After repeated squabbles with the civic administration over desilting of the Mithi river, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has now sent an ultimatum to the BMC that it will be doing the desilting work this year for the last time.

Both agencies have been at loggerheads for the past seven years over the desilting of a six-km stretch of the Mithi river, resulting in a delay in desilting and waterlogging in areas around that patch.

AHMEDABAD: Between January and April last year, there were close to 550 malaria cases in the city. This year during the same period there are more than 1,600 malaria cases - a number that is alarming considering the fact that these cases have surfaced way ahead before the onset of monsoons. The state health department and the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation ( AMC) have now sought help from the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP), Delhi and National Institute of Malaria Research in Nadiad to tackle the problem.

The civic administration will soon visit residential societies to urge residents to implement rainwater harvesting technology. With the slow progress of the rainwater harvesting technology, the civic body will also plan hoardings, advertisements and awareness campaigns to advocate residents regarding the project.

A senior official said ward level officials would be asked to visit residential societies to explain and urge citizens to implement the rainwater harvesting scheme in their colonies.

Agriculture output topped the target by 7 million tonnes last year, thanks to good monsoon
After clocking a record food grain production of over 252 million tonne in 2011-12, the government now targets 250 million tonne of production in the crop year of 2012-13.

Due to the erratic monsoon in 2011 and rising summer heat, Maharashtra's water supply position has come down to 19 per cent of the total capacity of dams in the State.

Last year, it was 32 per cent and in 2010, it was 21 per cent.

It is mostly caused by deliberate neglect and designed failure of the way we manage water and land

It’s drought time again. Nothing new in this announcement. Each year, first we have crippling droughts between December and June, and then devastating floods in the next few months. It’s a cycle of despair, which is more or less predictable. But this is not an inevitable cycle of nature we must live with.