Panchayati Raj Institutions

Most of Etawah, a city on the banks of the Yamuna river in Uttar Pradesh, has plenty of stories to share about their favourite leader Daddaji or Mulayam Singh Yadav, one of the former chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh. The area bordering the ravines near Chambal, on the other hand, resounds with tales of dacoits like Phoolan Devi, Seema Parihar and Nirbhay Gujjar.

Groundwater is a major source of water for a large number of Indians with 66 percent rural households and 27 percent urban households directly depending on it for drinking purposes, as per Census 2011.

In India, although we have approximately four months of monsoon (which is basically 45 days of effective rainfall), in drought prone areas, there are only 10-15 days of harvestable rain in the entire season. If you don't get enough rain during those days, it's a cause for worry.

Tired from the Baidyanath dhamyatra (pilgrimage) in the nearby town of Deoghar, Nunlal Kamath is stealing a quick nap on a charpoy outside his house. His house is right on the western bank of Kosi, north Bihar’s river of sorrow, in a particularly flood-prone area where there are no high grounds or flood platforms nearby.  

At just 24 years of age, Abhinav Vats has learnt a lot as the chief minister’s Good Governance Associate (CMGGA) posted in Palwal district of Haryana. An economics graduate from Delhi University, he worked as a research analyst with McKinsey and Company at Gurgaon for two-and-a-half years before deciding to be a CMGGA.

Gopal Nishad, a fisherman in his early 40s, is frustrated that there is hardly any fish left in the Mahanadi’s basin at Pitaibandh due to the lack of water in the basin. This basin is located near Rajim-Nawapara in Chhattisgarh, the proposed site for the fourth anicut on the Mahanadi.

Kaudikasa is a small village with a population of just 350 people in the Ambagad Chowki block of the Rajnandgaon district in Chhattisgarh. Despite its small size, Kaudikasa village has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Severe health problems have been reported from the village, thanks to acute arsenic contamination in its groundwater.

GoI allocations for the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation is Rs. 22,357 crores

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.

This year’s budget was expected to be extensively farmer- and rural-sector oriented. And that is exactly what it turned out to be. The distress in the agrarian sector has intensified and its political implications were rife this year considering the Lok Sabha elections are scheduled next year.