Millions of Indians are facing a new health risk. Increasing water scarcity is forcing farmers to grow vegetables and fodder using untreated sewage waste water across urban and rural cities.

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FAAI) has in the past issued several warnings on pesticide residues and crop contaminants, including aflatoxins, patulin and ochratoxin in Indian fruit and vegetables. These pesticides are known to adversely effect the nervous system and can result in lung damage and cancer

Despite efforts and “huge investments”, pollution level in Ganga and Yamuna continues to increase unabated, a Parliamentary panel on Friday said and slammed the environment ministry for only adopting an “engineering centric” approach to deal with the situation.

The standing committee on environment and forest in its latest report on demands for grants (2012-13) of the environment ministry said, “The quality of Ganga water is going down day by day.”

Lack of rainwater harvesting finishing many resources

A large water body at Dhulsiras village in South-West Delhi is an example of what a water body should not be. Littered with plastics and other refuse, moss-covered and encroached on all sides, this water body is also an example of poor management and utter neglect. “It was a fairly large water body but residents gradually began to fill it up and to create more space for their houses and cattle, and whatever remains of it today is used as a littering bin,” said Rakesh Kumar, a resident of a nearby village and a volunteer with non-government organisation Natural Heritage First.

The Delhi high court on Tuesday warned civic authorities it would summon the city’s environment secretary if its directions on construction of special permanent enclosures on the Yamuna bank are not taken seriously.
Justice G P Mittal pulled up the civic authorities for failure to build the enclosures for immersion of idols and other items during festivals to ensure the river doesn’t get choked.

Per capita availability of water in the country has declined to one-third in the past 65 years, the Water Resources Minister, Mr Pawan Kumar Bansal, informed the Rajya Sabha on Monday. Enough water was still available if the scarce natural resource was used judiciously, he said during Question Hour.

“A national water policy is on the anvil. I will announce that soon.”

New Delhi: Delhi Metro has again drawn the ire of environmentalists over construction of a bridge parallel to the existing Nizamuddin Bridge. This is not the first time DMRC is embroiled in a green row. Despite a condition set by the Yamuna Standing Committee that no labour camps, construction material yards or batching plants can be built on the floodplain or river bed for the project, DMRC has flattened the area in the intersection of the bridge and Ring Road in violation of norms.

India, to put it euphemistically, is awash in its own ‘crap’ — a word derived from old Dutch to mean excrement. While accurate to an alarming degree, coming soon after the euphoria over the Agni missile tests, the discomfiture is evident.

The project, to be launched in the second week of May, has been named after socialist icon Dr Ram Manohar Lohia as he had always raised the issues of farmers, according to PWD and Irrigation Minister Shivpal Singh Yadav. Giving details of the project to expand irrigation facilities across the state, Yadav said on Saturday that the government has earmarked Rs 3,000 crore for setting up new tubewells in the state.

Arsenic contamination of ground water from Yamuna floodplains in Delhi is several times the permissible limit and the prime culprit for this poisoning is fly ash and other residue from Delhi’s thermal power plants, a study by the Department of Geology at Delhi University (DU) has found. “Samples were collected from the Yamuna floodplains, one of the most important ground water recharging sources in the city, to study the level of arsenic content in it.

Uttar Pradesh PWD and Irrigation minister Shivpal Yadav has issued directives to clear the Yamuna floodplain land in Gautam Budh Nagar. The vast tract of land is owned by the state’s Irrigation department and has allegedly been gobbled up by land sharks. Several farm houses have come up in the ecologically-sensitive Yamuna catchment area.