Jhansi District

Bundelkhand, a geographical and cultural region in north-central India covering parts of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh is one of the hotspots of poverty and malnutrition.

Punjab no.1 in overexploitation of groundwater 

A crowd of people jostling by the ticket counter at Jhansi railway station in Uttar Pradesh; men and women, some with families in tow, boarding trains to Delhi, Lucknow, Mumbai and other big cities. These are common sights during the summer months at Jhansi, a major town and railway junction.

This story is of Punawli Kalan village in Uttar Pradesh, where a community with the support of a women-led federation, solved its water woes by developing a community-owned water supply system.

In December 2015, more than forty years after it was conceived, the Government was set to launch India’s ambitious 30-link river interlinking project linking 37 rivers.

In Jhansi, Bundelkhand farmers experience great uncertainties in agriculture due to erratic rainfall. Covering 13 districts of southwest Uttar Pradesh and Northern Madhya Pradesh with a population of approximately 21 million, Bundelkhand is a typical semi-arid region.  Around 83% of the area is rural and more than one third of the households are considered to be below the poverty line.

The newsletter explores the ways in which national laws, court pronouncements and judgements and international commitments can be interpreted to imply a right to water and sanitation.

Specific articles cover:

-Individual court cases and Supreme Court pronouncements

Some of the main findings of the status report on water resources in Tikamgarh and Jhansi districts by Development Alternatives are –