Quality, Standards and Testing

Govt says out of 445 river stretches, 275 are polluted

As India completes 70 years of its independence, let’s take a moment to introspect the contribution of science and technology to national development. Several scientific and technological developments have touched the lives of common people, though limelight is often hogged by achievements in fields like space and atomic energy.

When Satya Devi was a child, the open well near her house in the village of Malku Majra was the water source for the household. She reminisces, “The water was clean and soft. The well would never go dry.

Take a walk through the maze of lanes at Seelampur in north-east Delhi, you could see small children rummaging through electronic waste that has made its way here from all over north India. They segregate end-of-life electrical and electronic products, prise them apart, put them through acid wash and also burn circuit boards in the hope of extracting precious metals.

Decades of skating over environmental concerns have clearly cost us dear. The folly of pursuing better crop yields using chemical fertilisers in an indiscriminate manner has been surfacing lately. “Decades of agricultural abuse using fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides have taken its toll on us.

The United Nations, in its sustainable development goals (SDGs), has earmarked 2030 as the year by which universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all is to be achieved.

Asia has the highest number of people exposed to flooding: Report

The current set of government programmes such as Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) and Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) have gone a long way in improving access to water and sanitation services in India.

The people of the Marathwada region have been facing severe water crisis for more than three decades. Despite adverse circumstances, the Akoladev panchayat in the Jalna district has set an example for other panchayats by solving their water woes through community participation and effective water harvesting measures that suit their geographic terrain.

Rampura, situated in Bulandshahr district in western Uttar Pradesh, is one of the 1,200 villages on the banks of the 300-km long East Kali, a tributary of the Ganges. The river is named after goddess Kali who, according to the Hindu mythology, is fierce and fights evil by ingesting it.