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India:
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By Aditi Seshadri

Canada:
Cyberworld's Mummy Diaries
By Kinjal Dagli-Shah

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Best Country for Moms
By Sakuntala Narasimhan

India:
Mothers Without Strings
By Tripat Kaur

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Mommy Blogs: Cyber Support
By Neelima P

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Climate Change, MDGs and Gender In India

Mapping Vulnerabilities Caused By Global Warming
Being the Change In Times of Climate Change

India
Bone-dry Pattipura Hopes Brides Bring Rain
By Kulsum Mustafa

Pattipura village in Jalaun district in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh welcomes its new brides with fanfare. The locals believe that brides bring rain. But in 2009, when Gangawati's elder son got married and there was still no relief from the dry spell, the village of 200 simply accepted their fate and prepared for a waterless year. Drought is common in Bundelkhand and excessive mining and deforestation in the region has not helped. But desperate as they may be, people here would rather pin their hopes on new brides than the local administration. Pattipura can only depend on a little stream called 'ganda nala' for water because the pumping machines of the government-dug tube wells often develop a fault and there is nobody to repair it.

* 'While politicians carried out publicity campaigns by visiting many drought-hit regions in Bundelkhand nobody has visited us, not even a district official, to understand our plight.'

India
Poor Rain Takes the Zing Out Of Assam's Ginger Farms
By Ratna Bharali Talukdar

The decline in ginger production has pushed thousands of traditional ginger-growing tribal families in Assam's Karbi Anglong district into distress, despite the region being one of the largest zones for the cultivation of pure and organic ginger. Industrious women farmers add to their household incomes by planting Eri silkworm food plant, chilli and arum-roots alongside the ginger.

* The women growers - very few of whom have gone to school - use their traditional knowledge and attribute the poor crop to "less water in the soils of our hills'.

India
'Dam'ned Tribal Daughters Of The Man River
By Rahul Banerjee

Home to a significant tribal population, the Man River basin - a sub-basin of the Narmada River basin in Madhya Pradesh's Dhar district spanning three distinct agro-ecological zones - faces a serious problem of over-extraction of groundwater. The large dam in the basin, built on the river midway through its course, has affected water management drastically. Problems arising out of the mismanagement of dam irrigation and over-dependence on ground water have led to a serious crisis of over-exploitation of groundwater; waterlogging; inequity in water usage among the rich and the poor; and seasonal migration. And it is the women who are, perhaps, the worst affected.

* "The canal leaks like a broken pitcher and all the water seeps into our farmland rendering it useless for cultivation... this dam and its canals have made us into paupers."

India
The Wilting Of The Garden City
By Roshin Varghese

When Sohrab Mistry relocated to Bangalore 20 years ago, his new home did not have ceiling fans; Tara Joseph always went to church bundled up in her cashmere coat; and for Anand Gowda, cycling to college or to the cinema was the quickest way to get around. The three still live in the Garden City of India, but they can no longer recognise their home town. Today, Bangalore's temperate climate, green avenues and lakes are fast disappearing into a smoggy nothingness; a deadly cocktail of development, which has translated into a burgeoning population, mushrooming buildings, increased vehicular traffic and carbon dioxide emission levels hitting the sky.

* 'Of the 212 lakes, 42 have succumbed to 'development works'. They have been turned into hospitals, schools, government buildings, shopping complexes...'

India
Women Living Between A Rock And a Hard Place
By Manipadma Jena

While public and media attention is being drawn to the current political imbroglio over the Telangana statehood issue, impoverished farmers and even poorer farm widows are struggling for survival in rural Anantpur. Falling in a rain shadow zone, Anantpur - part of the Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh - is the second-most drought-prone district in India. In eight out of the 10 years between 1997-98 and 2007-08, all 63 administrative blocks were declared drought-affected, according to the state government's own data. What is life like for people of Anantpur, who seem to have been forgotten by the raingods? Perhaps the brothels in the major metros provide a clue.

* * The money that she may get under the Apat Bandhu Scheme as compensation for her son's death - if she is able to undertake the numerous frustrating visits to the block administrative headquarters - will go to repay only half the loan; Nadimamidamma, 55, has to continue paying interest on the rest.

India
Life By This Lakeside Is Far From Idyllic
By Shwetha E. George

Kerala's water-bodies are the greatest contributors to the food security of the state. The nutrient value of sardines, mackerel, tuna and other pelagic fish is a blessing to the 10 per cent coastal population here. But for the hard working people of Mattapally, a small village by the banks of the massive Vembanad Lake in Kottayam district separated from the Arabian Sea by a narrow barrier island, global warming, along with land reclamation, is destroying the black clams they harvest for a living.

* 'Even when my husband takes six hours to fish, all he can bring home is hardly one basket which will yield less than a kilo of meat.'

India
Bundelkhand: Kusuma Doesn't Live Here Anymore
By Alka Pande

Kusuma and Rajaram moved with their eight-year-old son to Mumbai in search of work. Tulsidas works in Surat, having left his frail wife, Kalli, to take care of three children in their village in Banda district, which falls in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh (UP). People like Kusuma, Rajaram and Tulsidas are among the thousands moving out of drought-ridden Bundelkhand in a bid to survive. Having faced 12 droughts in the last 25 years, the people here have absolutely no work. Rains, when they come, are erratic, making it extremely difficult to farm in a sustainable way.

* 'The villages are mostly empty. There is deafening silence here, with only fragile women and malnourished children in sight. So bad is the situation that when they spot a stranger in their village, old women start asking for money.'

India
The Climate Is Changing, But Mumbai Is Not
By Surekha Kadapa-Bose

The city that never sleeps should urgently wake up to the crisis of global warming that is advancing towards its shores at an alarming rate. Mumbai, known as the financial capital of the country and home to the world largest cinema industry, is facing multiple environmental crises. Real estate reclamation of land is causing ecological imbalances and loss of mangroves. Then there is high population density in low-lying areas, some of which are less than 10 metres above sea level. With the sea estimated to be rising at the rate of 1.2 mm each year, the residents of Maximum City need to be more alert to the realities of climate change.

* 'We have developed a sixth sense to predict the ferocity of monsoon and the level of high tides. But we find that our creeks are getting narrower due to reclamation. The suppressed water has to find an outlet and that is how we in the coastal zone get affected.'

India
Fragile Ladakh Thirsts For Water
By Shobha S.V

Away from the world's gaze, India's only cold desert is in the grip of an unprecedented environmental crisis. On the one hand, glaciers in the region are shrinking at an alarmingly rapid rate - ICIMOD predicts that 35 per cent of Ladakh's glaciers would have disappeared in two decades - on the other, the impact of unregulated tourism and a burgeoning construction industry is taking its toll. Nothing reflects the dismal situation more eloquently than the severe water scarcity in the region that is affecting the lives of ordinary Ladakhis, especially the women.

* In a bid to accommodate more tourists with their European lifestyles, the locals have taken to the rampant digging of borewells. In a region that depends on glacier water for its sustenance, this is not good news.

India
Aila! The Cry From The Sunderbans
By Soma Mitra

Ever since the fateful afternoon of May 25, when the Sunderbans in West Bengal were hit by the devastating cyclone Aila, Sabita Mondal, Kanchan Sarkar and Saraswati Halder, and thousands of other women here have become refugees on their own land. While the immediate impact of the disaster, like scarcity of food and drinking water, are obvious and distressing, far more pernicious are its long term implications. Experts predict that the incursion of saline water will have a debilitating impact on local agriculture and fishing, forcing even larger numbers to migrate from this delta region to cities like Kolkata.

* "The situation is so bad here that we have to leave this place. Our house is completely destroyed. Our field is still inundated and the entire stretch of embankment has been washed away. So what is left here?"

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