India

Diarrhoeal diseases are a leading cause for childhood mortality and morbidity worldwide. India registers the third highest proportion of child deaths caused by diarrhoea in South Asia [1]. According to Central Bureau of Health Intelligence, 2012, diarrhoeal diseases are the most prevalent of all water-related diseases in India [2].

Despite the severe water management crisis India is going through, hydro energy continues to be the second leading source of power, next only to thermal-based energy in the country. Hydropower generates over 16 percent of India’s electricity.

The management of water resources in India has always been a challenge. From the British era till now, the various governments that ruled India have grappled with the fundamental issue of water equity. 

Kanchi Kohli is a researcher, writer and campaigner working on environment, forest and biodiversity governance in India and their interface with trade and industrialisation.

DJB to give individual water connections in slums

"If you are to suffer, you should suffer in the interest of the country.”

- Jawaharlal Nehru, speaking to villagers who were to be displaced by the Hirakud Dam in 1948.

Farakka behind Bihar flood: CM

Telangana, Maharashtra sign pact for irrigation projects across Godavari

The chief minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar, called for the decommissioning of the Farakka barrage recently.

Manual scavenging has been glorified since the time of Mahatma Gandhi. It hasn’t changed now with prime minister Narendra Modi describing it as an “experience in spirituality”. Manual scavenging is dehumanising. And despite the laws created to abolish it, the news of manual scavenging and manual scavengers dying in sewers and septic tanks are not unheard of.