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A community festival keeps natural spring clean  

A police official from Panzath Nag explained that the benefit of this collective fishing activity could not be denied…reports Uruss Munaf

When Khadijah Begum was a little girl, she would often accompany her grandparents to a natural spring in her village. Her grandfather would catch fish along with other men, and Khadijah and her grandmother would clean them. The spring’s water was so clear, Khadijah recalled, that she and her friends could even apply kohl to their eyes through its reflection.

Today, decades since Khadijah’s trips to the spring with her grandparents, hundreds of natural water resources in Kashmir, on which local populations have depended for generations, have degraded due to pollution and waste disposal — except the spring she frequented.

This natural spring is in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district in the village of Panzath Nag, which translates to ‘the land of 500 springs’. Over the years, this perennial spring has managed to preserve its purity and pristine state, thanks to a unique annual festival that has been celebrated through generations. A celebration that “felt like Eid” for the now 76-year-old Khadijah Begum.

Rohan Posh, which translates to ‘flowering the souls’, is the traditional annual fruit blossom festival specific to the region, celebrated in the third week of May before the paddy fields are tilled. The festival happens whenever residents witness the first blossom in their orchards, which are then spread over the graves of the recently deceased. They believe that these fresh blooms will bring comfort to the dead. This festive week, the village elders of Panzath Nag choose a day dedicated to cleaning the spring. Everyone takes a day off for desilting, de-weeding and fishing. People from nearby villages, including children, gather with wicker baskets and mosquito nets, wading to filter through the waters. Later, the villagers take the fish home and have a feast with their families and relatives.

While the locals are unsure of when this ritual began, everyone agrees that it’s “age-old”.

“We inherited it from our forefathers — from the era of the maharajas between 1846 and 1947,” said Ali Mohammed Shah (63), adding that local residents had cleaned the spring water for generations to avail good water for drinking and irrigation all year round.

Moreover, the spring itself finds mention in the ancient texts of Kashmir, the Nilamata Purana and Rajatarangini that were written around the 12th Century.

Shabir Ahmad, a local resident said that the spring brings forth a rivulet, which, alongside irrigating the paddy fields in downstream villages, also provides drinking water to over 25 more villages through supply lines. However, in the summer, aquatic weeds such as algae bloom overwhelm the spring. The collective fishing-cum-weeding activity of the local community then restores the spring the following year. Deeming the festival a perfect example of a “community initiative”, environmental expert Dr Irfan Reshi said that the proliferation of weeds in the Kashmir Valley is a significant challenge that’s led to biodiversity loss and pollution.

Furthermore, a police official from Panzath Nag explained that the benefit of this collective fishing activity could not be denied.

Ishfaq Hassan, a visitor from Srinagar currently pursuing a degree in Environmental Science and Water Management at the University of Kashmir, said, “It’s an amazing experience to witness hundreds of people in the waters de-weeding and fishing in the spring.”

He added that in the rural areas of Kashmir, paddy fields are either being converted into housing colonies or horticulture orchards as they suffer from a shortage of irrigation facilities. The streams, rivulets, waterfalls, wells, ponds and rivers here had become dumping sites due to the lack of waste disposal provisions in villages.

Another visitor, Maheen from the Environmental Science Department at the University of Kashmir, echoed Hassan’s views and said, “Where most water bodies are under tremendous pressure and witnessing such de-weeding exercises without any government or organisational intervention, it’s hard to believe the unbelievable results this initiative is fetching.”

While villagers have participated in this tradition through the years, the festival has also attracted many visitors from Srinagar, much like Maheen and Hassan, who as students of environmental science were intrigued by the land of 500 springs and its self-sustaining traditions. Local residents believe the festival can help strengthen the village’s position on Kashmir’s tourist map. Shah said this will encourage authorities to take better care of it. Regardless, the villagers are committed to carrying on the tradition in the future.

“The festival is a way to connect with our friends, neighbours and family. The event is so lively and fun,” Mohammed Shariq (19), a student who lives in the village, told 101Reporters.

Appreciating the festival, environmentalist Reshi raised concerns over the alarming depletion of fresh water, of which 80 per cent is used for agricultural purposes in Kashmir.

“Despite such abundant water resources in Kashmir, there is enormous pressure on natural water resources. Nowadays, it is seen that in rural areas, the heritage water resources are polluted and choked by solid waste, household refusals, polythene bags, plastic substances, wrappers, and indiscriminate encroachments. Therefore, the government should promote such community initiatives to motivate more people towards the conservation of water resources.”

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As springs dry up, Uttarkashi women revive chal-khals

Pooja Rana, 27, a farmer who is also Patara’s panchayat chief, said that the water taps drawn from the springs in their hamlet are functional for barely an hour or two in the morning. In summers, the taps run completely dry…reports Asian Lite News.

Over the last decade, it has become increasingly hard for Sartama Devi to source water around her Uttarkashi village home in Uttarakhand and same has been the story for the rest of her co-habitants.

“Our water sources had been drying up with the diminishing monsoons. It has affected our livestock. In our fields, the koda-jhangora (Indian barn millet) crop had been withering away,” the 55-year-old said.

Water springs in small amounts in these mountain villages and exhausts quickly as the villagers use it for daily chores and to meet their livestock’s needs. These natural springs have not been sufficient for the 300 families in Patara village that have about 275 animals.

Pooja Rana, 27, a farmer who is also Patara’s panchayat chief, said that the water taps drawn from the springs in their hamlet are functional for barely an hour or two in the morning. In summers, the taps run completely dry.

It is ironic that the Bhagirathi river runs down from its glacial origin at the foothills of Patara — just 2-3 km away. It later meets the Alaknanda river and forms the Ganga. Despite being so close to India’s most extensive river system, Patara has struggled.

“People over the decades have migrated, leaving behind their farms. Many have settled on the Delhi-Dehradun road,” Devi said.

That is exactly why these Uttarkashi population is bringing chal-khals back to life. These percolation pits are saving women the time and effort it takes to find and carry water over long distances.

In 2019, Patara ushered in change when Sartama Devi formed the Him Patara Self Group to conserve water and revive water sources closer to the village.

With the men mostly absent, having migrated in search of better opportunities, the women became largely responsible for running the village. In their interactions with the local administration, they would constantly bring up the problems they were having with water.

It was then that the village development officer, Sunil Agnihotri, motivated them to set up a self-help group and establish contact with NGOs that were working on water conservation in the area.

The women started learning more about chal-khals; these percolation pits used to be built and maintained by mountain communities but this traditional knowledge had been lost over the years. In Pauri, Garhwal, Kumaun and other regions of Uttarakhand, several NGOs have been working the past few decades toward reviving chal-khals.

However, the work often happens in isolation, with a few villages benefiting and some hearing about it through word-of-mouth while many others still removed the means to access and implement this traditional knowledge.

A few years prior, there was some attempt to build chal-khals in Patara under MGNREGA but Sartama Devi said they were done without much thought (for example, they were built at non-ideal locations or even, once, cemented at the bottom rendering it useless) and the community didn’t know how to maintain them.

This time, the 100 or so women who had joined the initiative relied on hereditary knowledge to locate and revive old chal-khals that had fallen into disuse as well as scientifically evaluate ideal locations for new ones.

These percolation pits — usually measuring eight metres in diameter and one metre deep, though the size varies — are dug on sloping grounds. They collect water from the rain which seeps into the ground, improving the quality of the soil and recharging the groundwater. On the surface, it meets the villages’ everyday needs. A single waterbody can store up to 64,000 litres of water.

“For three years, the women from Patara relentlessly worked towards water conservation. Initially, all of our five chal-khals turned barren since we didn’t know how to maintain them.” They need to be routinely rid of the silt, mud and rocks that accumulate in the pits but due to lack of collectivism people stopped doing these traditional tasks and were dependent on the administration, she rued. “But we revived them and added new ones to the lot,” Devi said. At Patara, there are now 11 chal-khals that have collected and stored an estimated seven lakh litres of water over the past three years, helped along by the unseasonal rains.

Between the monsoons in June to September, the pre-monsoon rains in March and the occasional winter rains, the chal-khals are able to ensure a steady supply of water for a large part of the year. “We have built a majority of the chal-khals near the cattle yards to quench the animals’ needs. One cannot survive rural life without the animals,” Devi said.

The conservation effort has resonated among other villages in the district, in at least eight neighbouring villages people have started digging their own chal-khals. Devi received the Women’s Water Champion award from United Nations Development Programme India earlier this year.

Relief from relentless toil

Rana reflected on how the chal-khals have brought about a dramatic change in the women’s routines. “It has saved the women from toiling all day,” she said.

Earlier, the quest for water would consume the whole day. The women would start their days by foraging in the forest for cattle fodder, while trying to find a source of water. Upon returning, they would take the animals to the water source. “Some even carried water back to their homes in their cans,” Rana said.

Ram Pyari, a resident who worked with the women on the chal-khals, remembered carrying two containers of twenty litres back each day on her shoulders for her livestock. “Now, we do not have to toil unnecessarily. The water in the percolation pits will last us the next few months. It has also benefited the vegetables and herbs that several of us have planted in our fields,” she said.

These ‘nutri-gardens’ were also part of the efforts to improve nutrition among the women, many of whom were anaemic and easily exhausted from their arduous water duties every day.

The chal-khals have also provided some measure relief to farmers like Vijay Rana (35), who is cultivating black lentils, toor dal and paddy. “The earth has been rendered soft due to moisture retention. However, that is all the help that the chal-khals can give us. We still have to rely on the rain for most of the water as our fields are in the lower reaches whereas the percolation pits are on higher ground,” he said.

In Uttarakhand, 594 of the 16,793 villages depend entirely on natural sources, and about 90 percent of the population of the Himalayan region depends on springs for drinking water. A NITI Aayog report has highlighted the issue of drying water resources in the Himalayan region. In 2018, the state water board acknowledged that over the previous three years, every one of the 500 water supply projects had seen at least a 50% decrease in water discharge, with 93 of them seeing a decline of more than 90%.

Gaurav Kumar, chief development officer of Uttarkashi, confirmed that many sources in the district have indeed dried up, while a few others have been encroached upon. “New constructions have obstructed the sources. Freezing or solidification of soil due to construction and displaced boulders due to landslides have altered the flow of the mountain streams,” he said.

In light of this, the Uttarakhand government is working on reviving the water sources under their Swajal, a World Bank-supported initiative to promote the long term sustainability of the rural water supply. “We are working on restoring the water sources to their old forms,” Kumar said.

And chal-khals can play a crucial role in this. According to Vishal Singh, executive director of the Center for Ecology Development and Research (CEDAR), “We can improve the water system in the mountains by reviving springs. It can also improve the health of the forests as forests and water are both intertwined. For this, we have to map the recharge zones of these springs and carry out water conservation works here. Covering 2-3 hectares or more, these recharge areas can benefit from the construction of chal-khals and planting broad-leaf plants like oak. This is an effective solution to solve the problem of water in the Himalayan region.”

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-Top News UK News

Public inquiry into Covid response by spring 2022

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said his government has an obligation to examine its action rigorously learn the lessons at every stage of the pandemic, reports Asian Lite Newsdesk

Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday announced that an independent public inquiry into the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic will begin in spring 2022.

“Amid such tragedy, the state has an obligation to examine its actions as rigorously and as candidly as possible” and “learn every lesson for the future”, Johnson told lawmakers at the House of Commons, the lower house of the British Parliament, Xinhua news agency reported.

Britain was the first country in Europe to pass the grim mark of 100,000 coronavirus-related deaths. More than 127,000 people have died within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test since the pandemic began last year, while over 150,000 deaths have mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate, according to official figures.

“This inquiry must be able to look at the events of the last year in the cold light of day and identify the key issues that will make a difference for the future. Free to scrutinize every document to hear from all the key players and analyze and learn from the breadth of our response,” he said.

“That’s the right way, I think, to get the answers that the people of this country deserve and to ensure that our United Kingdom is better prepared for any future pandemic,” he added.

Johnson said his government would work closely with the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in setting up the inquiry.

Considering the potential threat of new COVID-19 variants and a potential winter surge, Johnson said he expected the “right moment” for the inquiry to begin in the spring of next year. Johnson also announced that a commission on COVID-19 commemoration would be set up.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson

“This national endeavor above party politics will remember the loved ones we have lost, honor the heroism of those who have saved lives and the courage of frontline workers who have kept our country going,” he said.

More than 35.5 million people have been given the first jab of a coronavirus vaccine, according to the latest official figures.

However, experts have warned that despite progress in vaccine rollout, Britain is “still not out of the woods” amid concerns over new variants, particularly those first emerged in South Africa, Brazil and India, and the third wave of the pandemic on the European continent.

On Monday, Queen Elizabeth II has announced a series of bills as the UK government pledged to “level up” the country while recovering from the pandemic crisis.

She was speaking at the House of Lords, the upper house of the British Parliament, to set out the government’s legislative agenda for new parliamentary session.

The Queen said that the government’s priority is to “deliver a recovery from the pandemic” which will “level up opportunities across all parts of the United Kingdom, supporting jobs, businesses and economic growth.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the government “won’t settle for going back to the way things were.”

He promised to end the “criminal waste of talent” in parts of the UK by spreading opportunity more evenly.

A man wearing a face mask cycles past the Francis Crick Institute Vaccination Centre in London,UK , Britain, March 18, 2021. (Xinhua/Han Yan/IANS)

“We intend to unite and level up across the whole of our United Kingdom because we one nation Conservatives understand this crucial point – that you will find flair and imagination and enthusiasm and genius distributed evenly across this country while opportunity is not,” BBC quoted Johnson as saying at the House of Lords.

He said there is a need to change that because “it is not just a moral and social disgrace, it is an economic mistake. It is a criminal waste of talent.”

“And though we cannot for one moment minimise the damage that Covid has done – the loss of learning, the NHS backlogs, the courts delays, the massive fiscal consequences – we must use this opportunity to achieve a national recovery so that jabs, jabs jabs becomes jobs, jobs, jobs,” he said.

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