paper was exciting because it showed that wind farms are like top predators and their impact can result not only in the decrease of bird activity (which was known previous), but it also indirectly increases the density of lizards, and changes the morphology, behaviour and physiology of those lizards. Adding or removing a top predator has wide-scale consequences for ecosystems and our study shows that anthropogenic structures can do just that. 

The research team included Dr Maria Thaker, Amod Zambre and Harshal Bhosale. (India Science Wire)