Stories from the field

There is a pond on the edge of a small Haryana village that people once crossed the road to avoid. Choked with algae, fed only by untreated household wastewater, it had stopped being water and become a wound on the landscape. Today, the same pond draws over a hundred villagers every evening.

In the heart of Mankrola village, near the Shiv Mandir, stood a pond that people had slowly stopped noticing. Once, it had been a part of everyday life — a place where rainwater gathered, birds descended at dawn, and villagers spent their evenings under open skies.

Here's a strange little fact about Bengaluru: the city's lakes are quietly doing some of the hardest work in urban water management — and almost nobody planned it that way. Despite decades of sewage inflow, encroachment and fragmented oversight, many of these lakes still recharge groundwater, buffer floods and host biodiversity.