Is the urban water system breaking? | The Hindu parley podcast

04/04/24 • 34 min

Bengaluru, often celebrated for being a ‘garden city’, the ‘IT capital’ of the country, and its pleasant weather, has been making headlines this year for facing a severe water crisis following the drought of 2023. The water crisis is also likely to hit other urban centres and rural areas. According to a recent weekly bulletin by the Central Water Commission, even as peak summer is around the corner, most of the major reservoirs in the southern States of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana are filled to only 25% of their capacity or less.

Is the urban water system breaking? Here we discuss the question.

Guests: T.V. Ramachandra, Coordinator of the Energy and Wetlands Research Group, Centre for Ecological Science, Indian Institute of Science; S. Vishwanath, a water conservationist

Host: K.C. Deepika

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Is the urban water system breaking? Here we discuss the question.

Guests: T.V. Ramachandra, Coordinator of the Energy and Wetlands Research Group, Centre for Ecological Science, Indian Institute of Science; S. Vishwanath, a water conservationist

Host: K.C. Deepika

You can now find The Hindu’s podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Stitcher. Search for Parley by The Hindu.

Write to us with comments and feedback at [email protected]

Previous Episode

Did the electoral bonds scheme enable extortion? | The Hindu parley podcast

Many companies that faced regulatory action from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) or Income Tax (IT) Department donated electoral bonds worth crores of rupees to ruling parties via the electoral bonds route, show data submitted by the State Bank of India (SBI) to the Election Commission of India (ECI). Some companies which got huge government contracts purchased bonds for large amounts. Some new companies, which were incorporated during the COVID-19 pandemic, purchased bonds worth crores of rupees just months after starting out.

Was the electoral bonds scheme used as an extortion tool? Here we discuss this question.

Guests: Subhash Chandra Garg, former Finance and Economic Affairs Secretary, Government of India; Anjali Bhardwaj, a Right To Information activist and founder of Satark Nagrik Sangathan, a citizens’ group working to promote transparency and accountability in government functioning

Host: Vignesh Radhakrishnan

Read the parley article here.

You can now find The Hindu’s podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Stitcher. Search for Parley by The Hindu.

Write to us with comments and feedback at [email protected]

Next Episode

Is the government justified in targeting terrorists outside the border? | The Hindu parley podcast

Earlier this month, following a report in The Guardian stating that the Indian government had killed about 20 people in Pakistan since 2020 as part of a broader plan to eliminate terrorists on foreign soil, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh responded that India will enter Pakistan to kill terrorists. A few days later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too, said that under a strong government, “atankwadiyon ko ghar mein ghus ke mare jata hai (terrorists are being killed in their homes)”.

Is the Indian government justified in targeting terrorists outside the border? Here we discuss the question.

Guests: Rakesh Sood, a former diplomat who served as Ambassador to Afghanistan, France, and Nepal. He was also Special Envoy of the Prime Minister on Disarmament and Nonproliferation until 2014; Tara Kartha, the director for research at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies. She spent 17 years at the National Security Council Secretariat, which sits at the apex of India’s national security architecture

Host: Suhasini Haidar.