Surface Water

Kalwaheri is a village of over thousand households comprising mostly of small farmers and landless people tucked away in Karnal, Haryana. The district, once the birth place of the Green Revolution, is now far from green.

Mile after mile of saline lands line the Delhi-Rohtak-Bhiwani stretch of the highway. Here, the land wasn't always saline, it became that way thanks to canal irrigation. Farmers have used extensive surface water, which has led to an increase in groundwater levels. This leads to the twin problem of waterlogging and salinity.

Climate change poses a threat to all. Be it forests, water or agriculture- it affects everything. India's Northeast, particularly, has witnessed a great deal of this impact. Sikkim, the physical bridge between the Northeast and mainland India, is also bearing the brunt of climate change in a myriad ways with agriculture and water bearing the most pronounced repercussions.

Maharashtra reels under hail storms

Abolish manual scavenging: SC

People learn and retain better through visual media. That's a fact. So what better way to bring attention to topics around the themes of water than by screening movies? That was the thought process behind organising an event on World Water Day with school students in Shimla. 

In honour of World Water Day 2014, the theme at the Green Bazaar, a community event run by The Alternative, was water. India Water Portal collaborated to add some 'blue' to the 'green'.

The theme of this year’s World Water Day was “energy-water nexus”. It was almost as if the topic was chosen keeping Western Uttar Pradesh in mind because the conflict between water and energy users in agriculture and industry has heightened here in the recent past.

“Posua botah”, he said. “The wind is blowing from the west now so we cannot take you to the beel to show you how we catch fish. This wind cleans the water and we won’t get fish. 'Bhatial botah', when the wind blows from the east, the water turns muddy and the fish come up to the surface to breathe. That’s the best time to fish”, he explained.

The twin sisters:  Bihar is a land of fertile farms bearing sugarcane, wheat, rice, gram and pulses. Interspersed between the fields are venerable mango groves. Of Bihar's children, perhaps none is as universally loved as Sita. The village that she was born in -Sitamarhi- welcomed another daughter along with Sita.