Seetha Gopalakrishnan

The union territory (UT) Of Puducherry is, for the most part, enveloped on three sides by the state of Tamil Nadu with the Bay of Bengal framing its eastern face. A total of 84 irrigation tanks--part of the Gingee and Pennaiyar river systems--dot the territory’s landscape. 

“My mother used to head out with a basket full of ash every day. She would visit dry latrines in the area one by one, sprinkle the ash on the night soil, scoop it up and carry the excreta-filled basket on her head to dump the contents into a small tanker. This was almost 40 years back in our 'Singara (beautiful) Chennai',” recounts Ravanaiah.

The demand, supply, availability and access of water resources do not always match. Going by the UN estimates, by the year 2022, India is expected to surpass China's population to become the most populous country in the world.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but more often than not, insightful pieces of art and photography find themselves confined to affluent salons and galleries. While employing art and photography to address social issues is common in the West, the concept of public art is still in its incipient stages here in India.

For almost two decades, the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act of 1993 was a paralytic occupant of the statute books. The Act prohibited the construction of dry toilets which required faeces to be removed manually and outlawed manual scavenging.

As part of its efforts to promote rural sanitation, the government, under the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), promises a subsidy of Rs 12,000 for the construction of individual household toilets. Households that fall in the below poverty line (BPL) category and select households such as those belonging to SCs/STs and the ones headed by women can avail of this subsidy amount.

The female menstrual cycle is the intricate work of hormones. Usually, girls start their cycle anywhere between 12 and 17 years of age when a series of changes prepare their uterus for child-bearing. The body produces the hormone oestrogen which stimulates the growth of a protective lining inside the uterus to cushion the baby in preparation of pregnancy every month.

India has come a long way since the days of its rigid top-down Central Rural Sanitation Programme (CRSP), which had minimal community participation. First it was the Total Sanitation Campaign which then became the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan, and most recently, the Swachh Bharat Mission.

South India's rivers are rain-fed unlike those in the North, which are glacier-fed due to the contrasting topography and climate. Unlike the Himalayan system, many of India’s peninsular rivers dry up during the hotter half of the year, leaving lips and fields equally parched.

The East Coast of India is very much unlike its western counterpart both in terms of physiography and climatology.