Lifestyle

Every year, thousands of villages in Maharashtra get affected by droughts. Experts say that the reasons for recurrent droughts include a lack of policy framework, technical knowledge and community participation as well as poor implementation of government programmes.

As part of Bonjour India 2017-2018, the four-months-long, ongoing Indo-French journey celebrating the Indo-French partnership, water-related issues are being highlighted through research, art and debates in cities like Jaipur, Bengaluru, New Delhi, Pondicherry and Kolkata.

There is a reason why water bodies are considered a resource. From the water they provide to the many living organisms they support, water bodies are constantly supplying us with things essential to our survival. They also provide livelihood as this story of some enterprising tribal women in a remote village in Andhra Pradesh exemplifies.

Pitidri is a nondescript village that dots the rainshadow area of Purulia district in West Bengal. Droughts are common here even when the area is endowed with above average rainfall of over 1300 mm a year. Until some time ago, Urmila Mahato, a 42-year-old farmer from Pitidri had been struggling to ensure her family’s food security.

Amar Singh sits in his huge courtyard at the centre of his home in the village of Atraula in Meerut. Lying in the far west part of Uttar Pradesh, this is a flourishing sugarcane belt. An important agricultural region, its demographic, economic and cultural patterns are similar to that of nearby Haryana and Rajasthan.

The fields are silvery white with raw salt crusts in the vicinity of Nawa, a small town on the northwestern banks of Sambhar lake, India’s largest inland lake. Nawa lies about 90 kilometres east of Jaipur. Also an extensive saline wetland and a Ramsar site, the blinding white salt flats stretch as far as one can see.

Social media has brought the world to our desktop where information is available at the click of a button. The issues now are not just related to a particular community, region, state, or country; they are global. We get attached to them directly or indirectly and share our opinions on them, which is an easy and powerful way to contribute towards addressing issues we care about.

A seasonal river in Pali, Rajasthan, the Bandi is nothing short of a sewer. The textile town has witnessed rampant industrial growth, raw sewage discharges and toxic contamination of its waters. The river, which is devoid of lean season flow, is polluted up to 55 km downstream. The river water is unfit for drinking as well as irrigation.

The Palk Bay is an ecological paradise located between the island nation of Sri Lanka and the South East Peninsula India. The region separates the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu from the northern parts of Sri Lanka.

The Palk Bay is a 15,000 sq km biodiversity conglomeration nestled between the island nation of Sri Lanka and South East Peninsula India with a coastal length of 250 km on the Indian side.