This site uses cookies, as explained in our terms of use. If you consent, please close this message and continue to use this site.
Nuvodita Singh
1 min Read
A colleague and I were discussing the theme for this year’s World Water Day – Wastewater. Immediately my mind conjured images of industries and factories churning out chemical laden waste, of urban sewage systems, and of frothy rivers as a result. The common themes running through all these images are- ‘Structure’, ‘Organization’, and ‘Linear Systems’.
These systems are designed to take wastewater away for disposal from its original source of production so that the order of mundane operations can be maintained, notwithstanding the occasional spanner in the works. A useful response to the ill effects of these operations is the implementation of infrastructure such as wastewater treatment plants that essentially create ‘feedback loops’ in an otherwise linear system and help further the cause of the ‘circular economy’. This is easy to visualize for an urban setting where the ‘building blocks’ such as procurement of land, labour, and resources are already in place, or at least available at hand. It is also a very sustainable pathway for urban development.
But what of communities far removed from these cityscapes? What of rural settings that might be relatively disorganized, or informal settlements marked by the absence of those ‘building blocks’, or any structural sewage or waste disposal system? Let us look at ‘Exhibit A’, Naya Tola Bishambharpur (NTB), a small village in the floodplains of Bihar’s West Champaran district.
<<READ MORE>>
Share
Stay up to date on what’s happening around the HKH with our most recent publications and find out how you can help by subscribing to our mailing list.
Related Content
Schoolchildren from the Himalayan valley of Langtang in north-central Nepal, 200 km north of Kathmandu, are acutely perceptive of the ...
The day when my supervisor asked me to join the practical, field-based training on the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ...
Empowering Women to Improve Agricultural Practices Building socio-economic resilience is at the core of the RMS concept and gender is an ...
The number of brick kilns is burgeoning in Nepal: even from ICIMOD’s rooftop you can see chimneys smoking away in ...
The homestay business in Haa dzongkhag (district), along Bhutan’s western border, has been transforming women’s roles in rural Bhutan. Seventy-year-old ...
“Nearly 75% of our students are from poor and marginalized families. Some of these families migrated to Kathmandu after the ...
Women are increasingly getting an education in underdeveloped/developing countries, despite this by no means being the norm (for example, according ...
Solar-powered irrigation pumps (SPIPs) are visibly helping balance gender inequalities in agricultural participation and access to finance and land ownership ...