When the rain gods do not send water for irrigation, farmers look downwards, at groundwater, for help. But, years of groundwater exploitation and lack of recharging, has led to a fall in the water tables. For instance, in north and central Gujarat, water tables have dropped to 20m per decade since 1974, as per a study by the Central Ground Water Board. If this continues, extracting groundwater will get more expensive because we have to dig deeper, or worse, groundwater will be only a myth for future generations.

Wetlands purify water through natural processes where aquatic plants act as bio-filters. Plants absorb phosphates and nitrates from the water and roots help to put back oxygen into the water. Constructed wetlands are a cost-effective method of treating wastewater and polluted water bodies. These are low cost solutions and can be easily made or replicated.

Water is the essence of life, and we need to adopt practices to save and reuse it

How the life around the Yamuna River changed with time and people Tributaries of the Yamuna flowed through the city and several rulers tapped the streams and fed the water through massive sluices into tanks, to provide water for their people. Today, these tributaries have dried up and become cemented tunnels underneath the city that carry sewage to the Yamuna.

Every monsoon the incidences of caving in increases. Nature or human activities–who is to blame?

It is said that when the British Governer General Warren Hastings brought the water hyacinth to India in the 18th century, thinking it was a flower, he couldn't have imagined that was actually a deadly weed. 

In the guise of development, what allows us to be callous with earth's resources? A study conducted by Indian Institute of Soil Science shows that majority of the soil in India is deficient in secondary nutrients, such as sulphur, and micronutrients, such as zinc, boron, iron, copper and manganese. The question then is how nutritious can our food be if it is grown on malnourished land? Many other villages are suffering, like Jaduguda and Kolaghat, because the polluter does not take the responsibility of the waste, burdening locals with unseen consequences...

Why is the Indian monsoon so slippery? The monsoon of the Indian subcontinent is also shaped by the heating of the Tibetan plateau, the shape of continents and mountains, Eurasian snow cover, temperature difference between eastern and western flanks of the Indian ocean, and, arguably the most important, El Niño (“little boy” in Spanish as this event occurs around Christmas), a weather event triggered by a greater heating of the eastern Pacific near Ecuador than its western counterpart. A strong El Niño, more often than not, implies a weak monsoon. In the last 100 years, 19 out of 43 deficient monsoon years were …