I have no teenage recollections of the river that flows through my place of birth and schooling. This is a most unhappy reflective statement from someone who now works for an organization that campaigns and advocates for healthy and flowing rivers. For as long as I can remember, the Yamuna, a putrid sludge like sewage canal has been the shameful refuse of Delhi, my home city.
Bharat Seth
Job title:
Former South Asia Program Coordinator
Personal bio:
Bharat Seth is our former South Asia Program Coordinator.
Date: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 - 05:35
In November last year, International Rivers’ team in South Asia and the Legal Initiative for Forests & Environment (LIFE) organized a two-day knowledge-sharing workshop to discuss the social and environmental implications of hydropower in India and Bhutan.
Date: Friday, January 9, 2015 - 02:45
“You can either be pro-environment or pro-development” is a futile binary statement that government officials often aim at people like me who work for environmental NGOs in India. They don’t understand integrated resources planning, soft-engineering or smart infrastructure. It’s barrages, dredged waterways and large hydropower dams, or, your river with all the fish in the world.
Date: Thursday, January 8, 2015 - 02:48
The first international visit undertaken by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who came to power in May 2014 with a landslide electoral victory and a personal mandate for development and governance, was to India’s tiny neighbour to the north east, the landlocked Himalayan state of Bhutan. This indicates the importance this kingdom holds for India.
Date: Friday, October 17, 2014 - 15:35
Prime Minister Modi says the Ganga will be a model river in self-praise. But neither he nor his band of ministers have cared to hold broader consultations in an attempt to understand how disastrous the initiatives planned can be not only on river ecology but also on people dependent on the river for their livelihoods.
Date: Monday, October 13, 2014 - 00:58
During a recent field visit, freelance multimedia journalist Thomas Clement produced a 5:45 minute video that attempts to capture the opposition to the cascade of dams that are being built or proposed on the Teesta River in India.
Date: Thursday, September 11, 2014 - 12:06
“Hi. This is Bharat from International Rivers. I’m calling regarding an email sent to you on August 4,” I said to a senior official in India's Ministry of Power over the phone. It had taken a few weeks of calling to finally get this Indian government official to answer my call.
Date: Tuesday, July 15, 2014 - 11:18
Earlier this year before the southwest monsoons set in, our regional team decided to pay a visit to the Indian state of Uttarakhand, which was ravaged by infamous floods last year that claimed more than 5,000 lives.
Date: Wednesday, July 2, 2014 - 03:07
In May earlier this year, around 50 people gathered in the commercial capital of Nagaland to support and promote off-grid renewable hydropower solutions in the ‘seven sister states’ of India’s northeast region. This area is endowed with hundreds of perennial streams that can be diverted to run micro hydro turbines less than one megawatt each.
Date: Sunday, June 29, 2014 - 22:31
In early June, a group of nearly fifty visiting engineering students walked down to the Beas River in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh where many large boulders jutted out over the water near the banks.
Date: Thursday, January 9, 2014 - 22:20
The upper riparian on a river often wears a hegemonic hard hat and seeks to appropriate every drop of water possible; water that flows to the delta is deemed “wasteful.” But when the hegemon becomes the hegemonized, or geographically disadvantaged, the hard hat is discarded for the baggy green to invoke the science of ecology.
Date: Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - 02:38
We arrived at Chadong village and went straight to the village headman’s home, on higher ground. It was half 10 in the morning. I recall the time as we were served lunch on arrival. Most families in Manipur – a state in northeast India – wake at dawn, eat soon after, and thus lunch is served well before noon.
Date: Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - 23:59
Earlier this year, in March, the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) asked four members of its Standing Committee comprising wildlife and conservation experts to carry out a site inspection for a 520 MW hydroelectric project on the river Teesta in the Indian state of Sikkim.
