India and Bangladesh recently signed an agreement to share water from the Kushiara river, and water management experts have derided it as “a drop in the ocean.” There are 54…
Noora walks past the Astan Nag, a local spring located in Burzhama area of Srinagar in Kashmir. She pauses for a while and starts walking towards the spring. Visiting it…
The summer of 2022 was unkind for the 30-odd farmers of Tandi village in Himachal Pradesh’s cold desert. Over 50% of their crops in the village in Lahaul and Spiti…
The Yarlung Tsangpo-Brahmaputra-Jamuna River Basin (BRB) embraces the unique geography of the Hindu Kush Himalayas, from high altitude Tibet Autonomous region to flood plains in Assam (India) and Bangladesh. The…
Buddha Dariya, in Punjab’s Ludhiana city, was once a clear stream of water, flowing into one of the largest rivers of the state, the Sutlej. Today, it is a stream…
In April 2022, several images of dead fish floating in the Banganga tank, located in Mumbai’s Malabar hill area, circulated on news sites and social media platforms. Clean up efforts…
Read part 1 of this series to understand Karnataka's port-based development spree and what it means for the people living on the coast. In part 2, find out how a road…
Read part 1 of this series to understand Karnataka's port-based development spree and what it means for the people living on the coast. Part 3 looks at one such minor…
Karnataka is on a port-development spree. The 320-kilometre coastline, spread across three districts – Uttara Kannada, Udupi, and Dakshin Kannada – is dotted with 12 minor ports, and one major…
When Binaya Bhusan Jena, a professor at the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) in Odisha’s Bhubaneswar city, first looked around campus, all he could spot were concrete academic buildings.…
A recent study reveals that unsustainable urbanisation is driving intense groundwater depletion in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. As the city’s population continues to rise (62% from 2001 to 2020), the immense…
A 2020 block-wise groundwater resources assessment by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) found that most of the districts in Punjab had over-exploited the groundwater levels. In some districts, the…
Water in India has always been perceived from a lens of public good rather than an economic commodity. A sense of ownership is missing among users as they abstract water…
Stephen Midzi, the biodiversity conservation manager of South Africa’s iconic Kruger National Park, thinks it is a good thing to allow rivers to be what rivers should be. Midzi is…
Madhya Pradesh's Manpur town near Pithampur, a Special Economic Zone with almost 50 industrial units, is facing water contamination. The locals assert that the chemical debris from Pithampur is tossed…
The history of Haryana’s 7,356 villages is as old as its ponds and wells. It is said that people settled wherever they found water storage capacity for human and cattle…
“Vizhinjam was once known as the harbour of pro-creation,” Father Michael, parish priest of Lady of Good Voyage Church in Vizhinjam, Kerala, told Mongabay-India. But today, the reality is different.…
Sonu Kalkal, a farmer living in Imlota village in Charkhi Dadri district of Haryana, used to cultivate his own land and harvest bumper crops. The 42-year-old has now turned landless.…
Satyanarayan Patel, a 60-year-old farmer, hails from Bijanwada village of Narmadapuram (Hoshangabad) district in Madhya Pradesh. His house is located on the banks of the Pasa river, a tributary of…
Leaving Panaji, Goa's capital city, for the airport, one drives past a large swathe of lifeless bare trees standing in a shallow black water swamp. This was once a verdant…
