The Telugu Desam state president, Mr Nara Chandrababu Naidu, on Tuesday found fault with the Godavari water policy of the Congress government. Speaking to newsmen, Mr Naidu said that the government has no vision in using Godavari river water for the purpose of irrigation. He said that the projects taken up by Dummugudem Link Canal Project and Indirasagar Irrigation Projects were not pragmatic and the government is wasting crores of rupees by going to impractical projects.

When Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, was asked to ponder the future of the world before an audience of powerful businessmen and politicians, at a meeting in Switzerland earlier this year, he could have chosen any topic he liked. What he focused on was both a hoary old favourite, and a newly popular preoccupation, of debates on world affairs: the rising risk of wars over fresh water, as populations increase and the world gets drier.

At least 84 Farmer Organizations (FOs) have decided 603 out of 744 cases received concerning to water relevant disputes from July 2007 to March 2008, Punjab Irrigation and Drainage Authority (PIDA) officials said here on Monday.

The bitterness between Orissa and Andhra Pradesh over sharing the water of river Mahendratanaya has reached flashpoint with the Andhra Pradesh government going ahead with its irrigation project. Andhra Pradesh chief minister, YS Rajasekhar Reddy, laid the foundation stone for the Rs 127-crore irrigation project across the Mahendratanaya in Srikakulam district recently. In retaliation, the Orissa government has decided to construct two diversion weirs for instant utilisation of water as an interim measure.

Water being an emotive issue, only a mandated institution can provide a platform to build consensus among States On the occasion of World Water Day, 2002, Kofi Annan, the then U.N. Secretary General, had warned that "water issues contain the seeds of violent conflict.' Similar sentiments were echoed recently by Ban Ki-moon in his message on World Water Day, 2008, that the problems growing from the scarcity of a vital resource (like water) would spill over state borders creating a high risk of violent conflict.

The BJP and the Congress' politics over Hogenakkal is undermining national integrity EVEN IN normal circumstances, the regional chauvinistic politics of Karnataka can be detestable. With the state assembly elections round the corner, it has only worsened. Tamil Nadu government's Hogenakkal drinking water project has provided the platform to whip up sentiments in both the states. The project, when completed, would provide safe drinking water to people in the arid districts of Dharmapuri and Krishnagiri in Tamil Nadu. Ground water in this region is contaminated

Political tensions over the disputed Hogenakkal water project have eased, but for how long? PC VINOJ KUMAR & SANJANA report

Three hours drive beyond Hosur from Bangalore, the popular picnic spot Hogenakkal

India's violation of water sharing deal hampers irrigation Raheed Ejaz New Delhi deprives Dhaka of its agreed share of the Ganges water as stipulated by the Gangers Water Sharing Treaty 1996 causing the tributaries to dry up and hampering seriously irrigation in the south-west. India has also not heeded the complaints Bangladesh earlier registered with the Indian authorities.

In 1998, Karnataka agreed to abide by the conditions imposed by the Union Water Resources Ministry if Tamil Nadu withdrew its objections to Cauvery water being used to augment supply to Bangalore, according to the minutes of a meeting convened by the Union Secretary (Water Resources) and attended by officers of the Cauvery basin States on drinking water supply schemes of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu on June 29, 1998.