DRP 070621: Local Water Options Stories from Five states

June 7, 2021February 20, 2026 SANDRP1 Comment

(Feature image A big main pond that has been constructed in the Phular village, Damoh. (Pic: Shahroz Afridi, News 18))

This week we would like to highlight some remarkable local water option stories from five states spread across India: Madhya Pradesh from Central India, Punjab from North India, Karnataka from South India, Rajasthan & Maharashtra from western India. These are stories just from this week among many others that show that local water options exist, they are the cheapest, sustainable, equitable, democratic and with least impacts and most appropriate in the climate change context. In a country like India where groundwater has been India’s water lifeline for over four decades now, these options are best suited for ensuring optimum recharge of groundwater aquifers at local level and sustaining those lifelines. Particularly when South West Monsoon is on our doorstep to gift its annual bounty to India. As UN starts the International Decade for Ecosystems Restoration with the theme of preventing, halting, reversing the degradation of ecosystems, these become even more important.

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Water on Wheels to Dying Fishes in Ganga River Basin in Bhagalpur

June 4, 2021June 4, 2021 SANDRP4 Comments

Guest Blog by Dr. Ruchi Shree (TMBU, Bhagalpur-Bihar)

Last year, I wrote three stories on dying Champa river in Bhagalpur and challenges/ prospects of its rejuvenation[i]. That exercise helped me in exploring the city through a river which used be an important waterbody in this region but now at the verge of extinction. Situated at the banks of river Ganga, the Bhagalpur city faces three to four major problems related to water and sanitation, namely, arsenic contaminated groundwater, falling water level, recurrent floods, open drainage, etc. This year, I pedaled (cycling) in the local vicinity to make sense of ‘piped water’ and its limitations in the city. One more concern was to document the growing ecological crisis in the university area as captured and reflected in this blog. This photo essay is based on my observations over a period of last three months in Nathnagar block of Bhagalpur (south-west part of the city). Bhagalpur, a “smart city” of south Bihar is close to Jharkhand. I visited the ward no. 13 and ward no.17 of the Nathnagar block to write this story. Two pictures (near Ganga) towards the end of the blog were taken in a different part of the city i.e. in Adampur area of Bhagalpur.

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Cloud Burst

Uttarakhand: Cloud bursts in May 2021

June 3, 2021June 4, 2021 SANDRP1 Comment

From the beginning of May 2021, Uttarakhand has started witnessing excessive rainfall events termed as ‘cloud bursts’. Worryingly the intensity and frequency seems on higher side this time. So far there have been about 24 reported cases of ‘cloud bursts’ in the state but the monitoring, prediction and mitigation efforts are lagging far behind.

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Indian Meteorological Department · Rainfall

Pre Monsoon 2021 season – State Wise, District Wise Rainfall

June 1, 2021June 11, 2021 SANDRPLeave a comment

In the just concluded pre monsoon season (March 1 to May 31, 2021) India received 155.2 mm rainfall, 18% above the normal rainfall of 131.7 mm as per the India Meteorological Department (IMD). This is similar to the case in 2020[i] when India received 158.5 mm or 20% above normal rainfall.

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DRP News Bulletin

DRP 310521: Worrying Dam Water Storage at the onset of SW monsoon

May 31, 2021February 21, 2026 SANDRP4 Comments

(Feature image source: Onmanorama.com)

It would be very useful and educative to look at the water storage levels of some of the major reservoirs of India even as India awaits the annual bounty of water from the South West Monsoon that normally officially starts on June 1, but this year may start on June 3 as the latest India Meteorological Department forecast yesterday, that is on May 30, 2021. While high storages at this point in time creates a possible Dam Flood hazard that India has been experiencing with increasing frequency with changing monsoon rainfall patterns and unaccountable reservoir operations, it also indicates the gross inefficiency of our use of water stored in these reservoirs if there is a lot of water there in the beginning of the annual filling period. It indicates that the storages created with such massive economic, social and environmental costs have not been optimally utilised in the just ending water year on May 31. Unfortunately, no agency is monitoring the water storages in these major reservoirs and asking as to why there is non optimal use of water and then addressing the reasons wherever they see such non optimal storages at the end of water year. SANDRP has been raising this issue for many years.

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DRP News Bulletin

DRP 240521: Campaign to protect Pune Rivers

May 24, 2021February 21, 2026 SANDRPLeave a comment

An active campaign has been going on for several months now to save the Pune Rivers from the so called “River Front Development” Project as can be seen the following stories of just last one month. The RFC supporters are also out to push multi crore project, as can be seen from the numerous stories being planted in the media on regular intervals. There is no doubt that the Pune Rivers will be destroyed and the city will face increasing flood disasters if the project goes ahead. One hopes the Civil Society campaign continues and judiciary steps in to stop this destruction at the earliest.

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Hydro Disaster

Deaths and disaster at NHPC’s Parbati-II Hydro project

May 22, 2021May 22, 2021 SANDRP4 Comments

In a tragic incident, 4 labourers were killed and one was injured after part of an under construction tunnel of NHPC’s Parbati-2 hydropower project collapsed on Friday evening around 4.30 pm, May 21, 2021[i]. This happened at Pancha Nalla in the Garsa (Bhuntar) Valley of Himachal Pradesh’s Kullu district[ii]. The accident happened when the labourers were doing drilling work in the 600m-long diversion tunnel (a sub tunnel of the main 31.52 km long tunnel[iii]). The whole area, where drilling was underway, collapsed. Four bodies were found buried under the debris. This description possibly shows signs of neglect of NHPC and the contractors.[iv]

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Dam Disaster · Uttarakhand

Himalayan Disasters: Early Warning Systems must, but much more needed

May 18, 2021 SANDRP1 Comment

Guest Article by Prof S P Sati

The suggestion of a robust early warning system always echoes as and when there is a disaster in the Himalaya. Hence, the murmuring of having a state of art early warning system after the February 7th 2021 Rishi Ganga disaster is nothing new.

Several concerned scientists of the country are considering of instituting a new centre using the state of art remote sensing techniques. The centre would be dedicated to the early warning forecasting in the Himalayan region. This is heard practically after every disaster since last two decades.

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DRP News Bulletin

DRP 170521: Dead Bodies in Rivers & Civilization

May 17, 2021February 21, 2026 SANDRPLeave a comment

The human dead bodies in the rivers and on the river banks are one of the many defining images of the Corona pandemic that India is in grip of currently. There is clearly complete failure of governments at several levels in this pandemic, starting from complete failure to have systems in place to ensure that the pandemic situation would not have become such a massive disaster. No explanation or accountability is likely to come our way from the governments. They are too busy suppressing the critical voices exposing the abject failure of the governments, building Central Vista project or harassing the elected governments ruled by other parties.

As one of the reports mentioned in this issue of weekly DRP Bulletin shows, similar scenes were seen also during the 1918-19 Spanish Flu pandemic in India. But we may remind our rulers and ourselves that a century latter our governance is supposed to have improved and the 1918-19 pandemic was several times much larger one. Moreover our governance today should be much better than the governance of the British Govt a century ago?

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DRP News Bulletin

DRP 100521: Velcan Holdings provide another evidence of unviable large hydro in India

May 10, 2021February 21, 2026 SANDRP1 Comment

Velcan Holdings Group is developing Heo and Tato-1 Hydropower projects with total installed capacity of 426 MW in Siang basin in Arunachal Pradesh since 2007. The international company with deep pockets and access to international capital markets has not been able to start work even in 2021. It obtained a number clearances, some of the like the CEA (Central Electricity Authority) techno-economic clearance has lapsed. No significant progress is seen in Land Acquisition as local people are rightly opposing. It is unable to find any buyers for the power to be generated, no one is ready to sign PPA (Power Purchase Agreement). The company questions if the low allocation to hydropower purchase obligations will at all help in making the projects bankable (clearly implying that the projects are not bankable currently). This is the state what it describes its Siang basin hydropower projects as the “the only hydropower projects of such size in India owned and developed by a foreign investor”, which “are amongst the most advanced private projects and present competitive techno-economic and environmental features”. The state of the rest of the large hydro projects will clearly be much worse. Why is the government pushing such unviable, destructive projects?

Read the excerpts from the company’s statutory filing in Europe on Apr 30, 2021 below.

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