5th International Conference on Public Policy and Management

One of our Lead Researchers, Dr Vishal Narain participated in the 5^th International Conference on Public Policy and Management organized by the Center for Public Policy at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. He presented a paper titled ‘Urbanisation and the land-water nexus: changing water use and access in periurban Gurgaon, India’ in a session on water sector reforms. The participants varied from academics to researchers to civil servants.

Several issues emerged from the discussion following the presentation, most importantly:

1)      The large-scale acquisition of land as well as loss of water in peri-urban settlements has implications for food security

2)      It is important to explore local low-cost solutions for the use of sewage water in peri-urban agriculture

Dr Narain’s notes

 It was a good opportunity to share results from the field with  a diverse group of actors engaged with water issues from several perspectives. Notably, several alumni of IIM- B’s  public policy programme – most of them civil servants were present on the occasion and it was a good forum to talk about these issues to policy-makers.

 It was also an opportunity to network with other peri-urban researchers  who has earlier worked on periurban agriculture,  land acquisition issues,  health issues in semi-urban areas and  common property resources in periurban settlements.