We track the journey of Mohan Kumar, a teacher who brought electricity and water to the Government Higher Primary School in Koravi and paid for it out of his own pocket Rashmi Patil Edex Live
His several initiatives like setting up a computer lab, making sure there is a steady supply of electricity and water, planting saplings and building huts in the school ensured that it looks no less than a private school.
Before working in Koravi, Mohan used to work in a government higher primary school in Periyapatna, near Mysuru district.
All for education: Mohan spent over Rs 17,000 to install the electric poles and procure other equipment for the school Mohan’s first initiative was to get computers to the higher primary school by pooling in funds from MNCs.
While the primary school was inside the village, the higher primary school was on the outskirts.
The primary school had all facilities including water and electricity which the higher primary school lacked.
When I approached the Karnataka Electricity Board for the provision of electricity, they said that they have to install eight electric poles to provide power to the school which is in the outskirts.
I had to write several letters to various government offices to get their approval for digging a borewell near the school.
Apart from this, the primary school was shifted to the same building as the higher primary school.
Mohan says, "The primary school was in a very old building inside the village premises.

South Africa is warming at twice the global average, according to the Department of Environmental Affairs.
This story provides striking examples pointing to a national crisis right up there with Eskom.
Enter the charity, Gift of the Givers, which has come to the aid of other South African towns in similar water-strapped states, including Beaufort West in the Western Cape.
“There are many grateful people in this town today,” Maclennan told Daily Maverick.
“In Beaufort West, leaks are estimated to see 40% of water waste away,” Western Cape local government spokesperson James-Brent Styan told Daily Maverick.
“These are, in my opinion, merely symptoms, not unlike Eskom, of the onset of total collapse of water infrastructure in SA,” Le Roy told Daily Maverick.
We are water-scarce in the entirety (of) South Africa,” he says.
Grahamstown / Makhanda residents queued patiently for their bottled water from Gift of the Givers.
“The establishment of an independent water regulator — like the National Energy Regulator for South Africa (Nersa) in the energy sector — is long overdue.” Le Roy says this body would be the first step towards “reinstating governance in the water sector”.
“Without these three steps we cannot arrest the implosion of SA’s water resources,” Le Roy warns.

From cutting down on electricity use to saving up nearly Rs 50 lakh from its gram panchayat fund for a purifying plant, how a Bhiwandi village, fought back to receive clean, drinkable water Until recently, the 40,000-odd residents of Shelar, a village in Bhiwandi, were a harried lot.
Leaks in their pipeline network meant that villagers received contaminated water, and that too, with poor force.
If that wasn’t bad enough, cases of residents suffering from water-borne diseases had become commonplace.
After decades of neglect at the hands of the authorities, the Shelar Gram Panchayat and villagers finally decided to take matters in their own hands, a few years ago.
The Shelar Gram Panchayat invested over two years into making the dream project of setting up the water purifying plant, a reality A fight for clean water Situated 40 km from Mumbai, Shelar has been facing the brunt of polluted and poor water supply for several years now.
Sandeep Patil, 27, the present sarpanch, said that around three years ago, the gram panchayat tried to get a separate water pipeline from the corporation.
"We started getting quotations from everyone in Mumbai, but all of them had given us a budget of more than Rs 3 crore," said Patil.
As a starting point, the gram panchayat decided to save the Rs 27 lakh that it received annually from the Central government, for at least two years.
We also got the villagers to assist them, in order to reduce the labour cost," said Bhoir, adding that the company finally agreed to install the plant with a budget of Rs 57 lakh.
Today, the plant purifies three lakh litres of water per hour.

Up to 23 million households (in over 292,000 villages) without electricity; 7 percent (43,000) villages without mobile services; 17 percent rural habitations without clean drinking water; 25 percent of 14 to 18-year-olds (nearly 88 million) in rural areas cannot read basic text in own language.
Of 640,932 villages in India (597,608 inhabited and 43,324 uninhabited), all inhabited villages have been electrified – according to the government, although this is unverified – but over 23 million households in rural areas are without electricity.
Of more than 219 million rural households, 195 million, or 89 percent, have been electrified, official data show.
Of 23 million rural households to be electrified, Uttar Pradesh leads the list with over 12 million households, followed by Assam (1.9 million) and Odisha (1.8 million), as on 22 August 2018.
The first mobile phone call in India was made in 1995; now, 23 years later, 43,000-odd inhabited villages do not have mobiles services as on 27 July 2018, according to government data.
Of 1,78,184 eligible habitations to be covered under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY, or the Prime Minister’s Rural Roads Programme), started in 2000 to ensure all-weather roads across villages, 31,022 or 17 percent habitations are yet to be connected, according to this reply to the Lok Sabha on 22 March 2018.
There is a 19 percent shortfall in health sub centres, 22 percent shortfall in primary health centres (PHCs) and 30 percent shortfall in community health centres (CHCs) at the end of March 2017, according to data from the Rural Health statistics.
The CAG survey found that 73 percent sub centres were more than 3 km from the remotest village, 28 percent were not accessible by public transport and 17 percent were unhygienic, IndiaSpend reported.
About 25 percent of the 14-18 age group (~88 million) in rural areas still cannot read basic text fluently in their own language, according to the Annual Status of Education Report, 2017 by Pratham, an advocacy.
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Hundreds of students of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University ,Yelwa Campus, staged a massive protest in the early hour of Friday, blocking the two main gates of the institution and other roads.
This, according to the protesting students followed continuous scarcity of water and perpetual absence of electricity as well as alleged exams malpractices by lecturers of the institution.
Adamu Mohammed, leader of the students told DAILY POST that water scarcity and lack of electricity were major hurdles faced in the institution.
“We have been suffering from acute scarcity of water and light to enable us read as we approach exams.
Apart from that, staff of the university were denied access to the premises while secondary school students of the University were also left stranded.
When DAILY POST contacted Mr. Zailani Bappa, the university spokesman, he confirmed that there has been water and electrical problems recently in the institution.
He said those challenges were caused by the explosion of the main transformer supplying electricity to the students.
Bappa assured that already, the management had procured a brand new transformer which was on the way, after which it will be installed in few a days.
On exams malpractices as alleged by the students, Bappa urged them to always contact various committees in appropriate places to channel their grievances instead of using campaign of calumny to divert public attention.
“The university has put in place various committees to received complaints from students where there is problem as a palliative measure to facilitate learning,” said Bappa.

On Wednesday, roughly two weeks after Hurricane Maria struck, just 50 percent of Puerto Rico had access to drinking water and only 5.4 percent had electricity. That information was clearly displayed on Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) website on disaster relief efforts in the U.S. territory.
FEMA explained to the Post that the information is still available in Spanish on a website maintained by the Puerto Rican government, www.status.pr. However, there was no comment about why the information was deleted from the main FEMA page.
Ricardo Rosselló’s office, FEMA spokesman William Booher said.
One subsection, which previously reported on electricity access, titled "Power Restoration and Fuel Impacts" was removed entirely. Other bullet points, including one reporting on water access, and a schematic titled "LOGISTICS SNAPSHOT for HURRICANE MARIA" were also removed.
President Trump and his administration have received intense criticism over his handling of the crisis in Puerto Rico as recovery efforts moves at a "glacial pace."

If you go to FEMA’s website detailing the federal response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, you’ll probably come away thinking that Puerto Ricans are in good hands and the relief effort is going well.
Of course, that’s because they removed a pair of noteworthy statistics that might damage that perception.
The Washington Post reported today that FEMA removed statistics about the availability of drinking water and electricity in Puerto Rico from its website.
More than 30 miles of roadway have been cleared, up from about 20 miles earlier in the week. About 65 percent of grocery stores have reopened, along with nearly all hospitals and dialysis centers. And 64 percent of wastewater treatment plants are working on generator power.
The Spanish-language site maintained by the office of the Puerto Rican governor, Ricardo Roselló, shows that just over half of the island has access to clean drinking water, and only ten percent of it has access to electricity at the time of this writing. These statistics show that recovery efforts in Puerto Rico aren’t all sunshine and rainbows—significant progress hasn’t even been made on getting Puerto Rican citizens clean water.
Trump has, in fact, made a concerted effort to blame Puerto Rico itself for the slowness of the recovery, pointing the finger at everything from their outdated power grid to the attitude of the people themselves.

EZULWINI – Over 190 million people are in dire need of access to electricity in southern African region, the King of Swaziland, Mswati III has revealed during the just ended SADC Energy Investment Forum here last week.
Mswati III the chairperson of SADC noted that currently the region is faced with several challenges which affect the live-hood of the people such as unemployment, insufficient electricity and water services that hinder the drive towards achieving industrialization goals.
He further stressed that it is disturbing to note that out of over 292 million people in the region, only 60 percent has access to safe drinking water while only 40 percent has access to adequate sanitation facilities.
The King he is hopeful that the national energy projects presented by Swaziland and those of the SADC Region will be able to attract funding and partnerships from financial institutions and investors.
She said the investment forum came at the opportune time in order to ensure that energy plays its rightful role in the region’s industrialisation drive.
Tax said the fact that 58 percent of the African population does not have access to electricity has serious negative implications for productivity, and therefore aspirations to industrialise.
“In the 21st Century women are still cooking with fuel wood and charcoal, spending many hours collecting wood and other biomass, thus denying them the valuable time for other productive activities.
“This happens when Africa and indeed the SADC Region has abundant supply of solar, hydropower, wind and geothermal potential, as well as significant amounts of natural gas and in some countries coal deposits”, said Tax.
The Executive Secretary said the region therefore has to move quickly to unlock the energy potential in order to accelerate the drive towards our goals of regional integration, through among others, a reliable base load power to drive industrial growth and thus economic prosperity and poverty eradication.
And for this to happen, SADC has to take advantage and effectively develop and utilize the abundant sources of energy through the emerging technologies and alternative business models that will facilitate investments in this critical socio-economic sector.

Much has been written about the building of hydropower dams in the upper reaches of the Mekong River and their role in causing droughts in the Mekong delta region in Vietnam.
The drought also had major economic, social and environmental impacts as it severely affected Vietnam’s coffee, rice and shrimp production and exports.
Last year’s El Nino-induced drought seriously reduced robusta coffee production in the central highlands and rice yields in the delta region.
But it can take steps to make agricultural practices more water-efficient.
As for the construction of hydropower dams by China, which many claim has been solely responsible for reduced water availability in the Mekong delta region, we must realise that demand for electricity and water in Mekong countries – China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam – is increasing steadily.
But will the push for hydropower cause more droughts in Vietnam?
After electricity is generated, water is discharged into the river.
This is to say, if dams are built only to generate electricity in the upper reaches of the Mekong and its tributaries in China, Laos and Thailand, they are unlikely to reduce the flow of water in the delta in the dry season.
So the riparian countries should urgently work on a coordinated and sustainable development plan for the Mekong region so as to realise the full potential of the river’s system.
Cecilia Tortajada is a senior research fellow at Institute of Water Policy at the same school, and editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Water Resources Development.

Scarcity of water in Sudan is known to cause conflict between and within communities.
In total, 200,000 people from 8 localities have benefited from a steady supply of water.
The benefits of solar water pumps Water scarcity and pressure on water resources have been highlighted as sources of conflict between tribes, pastoralists, communities and famers (UNDP and UNEP 2013).
Diesel pumps, which were used for water extraction before the installation of solar pumps, are a heavy polluter with large CO2 emissions.
In terms of efficiency, solar pumps provide 8,400 liters of water per hour in the five localities.
Many villages relied on hafeers for water collection.
In many cases humans and animals were sharing the water in hafeers, due to the lack of any other viable option.
Goal 6- Clean water and sanitation- water quality significantly increases as solar powered pumps extract from a deeper level.
Conclusion The application of solar water pumps in rural areas of Sudan has contributed to peace in communities.
Heshmati, A., S. Abolhosseini and J. Altmann (2015) ‘The Energy and Environment Relationship’, ‘The Energy and Environment Relationship’, The Development of Renewable Energy Sources and its Significance for the Environment, Singapore ;: Springer,.