India

Sanitation workers are out in full force tasked with disinfecting the public spaces as COVID-19 crisis continues to impact the country on top of other serious challenges faced by our WASH sector.

As the planet plunges towards irreversible climate change, the challenges posed by extreme weather events and environmental degradation pose an existential threat.

The twelfth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) goal which calls for ensuring responsible consumption and production patterns, recognizes that consumption and production despite being drivers of the economy have destructive impacts on natural resources.

The parched land of great Indian Thar desert stands out invariably for its hue and colours. And the communities from one of the harshest regions in the country continue to show their remarkable pliability to calibrate with the demographic difficulties and still bring out the most from the available resources!

Why science, fiction and sustainability? The title of this piece connects three words, concepts, thoughts and ideation and at the same time maintains their distinct identity.

Considering the overarching depen­dence on onsite sanitation systems, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), GoI launched the “National Policy on Faecal Sludge and Septage Management” in February 2017.

Unsustainable sandmining practices continue to be rampant in India. This has not only threatened the river ecosystems, but also led to commodification of river sand, a product in high demand in the construction industry. The high profits involved have turned sand mining into a highly competitive business with the sand mafia dominating the scene.

Under Project Nirmal, a detailed planning process was undertaken for designing Faecal Sludge Management (FSM) interventions in Angul and Dhenkanal Municipalities based on the existing sanitation situation in the towns, the techno-economic feasibility as well as cap

Mobile devices get increasingly used by frontline workers as non-profits procure and provide it to them. These devices need to be procured in bulk and hence it becomes important that the right decision is made.

While water sector actors from samaaj, sarkaar and bazaar have been working for decades on programmes that address water security issues in the country, making a sustainable impact at scale has continued to be a challenge.