Can Gujarat build a pipeline that costs more than its annual outlay? Himanshu Upadhyaya says most of the promises of Narmada waters are simply exercises in public relations.

The Supreme Court keeps issuing orders on water disputes, but these rarely prevail. Videh Upadhyay urges the Court to seize the opportunity to change that, permanently.

In Tamilnadu, the temple tanks were once the heart of water management, and ensured riparian rights and sustainable use. But community care has long since vanished, and with it, so has the water. Lalitha Sridhar reports.

In the 2004-5 budget speech, the finance minister announced subsidy support for a hundred thousand water harvesting units. But governments continue to miss the point that decentralisation must allow citizens choice over institutions too, not merely access to new schemes and loans, says Sudhirendar Sharma.

Researchers around the country gathered to discuss solutions to the key water-related problems India faces. From conflicts between states, to water-saving agricultural practices, to receding glaciers, a number of issues were raised, and their economic and social implications weighed. Surekha Sule reports.

Over the last five years the farmers of two rural districts outside Chennai have started selling water from their irrigation wells to the city's water utility. This, to the detriment of cultivation in their own lands and those of neighbouring farmers, reports Krithika Ramalingam.

The Permumatty grama panchayat of Kerala's Plachimada village has appealed to the Supreme Court for revocation of a recent High Court order granting permission to Coca Cola to draw water upto 5 lakh litres per day. The High Court's ruling was based on an investigation that has raised more questions than answered. P N Venugopal and M Suchitra report.

This B-school's 96-acre campus occupies two steep hillocks. There is no independent water source for the entire institute and the average daily water consumption exceeds one lakh litres. The absence of pre-monsoon showers in mid-Kerala is causing worry elsewhere, but IIM-Kozhikode shows no signs of anxiety. Shree Padre finds out why.

Despite numerous prohibitions and regulations, sand mining continues rapidly on the riverbed of the Bharathapuzha. Water tables have dropped dramatically, and a land once known for its plentiful rice harvest now faces scarcity of water, as locals are split between conservation and livelihood. Deepa A reports.

An environment magazine recently carried a Gujarat government-funded NGO's advertisement portraying vast tracts of Saurashtra and Kachchh supplied with drinking water through pipelines forking off of the Sardar Sarovar Canal. Reports in the print media were telling quite a different story. Himanshu Upadhyaya digs deeper.

Shortage of water has been a tale of woe in Rajasthan for decades. But this year, the state's largest circulated Hindi daily, Rajasthan Patrika, has motivated around 155,000 volunteers to clean up 388 discarded traditional ponds and wells. Ramesh Menon reports from Jaipur.

In a nation where floods and drought continually cause havoc in different regions, two recent events, one in Rajasthan and the other in Karnataka have brought citizens and media together to resolve acute water shortages. These are hopeful signs. The India Together editorial.

A senior advisor with the World Bank is quick to hail the establishment of water entitlements in India, but is it too quick? Merely promising quotas of water on paper, or setting up 'rights' that cannot be enforced, is hardly the same as actually providing water to meet citizens' needs, observes Videh Upadhyay.

Mere participation as labourers is not enough to mainstream women's concerns in water management. Instead, they must be engaged as partners, whose roles are located in larger social and political structures. Sudhirendar Sharma reviews Flowing Upstream, a collection of essays drawing attention to this distinction.

In parts of Kerala and Karnataka, kattas (check-dams) have been making a quiet comeback, thanks in no small part to the efforts of farmer-journalist Chandrasekhar Yethadka. Recently, a few village councils have been footing some of the costs of these traditional structures, giving a fillip to conservation and reliable irrigation. Shree Padre reports.

The Coke saga in Kerala took a new twist towards the end of 2005 when the company expressed its interest to shift out of Plachimada to a nearby industrial estate where water consumption may be less contested. Meanwhile, the tussle between Coke and the Perumatty Panchayat awaits resolution at the Supreme Court, reports P N Venugopal.

With its enchanting greenery and network of backwaters and rivers, Kerala is thought to be a water-plenty state. After all, Kerala gets 6 months of rainfall, 2.5 times higher than the national average. Despite this, the state has been experiencing water scarcity, with conditions worsening in some regions. P N Venugopal analyses the causes.

In the arid west of Gujarat, there are still those who place their faith in the Sardar Sarovar project, and its promises of water for their region. The government has paid little attention to the local water resources in the region, but this has not deterred them. Himanshu Upadhyaya reports on a petition before the Supreme Court.

While the LDF government was quick to ban colas in Kerala, it mounted only a mild defense when this was challenged in court by the manufacturers of the drinks. Ignoring evidence of groundwater depletion and contamination, it argued only that the drinks were unsafe for consumption. M Suchitra and P N Venugopal report.

A Pepsi bottling plant in Kerala is extracting excess groundwater and may be subjecting it to contamination risks, a state government study had reported several months ago. Despite meeting five times, a state assembly committee has not acted. M Suchitra digs deeper.

The second coming of the Congress government in Andhra Pradesh thus has opened the doors for total private control of Godavari waters. Sir Arthur Cotton's legacy is likely to continue without critical examination, writes R Uma Maheshwari.

This dairy in Palakkad, Kerala spent over Rs.2 lakhs buying water from outside in 2008, since borewell yields were insufficient. This year they will spend nearly eight-nine times less, because of a rain pond. Shree Padre has more.

For millions of people, the law does not explicitly direct that they are entitled to safe water. A United Nations resolution passed in July this year is about to change that. Shripad Dharmadhikary reports.

The hydropower industry's Protocol is an inside job - developed by the industry, to be administered by its consultants, who will work closely with project promoters, writes Shripad Dharmadhikary.

The new Bureau of Water Efficiency should push for Central laws that can be adopted without dilution by the states, and work with specific industry segments to address their water deficits, writes Chandrashekar Hariharan.

A noteworthy shift in the new Draft Water Policy is the clear preference of the Government to privatise the water sector. This goes against all the evidence so far, writes Shripad Dharmadhikary.

For the third time in less than a decade, the dams that irrigate much of north-west India have been depleted to critical levels, as their management stumbles without clear policy directions. Himanshu Thakkar reports.

A recent report by the UNICEF highlights the most critical issues faced by the Indian water sector today, urging the establishment to break new ground in resource management and utilization. Shripad Dharmadhikary discusses the key findings.

The extent of submergence of villages and farmland in the Narmada valley under the backwaters of Sardar Sarovar dam increases with successive monsoons. Himanshu Upadhyaya stresses the need for a more realistic and effective look at solutions to the woes of the region.

The Rs 6300-crore plans for development of the Ganga waterway from Allahabad to Haldia should be undertaken only after meticulous examination of its impact on various elements of river ecology. Debadityo Sinha explains why.

New regulations from the environment ministry require coal-based thermal power plants to stick to legally binding limits for water consumption. Shripad Dharmadhikary examines the implications of these rules.

How do we bring back to our streets the Indian identities they once had? The answer lies in documenting and codifying the many elements of construction in the past, for evolving an architecture with an Indian identity, writes Kiran Keswani.

Ramesh Ramanathan on participatory democracy and public governance

Fourth in a series of articles adapted from the book Holding the State to Account by Samuel Paul of the Public Affairs Center, Bangalore, the author looks at the weaknesses in civil society as a factor for our ailing public services.

Jayaprakash Narayan clarifies on the critical need for decentralization of political power by pointing out the linkage between voting and the public good.

Concluding article of the series on "What ails our public services?" adapted from the book Holding the State to Account by Samuel Paul of the Public Affairs Center, Bangalore.

Beginning a series of articles on Civil society and governance, Jayaprakash Narayan connects the dots that brought activism into the Indian state in 1947, the results of which we are feeling even today.

The nults and bolts of local democracy lie in a community-government partnership. Ramesh Ramanathan proposes a business model.

Concluding the six-part series on civil society and governance, Jayaprakash Narayan lays down the framework for addressing India's governance crisis.

Autonomy will not improve the IPS, instead it will simply make a system already tainted by its conduct even less accountable, says Arvind Verma.

Members of parliament find many uses for their constituency development funds, but a number of these are simply photo-ops for the incumbents.

Year after year, Police refuse to act and file thousands of complaints made by citizens. Arvind Verma looks at the FIR mechanism that forms the basis of criminal investigation.

For the Railways, the key to crime-control is to concentrate on the smaller issues of orderliness, abatement of nuisances, petty crimes and rule of law.

Information technology can and must expand from merely being an agent of the trickle-down effect to active resource mobilization, says Krishna Rupanagunta.

Elections 2004 are around the corner and Jayaprakash Narayan points out that the 'hate-politicians' attitude is perilous to democracy itself.

At the heart of the PM's proposed shift in economic direction are efficient service delivery and local governance. He needs to begin down this road by showing a willingness to scrap top-down Delhi-driven schemes.

We need to think about how RTI could be used to ensure more "systemic" solutions, where the performance of our government institutions are discussed in a regular, predictable manner says Ramesh Ramanathan.

An "All Fun, All Day Long, For Everyone” amusement park in Kerala's Kochi region has not been fun for the local panchayat, reports M Suchitra.

The Maharashtra elections are just around the corner and analyses are beginning to emerge on candidate background disclosures. But not long ago, 541 MPs were elected to the Lok Sabha. Samuel Paul and M Vivekananda of the Public Affairs Centre report findings from an analysis on our MPs' backgrounds.

In a recent lathi charge on protesting student activists, Kerala's police used electric shock batons. The state's model of development has many votaries worldwide, but the savageness in police actions on mass programmes does not seem to be going away, reports Venugopal P N.