Society, Culture, Religion and History

Photo: Muralidhar Adhikari

This study report by the Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP), a global partnership administered by the World Bank suggests that inadequate sanitation causes India considerable economic losses, equivalent to 6.4 per cent of India's GDP in 2006 at Rs. 2.4 Trillion. It analyzed the evidence on the adverse economic impacts of inadequate sanitation, which include costs associated with death and disease, accessing and treating water, and losses in education, productivity, time, and tourism. The findings are based on 2006 figures, although a similar magnitude of losses is likely in later years.

The study focused on the safe management of human excreta and associated hygiene behavior. The methodology adopted by the study included disaggregating the economic impacts of inadequate sanitation into health-related impacts including premature deaths, costs of treating diseases, and productive time lost due to illnesses; domestic water-related impacts including household treatment of water, and money and time costs to obtain safe water; welfare losses including additional time spent by people for accessing toilets or open defecation sites, and girls having to miss school, and women not going to work; and the loss of potential tourism owing to inadequate sanitation.

Data on incidence (e.g. diarrheal diseases, deaths, etc.) were compiled from national sources (National Family Health Survey, WHO Demographic and Health Surveys, and other Govt. of India sources). Based on scientific literature, attribution factors were used to estimate the populations impacted by inadequate sanitation. Economic valuation was carried out using costs/prices based on secondary studies.

This advocacy flyer by Arghyam and Peoples Learning Centre (PLC) Shillong highlights some of the main problems, action underway and potential solutions to cleaning up the water bodies of Shillong. It deals with the expanding human habitats and escalating socio-economic activities around the rivers Umkrah and Umshyrpi that flow through Shillong leading to their choking with sewage and pollution. This wastewater eventually enters Lake Umiam, which is a reservoir for hydro-electric power.

PLC is a non-profit organisation that works towards promoting knowledge on equity and rights, and is a platform for facilitating interdisciplinary dialogues between stakeholders in key developmental issues. Arghyam supports PLC in engaging with decision makes as well as citizens in order to create public opinion about river and lake pollution, and promote catchment friendly practices.

Organizer: EA Water Private Limited

This paper by the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth deals with access of the poor to water supply and sanitation in India. It argues that economic, technical, institutional as well as social factors constrain access to safe drinking water and proper sanitation in India for both the urban and rural poor, and that coverage figures do not reflect this restricted access. It finds that, increasingly, communities are being required to manage their own water and sanitation schemes, not just in rural areas but in urban ones as well.

The paper deals with domestic water supply and sanitation and presents a historical overview of the phenomenon in rural and urban India. This is followed by a critique of available figures for coverage which, it is contended, seem exaggerated because they do not account for the several constraints to access. It addresses the specific institutional problems faced in the public sector delivery of these two utilities in India apart from dealing with the parallel yet thus far limited presence of the private sector in these twin arenas.

This paper by Rajasthan Pollution Control Board on climate change impacts in the context of Rajasthan seeks to address the issue of need of the society for robust knowledge to pursue strategies for mitigation as well as adaptation in order to address the challenges associated with global warming and climate change.

Accordingly, here a brief review of the available literature and an annotated bibliography of published research on climate change impacts, mitigation and adaptation in order to facilitate the identification of policy options in Rajasthan is provided.

Also included is the literature on how human societies contribute to environmental change and how, in turn, become vulnerable to these changes. It also explores the available knowledge on how likely ecosystem goods and services are impacted to climatic oscillations (environmental sensitivity) and the ability of rural communities to cope (social resilience) with those changes.

Content Courtesy: Solution Exchange and Nitya Jacob
Author: Nitya Jacob

India’s arteries are choking. Her rivers, the lifeline of hundreds of millions, are over-taxed, polluted and encroached. They are being mined, dammed and emptied of water. Save for the four monsoon months, most rivers are streams of drains, depending on how many cities they pass through. This year people gaped in awe at the River Yamuna (I am sure they were over-awed by other rivers elsewhere too) as for the first time since 1978 looked like a river and not a drain.

This working paper by the University of Bonn attempts to give a spatial and temporal overview of water management in India. It traces how people and the successive regimes made choices across space and time from a wide range of water control and distribution technologies. The paper divides the water management in India into four periods –

• the traditional system of water management before colonial times;
• response from the colonial rulers to manage the complex socio-ecological system;
• large scale surface water development after independence; and
• finally, the small-scale community and market-led revolution.

This report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) deals with the economics of wastewater use in agriculture. It presents an economic framework for the assessment of the use of reclaimed water in agriculture, as part of a comprehensive planning process in water resource allocation strategies to provide for a more economically efficient and sustainable water utilization.