Tawi Barrage & Riverfront Projects in Jammu destroying river, inviting disaster

May 11, 2024May 11, 2024 SANDRPLeave a comment

(Feature Image: a picture of Tawi Riverfront and Real Estate Development uploaded on Jammu Smart City website)

Tawi Riverfront Development (RFD) project in Jammu symbolizes the fallacy of most of the RFD projects in India. The city owes its historical relevance, cultural legacy and gradual prosperity to the river. But in return the Tawi has been witnessing typical urban river problems of gradual decline in flows, continual rise in solid and liquid waste pollution, encroachments and riverbed mining. And as is the case with most of urban rivers, instead of taking effective measures to address the existing threats, the government here has been pumping crores of rupees into an artificial lake and RFD project for over past one and half decade in a non-transparent and questionable manner.

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Sand Mining

Why Existing Rules, Regulations Fail to Deter Illegal Sand Miners of Ken River?

April 6, 2024May 1, 2024 SANDRPLeave a comment

(Feature Image: Screenshot of Bundeli Junction video report dated Nov. 19, 2023 on large scale mechanized, instream sand mining in Ken river in Banda district. )

Ken is lifeline of Bundelkhand and among key tributaries of Lower Yamuna basin. The river is relatively clean and free of industrial pollution. However, its existence is under threat due to catchment degradation and the proposed Ken-Betwa interlinking proposal. Apart from this, the river eco-system and dependent people have been at receiving end of large scale mechanized and unsustainable, mostly illegal mining practices for the past many years.

Some recent short video clips, media reports and satellite images have again revealed that sand miners continue to indulge in river destructive mining activities in government approved mine sites in three districts of two states namely Panna and Chhatarpur districts of Madhya Pradesh and in Banda district of Uttar Pradesh. The miners here have blatantly violated the existing mining rules, MoEF guidelines and NGT orders while the respective regulatory agencies have miserably failed to enforce the laws and ensure compliance.

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DRP News Bulletin

DRP 290124: Wetlands and Human Wellbeing: So little reflected in wetlands governance

January 29, 2024February 28, 2026 SANDRP1 Comment

(Chest nut clutivators removing water hycinth from Giri taal of Kashipur in US Nagar, Uttarakhand in April 2023. Bhim Singh Rawat/SANDRP)

As the world approaches the World Wetlands Day on Feb 2, we notice a proliferation of news related to wetlands, but mostly bad news in this week’s DRP NB: Loktak lake in Manipur facing impact of inland waterways project, the Supreme Court having to intervene for the Futula lake in Nagpur, TN Govt telling NGT that 38% of Pallikaranai marshland is under encroachment, in Bangalore, NGT is asking for response from KSPCB and others regarding the lake buffer zone encroachment. There is also a lot of bad news about the worsening state of our rivers, including Ganga.

One piece of good news is that people have come out with their own plan for restoration of Ennore wetland in TN. In Assam, Maguri Motapung Bill is regaining biodiversity after earlier being polluted by oil spill, but that is only control of damage earlier. Similarly, while it is good news that SC has intervened to protect Futula lake in Nagpur, but the fact that the govt wanted to encroach on it in the name of “temporary” construction is not at all good news.

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DRP News Bulletin

DRP 150124: The Catchment degradation in Cauvery Basin

January 15, 2024February 28, 2026 SANDRPLeave a comment

The study by Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore has brought to light one of the key reasons for the water problems of Cauvery basin: 12850 Sq km of Cauvery basin has lost natural vegetation over the fifty years between 1965 and 2016. The trend is likely to have continued, possibly at an accelerated pace in the eight years since 2016. It may be useful to assess the hydrological implications of this massive destruction of the Cauvery basin.

SANDRP has been highlighting that the reason for the more frequent floods and followed by water scarcity and drought, in spite of somewhat increased rainfall under changing climate is exactly this, the degradation of the Cauvery catchment, including destruction of local water bodies, groundwater recharging mechanisms and natural vegetation.

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DRP News Bulletin

DRP 181223: Varanasi’s illegal tent city inaugurated by Prime Minister in Jan 2023

December 18, 2023February 23, 2026 SANDRPLeave a comment

(Feature Image: Collage of Sentinel Hub satellite images of Tent City location in Ganga river bed in Varanasi from Nov. 26, 2022 to Dec. 11, 2023)

While the NGT putting a stay on the Varanasi Tent city and imposing a fine of Rs 25000 on MoEF for not responding to NGT about how the turtle sanctuary was denotified is welcome, we hope NGT takes it to its logical conclusion. It is strange, to say the least to see the NMCG telling NGT through its one page report dated Dec 13 2023 that the Varanasi Development Authority proposal dated Nov 28 2023 for tent city is under consideration! The Tent city companies were fined by NGT, but UP PCB is yet to do anything to collect the fine. Most interestingly, the Prime Minister, no less, inaugurated the tent city project on January 13 2023, over 11 months back! And very shockingly, none of the National Media is even reporting this remarkable situation.

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DRP News Bulletin

DRP 041223: Groundwater recharge increased in India?

December 4, 2023February 27, 2026 SANDRPLeave a comment

(Feature Image: Cover photo of the National Compilation of Dynamic Ground Water Resource Assessment Report by CGWB)

There are at least two headline numbers of Government of India’s Dynamic Groundwater Resource Assessment Report 2023 released by Union Minister on Dec 2 2023, that seem counter intuitive and misleading. These are exactly the issues we also raised about the 2022 report too. Firstly, the PIB Press Release that accompanied the report release says India’s annual groundwater recharge in 2023 has increased by 11.48 BCM compared to the same in 2022.

Secondly, it says the groundwater situation has improved in at least 226 of the 6553 assessment Units across the country. Both seem counter intuitive and possibly misleading in the face of increasing groundwater use, depleting levels, worsening quality of groundwater and our increasing over dependence on groundwater.

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Fish, Fisheries, Fisherfolk

World Fisheries Day 2023: Resistance and Struggles of Fisherfolks

November 21, 2023November 22, 2023 SANDRPLeave a comment

(Feature Image: A Konda Reddi tribe rowing a Dhone, a traditional boat, in the Godavari near the Papikonda hills in Alluri Sitarama Raju district. Photo Credit: T. Appala Naidu/ The Hindu)

On occasion of World Fisheries Days 2023, this compilation of important developments from 2023 highlighting the ongoing resistance and struggles of inland as well as coastal fisherfolks in India whose lives and livelihoods have been significantly affected by destructive developmental projects including dams & hydro power projects, increasing pollution and encroachments of water bodies, mechanized mining of sand from rivers & coastal areas, unsustainable fishing and invasive fish species.

The compilation first lists ten most remarkable developments on the issue and then covers the other relevant incidents in section wise manner. In the first part of the series we have highlighted ten positive stories on river fish and fisherfolks of India. The third part has covered the mass fish death incidents in India that have occurred during past one year.

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DRP News Bulletin

DRP 010523: Water bodies census welcome, but how reliable?

May 1, 2023February 27, 2026 SANDRPLeave a comment

While the publication by the Union Jal Shakti Ministry of the first water body census of India is not only welcome but urgently required, the usefulness of the census findings will depend on the quality of the information in the report. Firstly, such a census should have been conducted in a bottom up way, starting from villages in rural areas and ward in urban areas. That way, the census findings would have not only been more reliable, but also the process would have helped create greater awareness about the water bodies and issues surrounding them.

In case of Karnataka, as the report below shows the survey by the Tank Conservation and Development Authority and Karnataka Public Land Corporation in 2021 showed the state had 40483 water bodies, whereas the Jal Shakti Ministry census of 2022 says the state has just 26994 water bodies, a huge 13489 less than the 2021 census. Clearly so many water bodies cannot disappear in a year. As some experts from Karnataka have asked, is the Jal Shakti Census a deliberate attempt to show that a much lower number of water bodies exist, allowing encroachers to go ahead to destroy water bodies not registered in the census?

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DRP News Bulletin

DRP 030423: IRENA confirms bleak future of Large Hydro globally

April 3, 2023February 27, 2026 SANDRPLeave a comment

(Feature Image: Graph showing annual growth in hydro power capacity in MW. Source: Rivers Without Boundaries, April 01, 2023)

The annual Renewable Statistics 2023 report from IRENA (International Renewable Energy Agency) says that globally, only 1.6% was added to the hydropower capacity in 2022, that too two thirds in non-democratic China. The capacity added in rest of the world outside China in 2022 was 7.3 GW, lowest figure in last 15 years. Similarly 99% of additional capacity added in pump storage projects in 2022 was in China. The report from IRENA also says that 97% of hydropower finance comes from public or government sources and private sector seems to have little enthusiasm for this sector. The projections for future painted in the report is no better. This is broadly in line with our lead story in DRP News Bulletin last week (dated March 27 2023) painting bleak future of large hydropower projects.

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Sand Mining

2023: Riverbed Mining Deaths & Violence in South India

March 21, 2023March 21, 2023 SANDRPLeave a comment

(Feature Image: The spot where the 7 girls were drowned (in sand mine pit) at A. Kuchipalayam, near Cuddalore, in Tamil Nadu on June 5, 2022. The Hindu)

This report (fourth part of our series on this subject in 2023) summarizes the detailed compilation tracking the human death toll and violent incidents related to illegal and unsustainable riverbed mining activities in Southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in 11 months between April 2022 and February 2023. The first three parts of the series have covered sand mining related human casualties and violence in North, East and West Zones for the same period.

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