Forwarded to the portal by: Sujoy Majumdar, DDWS through the

A civil society consultation was held on “Regenerating natural resources and rural livelihoods in rainfed areas of India” by WASSAN at Hyderabad in December 2010 to discuss priorities for the twelfth five year plan. The Planning Commission, Government of India has been steering the process of development in India by conceptualizing five year plans and had sought inputs from civil society organizations, activists groups, networks of CBOs / NGOs, donors and others for preparing an approach paper for twelfth plan.

The objective of the consultation workshop was to contribute to the process of defining broad contours of twelfth plan with a focus on rural livelihoods the thrust area being policy framework, funding support, institutional arrangements etc., by -

• Consolidating the lessons from good practices in promoting and protecting rural livelihoods in the country, that could be integrated in twelfth five year plan.
• Systematically articulating issues and concerns (bottlenecks) in promoting and protecting rural livelihoods, which could be addressed in the twelfth five year plan.

Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR) provides financial assistance to promote research work in the field of Water Resources Engineering. The assistance is provided by way of grants to academicians/experts in the Universities, IITs, recognised R&D laboratories, Water Resources / Irrigation departments of the Central and State Governments and NGOs. Research proposals of applied nature as well as basic research are considered for MoWR support.

Considering wide range of topics covered by Water Resources Engineers, five committees called Indian National Committees (INCs) have been constituted to co-ordinate the R&D programme. The five INCs are:

INC for Hydraulics Research (INCH)

• Management of Floods
• Hydraulic Structures (including masonry and concrete structures)

 .  In-situ bioremediation is an attractive alternative for this purpose. To achieve this objective, bacterial strains were isolated and enriched from the contaminated site of Tamil Nadu Chromates and Chemicals Limited (TCCL) premises, Ranipet, Tamil Nadu, India.

The basic objectives of this study were -

The audit was conducted as a follow up audit of the earlier report on AIBP (No 15 of 2004) to assess whether the performance of AIBP had improved, and also whether the key issues highlighted in the earlier report had been appropriately addressed.

This document by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) includes an audit report, which highlights issues related to adequacy, effectiveness of programmes, schemes, interventions made by the Ministry of Environment and Forests to tackle important environmental issues like deforestation, biodiversity and pollution control.

 It aims at sensitising policy makers to look at environmental issues with a holistic approach and address deficiencies in programmes/schemes/policies so that the environment can be conserved effectively.

Implementing Vessel Monitoring System in India 

India is often referred as “The land of rivers”. For generations India has had a strong tradition of preserving water judiciously. Our forefathers were visionaries who had the wisdom of thinking ahead of future. They anticipated the growing population which would lead to an increased demand for water in the future. Like today we have civil engineers, hydrologists and architects, who have acquired knowledge through lesser known or prestigious Institutions, our ancestors carried with them the same inborn talent to preserve water, that too without any formal degrees. They were people of intellect and had great sense of developing natural water resources. In a total of about 6.5 lakh villages of the country, approximately 50 lakh ponds and other similar structures exist. Unfortunately, during the past two decades the water quality has deteriorated at a rapid pace. One of the major reasons for this is the untreated waste water reaching the water sources, turning them to be a dirty drain. The Ganga and the Yamuna, the two most sacred rivers of our country are no exception to it. This has been achieved though an association with the World Water Monitoring Day program last year.

India is predominantly an agricultural country and even with current orientation towards services, still agriculture contributes ¼th of total GDP of the country, 15 percent of total export and 65 % of total population’s livelihood.