Rajasthan tackles drought through <i>pokhar</i>s

Prakashi Devi is happy her village pond still has some water left. "A little bit of water is good news," says the 40-year-old villager from Kaila Devi gram panchayat.

Central India in grip of worst-ever drought

The last five years have been tough on 55-year old Saraswati Devi. Her two sons have left their village to work as construction workers in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh (mp). The family's one hectare patch in Ragauli Bhatpura gram panchayat in Uttar Pradesh's (up) Banda district has been mortgaged. The money barely helps Saraswati tide over a drought that's ravaging Banda

When markets do work

Some innovations change lives. A favourite of mine is the village milk collection system, a cooperative model. There's a dairy in the village, people bring in milk, the dairy in-charge places a sample on an instrument, checks the fat content, prints a receipt that tells the seller the fat content and the price.

Employment guarantee scheme not in sync with Mastapur's needs

Hope floated in drought-hit Mastapur village when people heard of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (nrega) in 2006. Residents of this village in Madhya Pradesh's Tikamgarh district thought of the scheme as the perfect opportunity to renovate their local tank to tide over a four-year long drought.

Rajasthan village goes beyond caste, fights for water resources

Five years ago, Bhim Singh lost all of his groundnut crop because his fellow villagers did not let him dig a borewell. With the advantage of hindsight, he is happy they stopped him. He says it demonstrated the commitment of the villagers to preserve and judiciously use the water resources at their disposal. Preventing Bhim Singh was Amritya's first brush with blocking borewells, though the village in Rajasthan's parched Bhilwara district had begun other conservation projects earlier.

No substance in budget's agriculture hype

the Union budget for 2007-08 is big on illusions, small on vision. Despite the hype about its tilt towards the agriculture sector, the budget has failed to put together a package to bail out the ailing sector. Also, despite being the first budget of the 11th Five-Year Plan, it has failed to give an overall direction for the plan period.

Federal control over Murry-Darling river system

A fter 117 years, Australia entered a new era of water management with the federal government taking control of rivers from the states they run through. The federal authorities will spend us$10 billion over 10 years on conserving water and injecting more into the river system from Queensland to South Australia.

Ministers fight over funding National Rainfed Area Authority

who should fund the National Rainfed Area Authority (nraa)? The issue remained unresolved even after the first meeting of the authority ended in Delhi in January this year.

Andaman revives WWII wells to deal with water crisis

authorities in the Andaman islands are now reviving 191 old wells, dug during World War ii in Port Blair in an attempt to check the city's mounting water crisis. The city currently receives a restricted water supply--once in three days.

The politics of inefficient irrigation technology

Call it is one of the unknown Indian ironies. Over many years, the Indian state, through its public irrigation agencies, has systematically taken over the management of surface water systems. It has taken over the job of building irrigation systems--dams, reservoirs and canals--then maintaining these and supplying water. This has meant that over the years it has taken over water resources from the hands of village communities. The irony is that even as the state has vested this power in itself, people have taken water under their control.