Society, Culture, Religion and History

Manual scavenging has been glorified since the time of Mahatma Gandhi. It hasn’t changed now with prime minister Narendra Modi describing it as an “experience in spirituality”. Manual scavenging is dehumanising. And despite the laws created to abolish it, the news of manual scavenging and manual scavengers dying in sewers and septic tanks are not unheard of.

The pitiful state of some of the water bodies in the country, coupled with the sheer apathy of the government, have forced some well-meaning citizens to come out of their comfort zones and make a difference. Some of these efforts, like the Puttenahalli lake in Bengaluru that is now overflowing with clean water, have been successful, while others are ongoing.

In the olden times, people knew the importance of water and had devised a number of techniques to manage and conserve water resources. These efforts not only met the drinking water needs of the people, but also helped the survival of livestock and agriculture in areas where perennial rivers were absent and the population depended on rains and often faced water scarcity or droughts.

"Jatene dekho utene bawri" (wherever you look, there’s a stepwell). This is how the woman standing on the threshold of her house, in the walled city of Jodhpur, told us when we asked where we could find stepwells in her neighbourhood. 

World Culture Festival damaged Yamuna floodplains, concludes NGT

When two powerful and populous countries share a river to quench the thirst of its people, some amount of friction between the countries is bound to happen. The water of Brahmaputra, that flows through India, China, Bangladesh and Bhutan, has been a bone of contention between China and India for long.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but more often than not, insightful pieces of art and photography find themselves confined to affluent salons and galleries. While employing art and photography to address social issues is common in the West, the concept of public art is still in its incipient stages here in India.