Media Coveragae

Sakshi news paper published about the activities of SaciWATERs taken up in Ravirala, Maheshwaram Mandal, Hyderabad, India.

Construction of a Water Storage Tank

The water supply in the village of Ravirala is very erratic. The situation is worse as this supply is dependent on the electricity. People tend to store water and use it at the time of necessity. However, the students at the school are vulnerable to this situation. After the mid day lunch, these students do not have water to wash their hands as there is no power during that time. Hence, SaciWATERs felt the need of constructing a storage tank in the school premises. With the help of Ravirala Water User Association, SaciWATERs facilitated the construction of the water storage tank. The school head master conveyed his hearty thanks to both SaciWATERs and Ravirala Water User Association for the noble work. The school children expressed their gratitude towards SaciWATERs for providing such an important facility in their school.

Stakeholders Workshop, Gurgaon

DATE: 22.6.2012

VENUE: RAMADA, BMK, GURGAON

The second stakeholders’ workshop in Gurgaon under the IDRC Supported project ‘Water security in periurban South Asia: adapting to climate change and urbanization’ was organised on the 24^th of June, 2012 at the Ramada, BMK, Gurgaon. Dr. Vishal Narain began by highlighting the agenda of the meeting which was mainly to:

-         Assess how far the PHED had come in terms of performing the tasks agreed to at the last meeting to improve the water access of communities in the villages of Sultanpur and Jhanjhrola Kheda

-         Identify any other areas  that needed face to face dialogue between the water users and the PHED (Public Health Engineering Department)

-         Identify the further course of action during the last year of the project to improve water security in these two villages

-         Identify ways of continuing this process of dialogue between the PHED and the water users beyond the project period 

 Dr. Vishal Narain then highlighted some of the work that had been taken up by the PHED and the progress made since the last meeting as also some of the issues that had been raised by the PHED in relation to local water management practices.

The PHED made a few suggestions and urged the villagers to try and pursue those at their level. These included -

• ·         Informing the PHED about the illegal connections in the village, so that FIR could  be lodged against those who pursued such practises.
• ·         Forming a Water Committee to monitor the work and maintenance of the system

Some more suggestions that came from the PHED included compulsory registration of personal tubewells with the Central Groundwater Board;  otherwise they would be seized very soon by the authorities. On enquiring about the tank set up by the PHED in Sultanpur on a portion of a private land, the PHED officials informed that it could not be shifted from the current location, but the owner could be compensated. Also regarding the alternate day availability of water for some of the households in the Sultanpur village, the PHED mentioned that as per their records, they were supplying 70 litres per day per person, but due to illegal connections, most of the water was being taken away by other households leaving some without any water.

The meeting concluded with some concerns that were raised by women panch members from Sultanpur, who felt that water quality testing was very important. Apart from this, there was a need to provide an alternative source of fresh water especially considering the poor families who did not have any means of filtration. Also a pipe connection for households across the railway line was of urgent need.

Summary and Conclusions

This meeting saw a lot of change in the attitude of both the villagers as well as the PHED. Since the purpose of the meeting was to foster dialogue between the water users and providers, and to find ways to jointly improve or solve the problems, both sides conducted themselves very well. As against the usual blame game and anarchy characterising the relationship between the water users and providers, this had taken the form of a disciplined, structured and focused interaction to chalk out a future course of action.

Managing Community Impacts of Climate Change

March 12^th and 13^th  2012

organised by Monash University, Kolkata

A two day workshop was organised by the Monash University in Kolkata (ITC Sonar Bangla Hotel) on “Managing Community Impacts of Climate Change”. This workshop was attended by members of NGOs, academic institutions and other civil society bodies in West Bengal and a few other states, who presented their work along similar lines.

Ms. Sreoshi Singh of SaciWATERs presented the Peri-urban Water Security project and its activities in South Asia to the rest of the participants, where issues with regard to the peri-urban sites were highlighted along with how the communities were adapting to the changing climate. The various advocacy initiatives that have been/are being planned at the different study sites were also presented. The group appreciated the project and its objectives and realised how urbanisation as a process in itself would be an added problem to deal with, in the light of climate change. The peri-urban issues highlighted in the SaciWATERs presentation, however, raised the eyebrows of the organisers, who were working especially in the lower Ganga delta in India and Bangladesh and had not really considered the huge impact of urbanisation in these areas, when it comes to managing communities to deal with climate change.  

The academic circle also showed concern about the loss of surface storages in Hyderabad and urged the need for strict policy action to protect them in the face of rapid urbanisation and reduced water access in peri-urban areas.

Presentation at the National Consultation on Urban Drinking Water and Sanitation for the 12th Plan

The National Consultation on Urban Drinking Water and Sanitation, for the Planning Commission of Government of India, to provide input into the approach paper to the 12th Five Year Plan was held on December 15, 2010 at New Delhi. A submission pertaining to peri-urban areas which have emerged over the last six months during the scoping study phase of the Peri-Urban Water Security Project was made by Dr. Vishal Narain and Ms. Sreoshi Singh having the following points: 

Mainstreaming Periurban Issues in Policy and Planning 

As urbanization proceeds, the distinction between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ tends to get blurred, and more of the intermediary, periurban zone becomes visible. Periurban issues need better reflection in policy and planning.

1. There is a need for rigorous studies of the carrying capacity of cities. Urban expansion plans need to be based on the carrying capacity of cities. Otherwise, the ecological foot-print of cities continues to spill over the peripheral areas, engulfing the land and water resources of the peripheral villages, depriving locals their access to land, water and other natural resources. This breeds a pattern of urbanization that is inequitable and unsustainable. Urban development policies need to revisit and revise the existing building by-laws in peri-urban areas, which often ignore the negative consequences of urban expansion for the socially and economically marginalized communities who are affected by the development enclaves leading to reduced access to clean and safe water sources as well as other natural resources.

2. Increasingly, we need to devise ways of breaking the rural and urban dichotomy in planning. The focus of urban authorities on urban expansion and rural authorities on rural areas often implies that the relationships across ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ go unaddressed. Even if the peri-urban areas fall within a development zone, the focus tends to be largely urban-centric with little efforts to integrate rural development with the activities undertaken. The 74^th Amendment to the Constitution of India provides for the creation of DPCs (District Planning Committees) to integrate planning at a district level. There is a need for such committees to be set up and similar other institutions as well to better integrate planning across rural and urban areas.

3. There is a need to better recognize flows of water across rural and urban areas. The dichotomy between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ water supply is superficial and overlooks the flows of water between rural and urban areas – that will become more visible with ongoing processes of urbanization. Often expansion of urban water supply is at the expense of rural water supply, as peri-urban residents give away their land and water to allow canals to pass through to quench urban thirst, or allow water to be transported from their villages to the city in tankers.

4. There is a need for policies to conserve natural resources in peri-urban areas through local community initiatives, instead of giving them away on lease to development enclaves, to serve their water needs for recreational purposes. They are often a source of livelihoods for the landless as well as for the resource poor farmers.

Workshop on ‘Towards Sustainable and Climate Resilient Urban Development’

One of our Lead Researchers, Dr Vishal Narain and Senior Research Fellow, Ms Sreoshi Singh, participated in a workshop titled ‘Towards sustainable and climate resilient urban deelopment’  held at the Indian Habitat Centre, organised jointly by IRADe (Integrated Research and Action for Development) and ISET(Institute for Social and Economic Transition).

The workshop showcased the efforts of ACCCRN (Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network), which works in ten cities in 4 countries aiming to make these cities resilient to the impacts of climate change. Surat, Gorakhpur and Indore are the three Indian cities that have undertaken some resilience planning under the auspices of the ACCCRN.

The workshop, itself, was structured around the study and identification of vulnerable groups of people in these cities. SLDS – or shared learning dialogues - were an important aspect of the methodology used in developing climate resilient city plans. The thrust of much of the discussions in the workshop was on mainstreaming climate resilience into City Development Plans and Master Plans. An important issue identified in the deliberations – with particular relevance for our work - is the absence of carrying capacity studies for cities, which need to be the basis of urban planning and expansion. Indeed, periruban issues arise because the carrying capacity of cities is perhaps not systematically studied or factored into the expansion plans of cities. This is a general point relevant across our study locations.

Several other issues came up in the course of the deliberations with some relevance for our work:

1)      To understand vulnerability, one needs to look at the irregular income streams of households and the factors that contribute to the irregularity  

2)      The lack of climate data and information can be an important stumbling block in research

Dr Narain's notes 

All the discussions seemed to stay confined to the sustainability and climate resilience of the cities and those who lived in them. Even when participants spoke about the poor, it was with reference to the poor who lived in the cities, rather than those at the peripheries whose land and water these cities would acquire to grow, or even to become sustainable and climate resilient.

I spoke to other researchers about our project, who found the concept interesting, relevant and topical. Notably I took this opportunity to interact with the ISET Team . I spoke to representatives of TARU, the Action Research Unit, which has an office in Gurgaon.