Guest Post: Rahul Banerjee

Ramaswamy Iyer has made a commendable effort to draft a National Water Policy that tries to reform the current unsustainable approach to water resource management in this country  (EPW Vol XLVI Nos 26&27 Supplement pp 201). Assuming that this draft is an invitation to a larger public debate on the issues involved I would like to make a few comments on it.

This document  by the Central Pollution and Control Board (CPCB) describes the findings of a study that evaluated water treatment plants located across the country, for prevailing raw water quality, water treatment technologies, operational practices, chemical consumptio

The workshop was hosted by Government of Kerala and the Water and Sanitation Program, South Asia with the Government of India, The World Bank Institute and the World Bank was held at Cochin, Kerala from December 7th to December 8th, 1999.

Adequate potable water supply to the community has become an uphill task to the administration both in rural and urban areas. This is because of dwindling groundwater sources, over-extraction, pollution of surface water bodies, negligence of fresh water bodies, poor water management, etc.

This paper published in the Journal of Asian and African Studies examines the argument that the political and institutional contexts of service delivery shape people's access to the state and its resources and also the mediation between citizens and g

Reap what you sow, eat what you grow - A film by Suma Josson

It depicts how applying ecological principles and practices to maintain soil fertility, to manage crop health, and to keep soil and water in a good condition is especially relevant to the urban setting. The film focuses on the work being done in the urban farms, yet it can be seen as much more than that and, understood as a vision on healthy products, healthy production systems and as a way of life.

The urban expansion in India has not been met by a similar expansion in infrastructure and basic services. This has severely affected the quality of urban life and economic growth.

This paper by Ajit Seshadri, Vigyan Vijay Foundation highlights the poor sanitation situation in India and argues that centralized approaches to wastewater treatment have had limited success and there is a need to make wastwater treatment people centric and effective through the use of decentralized systems such as DEWATS (Decentralized Wastewater Treatment Systems). DEWATS are locally organized and people driven systems that typically comprise a settler, anaerobic baffled tanks, filter beds of gravel and sand, and an open pond. The open pond or the polishing tank recreates a living environment for the wastewater to clean itself, naturally.

The objective of the scheme is to convert or construct low cost sanitation units through sanitary two pit pour flush latrines with superstructures and appropriate variations to suit local conditions (area specific latrines) and construct new latrines where economically weaker sections household have no latrines and follow the in-human practice of defecating in the open in urban areas. This would improve overall sanitation in the towns.