The cost of a delayed Teesta treaty

The cost of a delayed Teesta treaty.
Bangladesh shares 54 of its 57 transboundary rivers with India.
Bangladesh experiences severe water crisis in the dry and lean season in most of the shared river basins due to upstream intervention by India, which impedes the livelihood options of the river dependent communities of the country.
But the deadlock in transboundary water sharing is considered as an impediment to the bilateral relation between these two nations.
Among the shared rivers of India and Bangladesh, a water sharing treaty exists only for the Ganges, which itself took two decades of negotiation.
When India constructed the Gazaldoba barrage in the upper Teesta region and started large scale irrigation projects in 1989, the water flow in Bangladesh was severely reduced.
Whereas, due to enormous water scarcity, on Bangladesh’s side this figure stands at 20 percent of its total irrigable area, which turns worse during the dry season as a large share of water is diverted and utilised by India through the Gazaldoba barrage.
The 1,11,406 hectors of irrigable land in the Teesta basin area inside Bangladesh can be irrigated in the Aus and Aman season but during the Boro season, a large amount of land is kept uncultivated due to water scarcity.
During the last ten years, Teesta was entirely dried up five times, which has had enormous ecological costs.
Although delayed, if New Delhi comes up with optimum solutions and restores the confidence of Dhaka regarding transboundary water issues during the upcoming visit of our Prime Minister, it will definitely strengthen the bilateral relationship between these close neighbours.

Reviving traditional water bodies is essential for smart cities

Reviving traditional water bodies is essential for smart cities.
Most of the cities in India are grappling with the issue of demand and supply gap, with their administrations going beyond the city boundaries to lift water from distant sources to meet the rising demand.
Even one intense shower can lead to water-logging, as was seen in Gurugram city last year.
The problem these cities face is common: most of the traditional water bodies in the cities and towns have been ignored and today these water storage structures are no more than ruins or sites of archaeological value.
Photo: Archaeological Survey of India The structures were built to address the regular occurrence of problems like floods and droughts in India.
Traditional water bodies were built to harvest the rainwater and prevent any flooding into the city core and use this water for various purposes; even to tide over the situation of drought.
Poor management of these water bodies is one of the main reasons as is encroachment of the water bodies because of urbanisation and unplanned development.
In rural areas, there is impetus to adopt the watershed approach and construct farm ponds and other water-harvesting structures.
Rural India is still managing some of these traditional structures.
This initiative could be expanded to explicitly promote the revival of traditional water bodies to help better manage the water resources of the city besides reducing urban heat effects and promoting eco-balance, as intended in a smart city programme.

With civic body polls round the corner, politics over Shimla’s water woes heats up

While water scarcity is a routine affair in the town for the last several years, the prediction of a long and harsh summer and its early onset has put the residents on tenterhooks.
Reports say that after suspension of water supply from Ashwani Khud, the availability of water was reduced by seven to eight million litres daily (MLD).
SMC mayor Sanjay Chauhan and deputy mayor Tikender Panwar, both of whom are from the CPM, have pointed that the SMC is doing its best to address the problem and the situation will improve soon.
They added that Ashwani Khud supply that catered to 25% of requirement has been frozen because of contamination.
This has started pouring result and augmentation of Giri water supply has been successfully tested.” It has taken over seven months for the replacement work of laying over 2,000 metres of pipeline.
This initiative of the SMC will ease out the water problem but would not completely mitigate the woes as there is a huge gap between the supply and demand of water,” Chauhan and Panwar said.
Both these Left leaders have reiterated the commitment of the SMC to provide potable water to the city residents pointing out that the water supplied is being tested by different agencies.
Apart from the Congress and the BJP, the Left also has a strong presence at the local level.
Among the other elected members 12 were from BJP, 10 from the Congress and three from the CPM.
It was in April 2014 that the state Assembly passed the Bill clearing indirect elections for the posts of the mayor and deputy mayor in Shimla along with chairmen and vice-chairmen of municipal committees in Dharamsala,Solan,Mandi,Kullu and Nahan.

Water issue dominates Udupi CMC meeting

The issue of drinking water scarcity dominated the general body meeting of Udupi City Municipal Council (CMC) here on Friday.
Raising the issue, Yashpal Suvarna, councillor, said that the CMC had announced that it would be supplying water to the city on alternate days.
P. Yuvaraj, councillor, said that the tradition of supplying water on alternate days to tide over the summer crisis had started when the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was in power in the CMC.
The Congress had come to power just four years ago, he said.
Raghavendra, CMC Environment Engineer, said that water storage in the Baje Dam was poor when compared to last year.
But last year, the water-level in the dam reached the 3.31-metre mark on April 24.
At present, 15 million litres of water per day (mld) was being pumped from the Baje Dam so that water in the reservoir lasts till at least June 5.
K. Ganesh, Assistant Executive Engineer, said that the CMC had installed four telephone helplines to deal with water complaints.
As many as 70 complaints were received and all of them were attended to, he said.
Prashanth Amin, councillor, said that the CMC should cut off water supply to the neighbouring gram panchayats, when the city was suffering from water scarcity.

Tapping into the GCC’s water demand

Owned by Abdul Latif Jameel Energy, the company has been established to “tackle the challenges of water scarcity and contamination”.
Focusing on the provision of global solutions that will contribute to sustainable development in the water sector, Almar will help construct and operate water desalination and purification treatment plants in areas that need them most.
That’s some of the problems we have to face over the next few years.
At the end, we see that the consequences will be felt by the 1.2 billion people living in what we call scarcity areas, while 1.6 billion people will be really affected at an economic level.” While this paints a fairly gloomy picture, Cosin is adamant that Almar will be able to help regional governments and utility providers over the coming years, backed as they are by Abdul Latif Jameel Energy’s resources and capabilities.
The cycles are different, but the overall business concept is the same.” “The strategy with Almar is to develop, finance, build and operate the plants, and after a reasonable period of time, when the production is stable, sell the assets – but keep the operation and maintenance of those assets.” Cosin adds that although government budgets have tightened, the private sector has started to show greater interest in the water generation industry.
This will be giving us a very good solution to develop a new way for infrastructure development,” he says.
No one is starting from scratch, creating solutions with governments and utility providers, and finding out what is the best way,” Cosin elaborates.
“One important point for us with Abdul Latif Jameel Energy is the long-term vision that they have.
These projects take two to three years to develop.
“We decided to create this new platform about 10 months ago, with the possibility to use this extension of FRV in the water sector, in the very parallel areas that the water business needs to be in, which is the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.” Keeping this vision in mind, Cosin and Arozamena outline how they built and developed a team with the necessary experience in developing projects in the municipal and industrial sectors, while also recruiting personnel with the knowledge and experience to extend the PPP model, so often used in the municipal sector, into the industrial sector.

Udupi: Issue of water scarcity dominates CMC meeting, opposition disrupts

Udupi: Issue of water scarcity dominates CMC meeting, opposition disrupts.
No one has taken initiative about dredging work in the dam so far.
Replying to him, assistant executive engineer, Ganesh K said, “The water level in Baje dam has gone down to 1.17 metre.
Compared to last year, the water level in the dam is abysmal.
Everyday 15 MLT of water is spent for around 355 apartments in city.
CMC supplies water 12 to 15 hours a day.” Raghavendra, environmental engineer, said, “At present, 3.31 metres of water is available at Baje dam.
It is enough only for next 25 days.
If they keep the same measure, they can manage water supply till June 5.” Yashpal Suvarna and other opposition party councillors were seen disrupting the meeting for small reasons.
The ruling party councillors demanded apology for his abusive words and warned that he should not use such language in coming days and it was an insult to CMC.
Because of this, we have reduced pumping capacity to manage water for next two months.” Many councillors objected to water supply for panchayat area and demanded to connect cut off water supply to find solution for water shortage.

Bengaluru: Now, special ‘ambulances’ to meet water needs in rural areas

Bengaluru: Now, special ‘ambulances’ to meet water needs in rural areas.
The government has been encountering problems in streamlining drinking water supply to residential areas in the rural belt.
Therefore, it has been decided to press ‘water ambulances’ into service for proper management of water supply and redressal the problems on the spot.
One water ambulance (drinking water emergency service vehicle) will be functional within the jurisdiction of each of the zilla panchayats.
As per the order issued by rural water supply and sanitation department, these water ambulances will be obtained through outsourcing.
The expenses to maintain the service will be met out of the fund allotted for National Rural Drinking Water Scheme.
Staff having enough experience and technical expertise have to be appointed for receiving complaints, managing the ambulance and repairing it, as per the requirements and their emoluments would be met out of the above fund.
The scheme requires the officials to receive complaints at taluk and district levels and record the same in logbook or registration register.
For the purpose of maintenance of this service, space should be set aside in the divisional offices of rural water supply department, with one nodal officer at the district level to monitor its implementation.
The order has also stipulated that report should be submitted on the last day of every week about the functioning of water ambulance.

Water crisis, farmers` suicides are Congress` contributions: Govt.

Water crisis, farmers` suicides are Congress` contributions: Govt.. New Delhi: Lauding Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA regime as ‘pro-farmer government’, Union Human Resource and Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday alleged that water crisis and farmers’ suicide are contributions of the Congress Party.
Responding to a poser on Rahul Gandhi’s accusation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi neglected the farmers of the country while helping the rich, Javadekar said that he would not like to comment on the charges levelled by a ‘rejected’ Congress vice-president.
“I do not comment on those who are defeated and frustrated people.
Under Modi ji, there is a pro-farmer government and it is doing its work well,” Javadekar told ANI.
We are rectifying these things and we are confident of getting success,” he added.
Gandhi, who today met Tamil Nadu farmers protesting at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar for over two weeks, said it is Prime Minister Modi’s responsibility to listen to their problems and resolve them.
“The PM has given debt relief to richest people in the country, why not for the people who have built this country – the farmers,” he said in an apparent reference to liquor baron Vijay Mallya.
Earlier, DMK MP Kanimozhi also met the protesting Tamil Nadu farmers.
Tamil Nadu has not seen such a drought.
The farmers, who have been protesting in the national capital since March 21 with human skulls which they claim are of farmers who committed suicide, have been demanding that their loans from nationalised banks be forgiven, fair and just prices be set for their produce besides realistic solutions to address water scarcity in the state.

Law conference participants call for comprehensive land tenure policy

Accra, March 30, GNA – Participants and delegates of the maiden Law Conference of the Faculty of Law, University of Professional Studies, Accra, have called for a comprehensive national policy on land tenure system.
A communiqué issued at the end of the conference, noted that the Land Administration Project (LAP) should be reviewed and strengthened to capture a comprehensive land tenure system that would ensure that Ghanaians do not become landless in their own country.
It said the nation must jealously promote, defend and maintain the rule of law, constitutional democracy and good governance system, as the economic transformation and prosperity of Ghana could only be achieved through their existence.
The Conference, which was held from March 9 to March 10, to mark Ghana’s 60th Independence Anniversary was on the theme: “Ghana@60: Evolution of Law, Democratic Governance, Human Rights and Future Prospects.” The communiqué said there should be a continuous and active review of the 1992 Constitution with a view to ensuring that its provisions were in line with the democratic governance system.
It added that the 1992 Constitution should be translated into all the Ghanaian languages.
It noted that the composition and structure of the Council of State must be reformed to make it more meaningful in our governance system.
It said the position of the Attorney-General’s functions and powers needs urgent review.
The communiqué said the institution of chieftaincy still remained relevant in our governance system, but must be further strengthened.
It noted that State Owned Enterprises must be manned by competent and capable people who could help achieve the aims of the entities concerned, and not by ‘incompetent’ persons who were merely being rewarded for their party affiliation.
It said the criminal justice system as whole needed a major reform to include a transformation of the sentencing practice that would admit varied alternative sanctions.

Jordan’s Irbid water network to be expanded

Jordan’s Irbid water network to be expanded.
Mar 30,2017 AMMAN — Construction on a project to install and renovate water networks to improve the water supply before the start of the dry season in Irbid is under way, a government official said on Wednesday.
The new network is scheduled to be ready in three months, the official said, noting that the project seeks to improve water supply in communities hosting refugees.
He underscored that the renovation and installation of new water pipelines seek to ultimately link Irbid and the northern governorates to the national water carrier project, which plans to transfer 10 million cubic metres of water to the north annually to address the water shortage as part of the Disi Water Conveyance Project.
The ministry considers the national water carrier project as a mid-term solution to the country’s water crisis, according to the official, who noted that the desalination of Red Sea water under the Red Sea – Dead Sea Water Conveyance Project is the country’s long-term solution to water scarcity.
Under the first phase of the Red-Dead project, due to begin this year, a total of 300 million cubic metres of water will be pumped each year.
A total of 85-100 million cubic metres of water will be desalinated every year, while seawater will be pumped out from an intake located in the north of the Gulf of Aqaba.
In addition, a conveyor will be extended to transfer desalinated water, as well as a pipeline to dump the brine into the Dead Sea in order to stop its constant decline, estimated at one metre every year.
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