000 03003cam a2200313 a 4500
999 _c344536
_d344536
001 17183955
003 OSt
005 20210629115112.0
008 120227s2012 nyuab b 001 0 eng
010 _a 2012005796
020 _a9780199845019 (hardcover : alk. paper)
040 _aDLC
_cDLC
042 _apcc
043 _aa-ii---
_aa-bg---
082 0 0 _a333.91620954
_223
_bCOL
100 1 _aColopy, Cheryl
245 1 0 _aDirty, sacred rivers :
_bconfronting South Asia's water crisis /
_cCheryl Colopy.
260 _aNew York :
_bOxford University Press,
_cc2012.
300 _axiii, 400 p. :
_bill., maps ;
_c25 cm.
504 _aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
520 _aDirty, Sacred Rivers explores South Asia's increasingly urgent water crisis, taking readers on a journey through North India, Nepal and Bangladesh, from the Himalaya to the Bay of Bengal. The book shows how rivers, traditionally revered by the people of the Indian subcontinent, have in recent decades deteriorated dramatically due to economic progress and gross mismanagement. Dams and ill-advised embankments strangle the Ganges and its sacred tributaries. Rivers have become sewage channels for a burgeoning population. To tell the story of this enormous river basin, environmental journalist Cheryl Colopy treks to high mountain glaciers with hydrologists; bumps around the rough embankments of India's poorest state in a jeep with social workers; and takes a boat excursion through the Sundarbans, the mangrove forests at the end of the Ganges watershed. She lingers in key places and hot spots in the debate over water: the megacity Delhi, a paradigm of water mismanagement; Bihar, India's poorest, most crime-ridden state, thanks largely to the blunders of engineers who tried to tame powerful Himalayan rivers with embankments but instead created annual floods; and Kathmandu, the home of one of the most elegant and ancient traditional water systems on the subcontinent, now the site of a water-development boondoggle. Colopy's vivid first-person narrative brings exotic places and complex issues to life, introducing the reader to a memorable cast of characters, ranging from the most humble members of South Asian society to engineers and former ministers. Here we find real-life heroes, bucking current trends, trying to find rational ways to manage rivers and water. They are reviving ingenious methods of water management that thrived for centuries in South Asia and may point the way to water sustainability and healthy rivers.
650 0 _aWater
_xPollution
_zGanges River (India and Bangladesh)
650 0 _aWater-supply
_zGanges River (India and Bangladesh)
650 0 _aStream ecology
_zGanges River (India and Bangladesh)
651 0 _aGanges River (India and Bangladesh)
_xEnvironmental conditions.
906 _a7
_bcbc
_corignew
_d1
_eecip
_f20
_gy-gencatlg
942 _2ddc
_cB