Irrigation

Purba Bhateni is a village located in the Mahakalapada block of Kendrapara district of Odisha on the coast of the Bay of Bengal. Abutting the coastal tidal line, the village is surrounded by tidal water bodies and protected by saline protection embankment. Farming and small-scale fishing in the tidal water bodies is the source of livelihood for farmers here.

The year 2009 was an exceptionally dry year for Maharashtra. There was an acute shortage of water. The farmlands went dry. The farmers, unable to pay their debts, were a worried lot. Lakshman Ambilkar of Kinni village in the Yavatmal district of Maharashtra was one such farmer who could not take it anymore. He killed himself, leaving a young, distraught wife to fend for herself.

The use of wastewater for irrigation in agricultural lands is a common practice across the globe. But a study by Indian researchers has found that it can also affect the quality of soil and groundwater, and consequently, human health. 

Rs 5000 fine on those dumping waste on Yamuna floodplains

A group of Indian, Chinese, and Canadian scientists has developed transgenic rice that gives high yield even under severe water deficit. The new rice variety has been developed by transferring a gene from a common plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, into a variety of Indian rice called samba mahsuri.

Kokapet, one of the study villages for the project ‘Ensuring Water Security in Metropolitan Hyderabad’, was the first village that we visited for field work. Even though we refer to them as ‘villages’, there was very little that we found village-like here.

Over the years, the increasing population and urbanisation have meant growing shortage of land for disposal of domestic greywater, indiscriminate cutting down of forests for biomass production and lesser availability of water for irrigation.

Following Ganga and Yamuna, Narmada river also gets living entity status

A woman stands with a begging bowl and a placard strung around her neck. An old man shuffles along barefoot in the street at Jantar Mantar, the official site of a farmers’ protest in the heart of New Delhi. He finds his way through a group of farmers gathered at the protest site on a hot summer afternoon.

Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu governments waive off farm loans