A fluid right

Blog Intro:  Campaign to make water and sanitation a right gathers momentum Campaign to make water and sanitation a right gathers momentum

Drought of equity

Water ATM

As dawn breaks, two queues start forming at the only petrol pump in Lakshmangarh, a small town in Rajasthan’s Alwar district. One, obviously, is of people waiting to get their vehicles’ fuel tanks refilled. The other is in front of a simple metal box mounted on the petrol pump’s boundary wall. People like to call it ATM machine.

Public private prank

Growth is back on the agenda, says the government. It is hoping that with pushy announcements foreign and Indian investment will miraculously start pouring in and infrastructure will be the name of the game once again. But this assumption ignores one crucial detail: currently, public-private partnerships (PPPs) in infrastructure are on the cusp of disaster.

Leakage plugged

LEAKY pipes are a major concern for water utilities across the globe. An estimated 20 to 40 per cent of water is lost through leakages in distribution systems that often remain undetected. Finding accurate methods to pinpoint the leak so that the pipes can be repaired is a necessity. But tracking leaks in water pipes can be tricky.

Looking beyond privatisation

Karen Bakker is an old hand at tracking the expansion of private control of water utilities in the 1990s by companies such as Bechtel, Enron and Vivendi (now Veolia). She has also researched the more recent shift towards public private partnerships (PPP) in water supply.

Rs 1,86,000 cr illusion

Ensure piped water supply to residents near Union Carbide plant: monitoring committee to Bhopal municipality

The group of ministers appointed by the Centre to look into Bhopal gas disaster-related matters will meet on June 8 to finalise the disposal of 350 tonnes of hazardous waste lying at the defunct Union Carbide

Letters - May 15, 2012

Freshwater economics

Subverting a basic human right

The new draft National Water Policy circulated by the Union Ministry of Water Resources to water experts suggests that the government is poised to withdraw from its responsibility of water service delivery, and that multinational corporations and financial institutions might have too big a say in water allocation and policy.