Bengaluru catches drops

Business is brisk for John Daniel. He has sold more than 4,000 rainwater filters, mostly in Bengaluru, in the past eight months. This is a sudden climb from the 1,000-odd filters he sold in the previous five years. Sales shot up after the Karnataka government made rainwater harvesting (RWH) compulsory in Bengaluru.

Growth thirsty

Call it the fallout of rapid urbanisation or plain negligence of the authorities, groundwater in Dhaka is sinking at an alarming rate. According to a study by the Institute of Water Modelling in Dhaka in 2009, groundwater in the city is going down three metres every year. It has sunk by 50 metres in the past four decades and is at over 60 metres below the ground.

Injustice gets nastier

Water scarcity accentuates discrimination against the socially backward

Science and Technology - Briefs

TECHNOLOGY Sound, light and gold

News 360° - Briefs

WATER RESOURCES RAIN SAVES MURRAY For the first time since 2002 dredging has stopped at the Murray river mouth in south Australia. Rains across the Murray-Darling Basin, one of the world’s largest river systems, improved water flow down the country’s longest river with an estimated 48,000 megalitres passing through the mouth each day. Dams, irrigation and droughts between 2000 and 2007 had made the river dry and saline.

Google in map trouble

Google Maps is tangled in a border dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

How pure are their claims?

Manoj Lodhiwal is the head salesperson at a household appliance store in south Delhi. Every morning as the storeowner performs puja, he examines how and where to display products. “The facade must remain stacked with home water purifiers; they are the hottest items,” Lodhiwal said. His store is in Mohan Singh market, an electronics and household appliance hub in Delhi. The frontage of most shops here display water purifiers—from low-cost variants priced at Rs 999 to the ones with more attractive features, worth Rs 50,000.

Letters

PDS for family planning

Look what’s swelling the sea

GROUNDWATER is becoming important to sustain agriculture, industry and drinking water. But as we exploit aquifers, more water becomes part of the hydrological cycle. A recent study shows evaporation and precipitation of groundwater is responsible for a fourth of the annual sea level rise of 3.1 mm.

Rivers at risk

THE world’s rivers are threatened due to mismanagement and pollution. This imperils eight of every 10 people as well as 10,000-20,000 species that call them home. This is the finding of the first global initiative that assessed water security for people and river biodiversity. Eleven scientists identified 23 stressors, such as pollution, intensive agriculture, catchment disturbance and dam building, and integrated them to prepare maps showing their impact on the health of rivers and associated habitat.