The Oscar host’s bit involving children posing as accountants reinforced stereotypes and drew widespread condemnation online.
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Groundwater Governance in Andhra Pradesh
Sustainable groundwater utlisation is critical to rural livelihoods. Credit: FAO, Bharathi Integrated Rural Development Society
By Shyam Bahadur Khadka
NEW DELHI, Feb 29 2016 (IPS)
India is the largest user of ground water in the world. But reliance of this overexploited resource has reached its limits in many parts of the country. Nowhere is this more evident than in the drought-prone districts of Rayalseema, uplands of Prakasam, Krishna, East-West Godavari, parts of Nellore, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam in the state of Andhra Pradesh (AP). Forty per cent of the state’s irrigation needs are met through groundwater. In the drought-prone Rayalseema region – which comprises Chittoor, Anantapur, Kurnool, Prakasam and Kadapa districts — dependence on groundwater for irrigation is particularly high. The water crisis is also most severe in this region.
In Rayalaseema, groundwater-linked irrigation has become an unviable source for many small farmers. There has been a sharp decline in groundwater levels, which has affected the livelihood system, food security and nutrition of the farmers. In Chittoor and Anantapur, groundwater levels in fact have reached a critical point making well-failure a common occurrence. Drilling depths in Chittoor district (Ramasamudram and its neighbourhood) averages 1,200 feet, with energising and pipeline costs touching Rs 650,000. As much as 90 percent of drilled wells fail or do not yield any water. In Anantapur, 95 per cent of the newly drilled wells reportedly fail.
Lakhs of wells have either dried up or become un-operational because of deteriorating quality or due to high level of inefficiency. Such failures are likely to increase over time and can emerge as a major economic, societal and environmental concern. It is a no-brainer that drying up of a bore-well impacts food production, leads to loss of livelihood for several dependent families, causes indebtedness and leaves behind a hole in the ground that can be a potential source for contamination. In Prakasam, Kurnool and Anantapur districts, and in coastal areas and major cities and towns, groundwater contamination is fast expanding to new areas and there is environmental degradation.
To address this critical issue elsewhere in India, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) led initiative — Andhra Pradesh Groundwater Systems (APFAMGS) — implemented in five districts of AP deserves serious consideration. APFAMGS provides an ideal framework for designing new decentralised strategies to initiate local self-governance for effective and sustainable management of groundwater resources. AP believes that the prevailing drought and the associated groundwater distress offer an opportunity to use the APFAMGS model for designing new de-centralised strategies. This improves groundwater management and incomes of small and marginal farmers.
FAO and its local partners implemented a very successful APFAMGS project in drought-prone districts of Rayalseema and Mahbubnagar and Nalgonda districts in the newly constituted state of Telengana APFAMGS developed a participatory hydrological monitoring programme to build farmers capacities with the requisite knowledge, data and skills to understand the hydrology of groundwater resources. The project facilitated formation of Groundwater Monitoring Committees—638 farmer committees at the village-level that monitored groundwater resources. These committees were then federated into 63 Hydrological Unit Networks at the hydrological unit level.
Groundwater Monitoring Committees in each hydrological unit estimated the total groundwater resource available and worked out appropriate cropping systems that matched with water availability. The Committees then disseminated the information to the entire farming community within each hydrological unit and acted as pressure groups. It encouraged appropriate water saving and harvesting projects, promoted low investment organic agriculture and helped formulate rules that would ensure inter-annual sustainability of limited groundwater resources. In a majority of the pilot project area (638 villages across seven districts)., the results have been very positive.
The success of this initiative has been noted in World Bank’s Study and Technical Assistance Initiative on Groundwater management in India:
“APFAMGS presents an instructive case study in the “how-to-do” of community-based groundwater management, with its emphasis on participatory rather than passive information gathering, use of non-formal means of education, attention to capacity building and social mobilization rather than physical solutions, generation of a culture of empowerment through engagement of all segments of the community, and respect for armers’ ability to process crucial information of direct relevance to them…. The reductions in groundwater draft in APFAMGS are not coming from altruistic collective action, but from the individual risk management and profit-seeking decisions of thousands of farmers. This makes the APFAMGS model robust and replicable, as no authoritative leadership is required for enforcement of compacts. A major lesson, therefore, is that community-based groundwater management need not require sacrifice.”
The FAO evaluation report on the APFAMGS project said that:
“APFAMGS experience is a breakthrough in the management of groundwater and in securing livelihoods of poor farmers in India: since both are key concerns of the central Government of India and of many State Governments, the approach should be adopted and mainstreamed in the Government’s policy and development work.”
Based on the successful experience in using informal grassroots organization, the Government of Andhra Pradesh and FAO recently agreed to expand the pilot that will involve village level Gram Panchayats upfront in governing water resources. This pilot operates with a very limited funding: total estimated budget for this FAO-led initiative is Rs 35,345,300 or about US$ 534,240. Of this, the state government’s share is pegged at Rs 23,778,500 (US$ 359,409). This is mainly for buying equipments for monitoring water levels, including those that are needed for monitoring rural water supply. FAO’s investment has focuses more on the ‘softer’ side such as hiring village level co-ordinators, farmer’s training, expert consultancy and administrative support and is estimated at about Rs 11,566,800 or US$ 174,831.
Concurrently, FAO is actively looking for partners who are interested in scaling-up the model based on informal organization that has already proven to be effective in managing the demand for fastly depleting groundwater.
* Shyam Bahadur Khadka is FAO’s Representative in India
Garbage, Garbage Everywhere, but…
By Francesco Farnè
ROME, Feb 29 2016 (IPS)
Imagine a river bursting its banks and flooding entire cities and towns. But when the river is made of malodorous garbage and is in Beirut, this is a stark and dramatic situation affecting the city’s 2.226 million people.
It all started in July 2015, when the Lebanese administration closed the major landfill of the city. Since then, trash is being piled all over the streets of Jdeideh in Beirut’s northern suburbs. This river of garbage grew steadily, as reported in recent days by a wide section of news media, including Al Jazeera, CNN and Reuters. Thousands of kilometers away in Pakistan, a very similar situation is reported by Dawn.
Unresponsive State
By Hajrah Mumtaz
This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan
IT may have been an unconventional form of protest, but it certainly echoes the frustration and helplessness many in Pakistan feel, especially if they happen to be cursed with an honest nature which in this jungle can often prove tobe ahindrance.
On Thursday, a man named Alamgir Khan filled a trolley with rotting garbage and was arrested (he was granted bail later) as he was attempting to dump it in front of the Chief Minister`s House in Karachi`s `red zone`. This was his last-resort idea to try and attract the attention of the head of the provincial government to the unsanitary condition that plagues the city: the malodorous piles of waste in every locality, the inability of most citizens to walk down a street without being assailed by stench. Try and see how you lil
Had he succeeded in placing his consignment of filth at the city administration`s doorstep, where the great and the good wouldn`t help but trip over it, would such an extreme step have made someone take notice? Unfortunately enough, I doubt it.
From some desk behind those high walls, a clean-up would have been decreed; and as those at the helm of affairs in administration zipped by in their cars with darkened windows, I don`t think they would have been paying attention.
After all, this was not Mr Khan`s first attempt to draw attention to the state of the city and its infrastructure. His earlier efforts under the #fixit banner gained a lot of publicity; he had taken the novel approach of stencilling an image of Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah next to piles of garbage and some of the innumerable open manholes and potholes in the city, with the demand that it should be fixed.
That caused enough of a stir in official circles for Mr Khan to allege police harassment, and the chief minister took enough notice to warn the relevant officials to `fix it`, but we`re still waiting for the news that the slug of officialdom has finally been stirred into any sort of action.
So what does a person have to do to get the state to tune in and actually perform some of its duties? Some traders in Karachi`s Saddar area must have been pondering over the same question earlier this month when they organised a `gutter fashion show` in the lanes inundated by sewage where their shops are located.
One of the shopkeepers told the media that it had been three months since the area had been flooded, and that `hundreds` of applications to the chief minister`s office and the Karachi Water and Sewage Board had netted no response. Now, their customers had dried up and their incomes were badly affected. Sothey placed a commode in the filth, and a picture of the chief minister next to it, and people sashayed barefoot down the `catwalk`.
There is truth to what the president of the Karachi Tajir Alliance Association of Bohri Bazaar told the media: that elected representatives `feel proud of going to the fashion shows of the elite class whereas slum residents do not have clothes to wear and are forced to live amid overflowing gutters. So I decided to arrange a fashion show featuring the misery of the common man`.
After this became news, shopkeepers in the area did say that a sanitation team visited and the area has become less flooded.
But elsewhere in the city, in other cities and towns, the problem of garbage and sewage accumulation remains. Does everybody have to resort to such humiliating inelegancies to get their administrations to do the worl< for which they were appointed? In terms of Karachi specifically, part of the problem is that state inattention, and the civic status quo, have solidified into a longterm bad habit. The city administrationdoesn`t care, and hasn`t done so for so long that many citizens have even stopped expecting it to care. If, once in a while, by some miracle, something that benefits citizens in terms of city infrastructure does occur, the generalfeeling is that of surprise.
Surely there must be a limit past which it would not be possible for people to tolerate their filthy environs. But that limit has come and gone, it is possible to argue. The trouble is the old one: those who are in positions to force a change either those in positions of administrations or those who form a powerful lobby by virtue of their positions in society aren`t really affected.
That only leaves the option exercised by residents of Skardu on Friday: tired of waiting for the administration to fix potholes in major roads, about 50 people picked up pickaxes and got to work themselves. Again, people told the media that they had repeatedly called upon the authorities to do the needful, but in vain. Which leaves the honest amongst us thinking, yet again, what do we pay taxes for? A placard held by one person there read: `The people will make roads, and will awaken the sleeping government.` But I wouldn`t hold my breath.
The writer is a member of staff. hajrahmumtaz@gmail.com
This odorous news is a clear sign of administrative and political failure and unresponsiveness to a serious health and hygiene issue for residents of these cities. Garbage stagnating around cities is a major threat to public safety which could lead to epidemics and polluted drinking water. Read some facts and figure on Water and Sanitation (SDG6): http://bitly.com/1T4ZjCU
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Trump sparks furore for tweeting Mussolini ‘lion’ quote – The Local
Trump’s official Twitter account retweeted a quote from an account under Mussolini’s nickname, Il Duce, which even has as its profile photo a portrait of the famously bald dictator with Trump’s wispy hair photo-shopped onto his hairless pate. The quote read: “It’s better to live one day as a lion than a thousand years as a sheep,” a saying often attributed to Mussolini, who was fond of the expression and used it in a 1922 speech.
Source: Trump sparks furore for tweeting Mussolini ‘lion’ quote – The Local
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