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06/11/2020 - 10:14

Water tanker lorry is a noticeable vehicle all around Chennai throughout the year. If anyone has been to Chennai it wouldn’t be so tough for them to spot the lorries roaming in the city leaking water all over the road. Being a Chennaite, I have quite often seen these scenes and I have also observed these lorries very closely.

23/04/2018 - 15:08

India’s water security is perched in a precarious position. Even by conservative estimates, 40% of people in India will not have drinking water by 2030. According to a World Bank report, at least 21 Indian cities are moving towards zero groundwater level by 2020. 

13/04/2018 - 11:08

A WhatsApp forward came the other day. The provenance was unknown and information scanty. It consisted of an image announcing a meeting under the aegis of CRRT (Chennai River Restoration Trust, a government-owned trust) and TNUIFSL (Tamil Nadu Urban Infrastructure Financial Services Ltd, a Public Limited Company).

03/11/2016 - 21:46

Recently, I had attended a meeting on the topic of "Privatization and Commercialisation of water in India" held in Bhopal on August 10th, 2016 organized by the National Alliance for People's movement and saw participation from activists and local as well as national NGOs.

21/10/2016 - 19:04

Chennai has zero community toilets.[1] Shocking, is it not? The Corporation of Chennai has somewhere between 800 and 1000 public toilets, some of which are located near low income settlements. None of these have been designed to be community toilets though.

13/10/2016 - 11:43

There is much to learn from the working of previously constructed community managed toilets. When it comes to public sanitation, it is the provision of facilities for the poorest that is often neglected. According to a 2011 census, only 46.9% of India’s homes have a toilet.[1] Open defecation is prominent among those who do not have access to private sanitation facilities and posses many health and safety risks.

06/10/2016 - 12:01

In March 2016, CAG and Real Charitable Trust (RCT), a Chennai based NGO working with communities on health, solid waste management etc.,inaugurated a project with a long-term vision of revitalising the Madhavaram Truck Terminal (MTT) by working with city government officials, sanitation workers, truck drivers and owners, vendors, small businesses working within the terminal to improve the infrastructure and services related to drinking water, toilets, bathing, washing and waste management.

28/09/2016 - 12:59

During the past decade and half India has been witnessing measures to reform the water sector based on the financial sustainability model put forward by the international institutions based on principles like full cost recovery, rationalisation of water tariffs, privatisation and public private partnerships across urban, rural as well as agricultural sub-sectors. The move is towards privatisation, commercialisation and commodification of water sector.

06/09/2016 - 12:38

The floods in Chennai has come as a serious warning from Mother Nature. The issue can be approached from various facets; its causes, consequences, the effect on people and how the city seems to have moved on. But is that it? Do problems come to us just so that we can rediscover our strength, capability and tolerance levels each time? My “tolerance” comes in quotes to highlight the significance of the word today as well as to how intolerance has become a bad term.