Mewat women walk 5 km for water.
Haryana State govt’s promise of uninterrupted supply during Ramzan not met Sumedha Sharma Gurugram, June 10 The state government’s tall promise of uninterrupted water supply during Ramzan had fallen flat.
The wells in these villages have dried up and government water supply is erratic.
Women in these villages have to walk over 4 km to get water from a jungle nearby or buy water at exorbitant rates.
There are no pipelines and wells have dried up.
There is no water supply or groundwater.
“Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar promised unobstructed water supply during Ramzan, but what happened thereafter?
Mewat is the government’s stepchild, where getting clean drinking water has become a luxury.
A majority of villages depended on wells and channels in jungles.
The district administration had, over the years, identified 400 villages facing scarcity of water, but nothing much had been done to mitigate the suffering.

Loan waiver, water issues: Pro-Kannada units call for Bandh in Karnataka on June 12.
Bengaluru: To push for a variety of demands including farm loan waiver, Prime Minister’s intervention in the Mahadayi river water dispute and a permanent solution to the problem of water scarcity in arid areas, pro-Kannada bodies have called for a Karnataka bandh on June 12.
‘Kannada Okoota’, an umbrella organisation of Kannada bodies, has called for a dawn to dusk bandh.
Their charter of demands include exile of Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti (MES) activists from the state for their alleged ‘anti Kannada’ activities in Belagavi and farm loan waiver.
Read: Agrarian distress: 5 farmers commit suicide in 3 days across states Vatal Nagaraj, who heads Kannada Okoota, said in a statement that the bandh is also against Tamil Nadu’s opposition to the Mekedatu project across the river Cauvery and proposal to privatise BEML.
Kannada Okoota, which claimed support from several like- minded organisations, said Nagraj would meet office bearers of Karnataka Employers’ Association on Sunday to seek their support for the bandh.
The Karnataka government has locked horns with the neighbouring Goa on the larger issue of sharing the Mahadayi River water between both the states.
Read: Announce a ‘complete farm loan waiver’: Shiv Sena to BJP The Kalasa-Banduri project is being undertaken by Karnataka to improve drinking water supply in the twin cities of Hubballi-Dharwad and the districts of Belagavi and Gadag.
The Mahadayi tribunal has asked the states to resolve the issue out of court settlement through negotiations, with or without third party intervention.
(With inputs from PTI)

Pro-Kannada groups declare Karnataka Bandh on June 12 over farm loan waiver, water issues.
A grouping of pro-Kannada outfits have called for a 12-hour bandh, or shutdown, across Karnataka on Monday, June 12.
They have said they are looking for loan waiver for farmers — an already-burning issue in Madhya Pradesh — and solution to the water problems in the state, including the intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in one water project.
The bandh has been called by the Kannada Okoota — an umbrella grouping of pro-Kannada bodies led by Vatal Nagaraj.
These include disputes with neighbouring states over the waters of the Cauvery and Mahadayi rivers, as well as the Mekedatu project over the Cauvery.
The Cauvery issue has the state fighting for the waters of the river with Tamil Nadu.
The Supreme Court has weighed in heavily on it from time to time, with most decisions going against Karnataka.
According to a PTI report, Nagaraj is now planning to "meet the office-bearers of Karnataka Employers Association" on Sunday to "seek their support" for the bandh.
If they join hands, there is every chance that the dawn-to-dusk bandh will be a total success, even as it inconveniences many people.
Water scarcity has also affected the interiors of Karnataka, with several districts considered water-stressed.

The seasonal rivulet, originating from the nearby hills, used to flow down from Kanerkhed village to Nigadi, meeting the latter’s drinking water and irrigation needs.
“But, last April and May, villagers did shramdan to carry out watershed works.
<class=”wp-caption alignnone”> Training local water managers Nigadi isn’t the only village in Maharashtra trying to drought-proof itself.
Between April and May this year, the residents of 1,300 participating villages are creating various water harvesting structures in keeping with the ridge-to-valley approach.
Trained villagers have further trained more people in their respective villages.
For instance, five trained villagers of Kiraksal village in drought-prone Maan taluk have trained 88 more residents of Kiraksal.
People’s movement on water Over 190 families of Pawarwadi in Koregaon taluk are working day and night to complete the watershed works they have planned as part of the Water Cup 2017.
Last year, 116 villages in three talukas of Maharashtra participated in the Water Cup 2016.
Velu village in Koregaon taluk was awarded the first prize.
As per Paani Foundation’s estimate, the villages participating in the last water cup created a water storage capacity of 1,368 crore litres that is equivalent to 1,368,000 tankers of water, or Rs 272 crore worth of water savings.

CHENNAI: Southern Railway will get much-needed respite if monsoon sets in on time as stations are affected by water scarcity and managing with minimum supply.
Some stations like Egmore solely dependent on metro water are managing with the available water supply coupled with the water recycled after cleaning of coaches.
According to senior officials, there are days when the station doesn’t receive even the minimum requirement of water from metro water due to scarcity in the state.
Chennai Central, Egmore and Tambaram witness huge footfalls on a daily basis and are dependent on metro water as well as supply from borewells.
According to a senior official in the railways, Egmore is the only station that does not have an alternate supply of water other than metro water.
“At Egmore, the daily requirement is 7.5 lakh litres per day.
The minimum the station needs are at least 6 lakh litres of water daily to ensure that water supply, cleaning of stations, coaches go on smoothly.
We have been reeling with shortage, so much so that there is no water to supply for water vending units.
Supply for the last few days has been minimum,” said the offi-cial.
Chennai Central has a water requirement of 9 lakh litres per day that is 1.5 times that of Egmore station considering the number of passengers who use the station as well as trains handled there.

BJD to observe four hour hartal in 4 districts over Mahanadi water dispute.
Bhubaneswar: The ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) on Friday called for a 4-hour hartal in four Western Odisha districts on Saturday against the Chhattisgarh government’s move closing Kalma barrage gates and not allowing free of Mahanadi River downstream.
The party demanded immediate opening of the barrage gates to ensure flow of water downstream.
Announcing this at a press conference here, the party’s Rajya Sabha MP and vice-president Prasanna Acharya, vice-president Debi Prasad Mishra and Rajya Sabha MP Nagendra Pradhan said the hartal will be observed in Sambalpur, Bargarh, Jharsuguda and Sonepur districts from 6 am to 10 am.
They said rallies and roadside meetings have been scheduled for Friday in the four districts.
Describing it as a matter of seriousness, Mishra said closure of Kalma barrage gates has resulted in acute drinking water scarcity in Western Odisha.
Earlier on June 3, chief minister Naveen Patnaik had written to his Chhattisgarh counterpart Raman Singh to instruct officials of Chhattisgarh water department to immediately open the barrage gates.
Following no response, Patnaik wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 6 seeking his intervention.

From Mississippi to South Carolina to Georgia, drought and water scarcity have damaged and devastated many communities in the South, as a result of climate change. But climate change won’t stop there. “We’re now living in a world of extremes on the Mississippi River,” Mayor Brant Walker of Alton, Illinois told E&E News last month. “We just don’t get normal spring rains anymore. We get huge downpours.” The community of Alton isn’t alone. Flooding has devastated communities from South Carolina to California in recent years, while drought and water scarcity have squeezed Georgia, Arizona, and other states. From floods to droughts, unprecedented climate changes are affecting all of our communities.Click To Tweet These are the kinds of impacts we’re seeing with climate change – and we may see more, now that President Trump is withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement. There’s no doubt that…

Water crisis, payment of dues to farmers dominate.
Uttarakhand
Dehradun, June 9 The issue of water scarcity and payment of pending dues to farmers by the sugar mills dominated question hour on the second day of the Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly today.
Raising the water scarcity issue being faced in Tehri, Independent Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Dhanolti Preetam Singh Panwar demanded to know what the government was doing to tackle the problem in Tehri.
In his reply, Uttarakhand Water Resource Minister Prakash Pant said the government was tackling the problem by coming up with various schemes such as water lifting and gravity charged schemes.
“Around four pumping schemes such as the Rs 15-crore Anand chowk scheme and the Rs 800-lakh (Sago Gadhera) scheme have been approved for tackling water scarcity in Tehri,” he said.
To another supplementary raised by Congress MLA Govind Singh Kunjwal regarding the number of lifting schemes and gravity based water supply schemes in Uttarakhand, the minister said around 110 schemes costing Rs 913.42 crore was under construction.
He said the government also launched an exercise to map water sources in the scheme.
The issue of payment of dues to the farmers by the sugar mills was raised both by BJP MLAs Deshraj Karnwal, Harbhajan Singh Cheema and Congress MLA Qazi Nizamuddin.

Increasingly, scientists and activists are enabling citizen observers to collect data and upload it to the cloud with the aim of pushing all stakeholders — government agencies, corporations and citizens — toward change.
Official rainfall data showed that rainfall was normal for those years and yet the farming lands were fallow and dry.” Additionally, says Umrbek Allakulov, Research and Development Officer at Water Integrity Network, government agencies and research centers in developing countries may not have the ability to monitor and test water quality.
Freshwater Watch has active projects in Delhi’s Yamuna river and Hyderabad’s lakes.
And people supporting citizen data gathering say they have seen outside data lead to change.
“The measurements were used as evidence to advocate policy change,” she says.
She hopes it’ll encourage citizens to log data about air, water and soil in the Climatix app.
Sometimes, needed information goes beyond simple observations on water levels or color; it can require doing a quick lab test on the go.
But the local administration and police department of Nalgonda were responsive: The water authorities promised to monitor the filtration plant and close off contaminated wells.
“When data is collected in India, it is not only about water and sanitation but also demographics,” says Das of Water Integrity Network.
Her mantra: “What we can measure, we can manage.” Chhavi Sachdev is a freelance reporter in India.

Reducing Dhaka’s water crisis.
WATER crisis is the last thing Dhaka’s people would expect in the midst of Ramadan, although the city has a history of frequently-interrupted water supply.
Every summer, people face the agonising shortage of fresh drinking water in some neighbourhoods – with oft-repeated excuses from the authorities.
However, water scarcity can be extremely inconvenient during Ramadan.
Besides, this is arguably the hottest season and residents of Dhaka are already irritated by excessive traffic jams.
Despite numerous steps being taken in the past to reduce occasional water shortages, the residents of Rayer Bazar are having a difficult time.
Recently, WASA introduced a 24-hour hotline for city-dwellers to file complaints regarding problems with water supply but the authority is yet to bring a long-term solution.
Since Dhaka lacks an effective strategy or the means to permanently stop its water problems, an early warning system based on emergency directives to guide citizens during the crises can be adopted and maintained annually.
Furthermore, the government should ensure maximum level of water supply at least for the month of Ramadan.
Apart from public health, water is everyone’s fundamental right and hence nobody should be deprived of it.