Western Plains

Touched by very little water
Anupam Mishra talks about how the desert societies of Rajasthan have managed their scarce water resources for over 1000 years.
Amita Bhaduri
Posted on 01 Aug, 2013 11:54 AM

Author and conservationist, Anupam Mishra has spent decades promoting water conservation and management. Through his travels across various states of India, he has been studying and teaching the time-tested techniques of rainwater harvesting.
Kunds and tankas have been used to collect water
कठपुतली बोलेगी कल की बात
बाड़मेर।भारतीय संस्कृति का प्रतिबिंब लोककलाओं में झलकता है। इन्हीं लोककलाओं में कठपुतली कला भी शामिल है। यह देश की सांस्कृतिक धरोहर होने के साथसाथ प्रचारप्रसार का सशक्त माध्यम भी है, लेकिन आधुनिक सभ्यता के चलते मनोरंजन के नित नए साधन आने से सदियों पुरानी यह कला अब लुप्त होने के कगार पर है।
Ashok Rajpurohit
Posted on 09 Apr, 2012 03:10 PM

Puppets
Government of Rajasthan prepares a working draft of a rural sanitation and hygiene strategy (2012 2022)
The Government of Rajasthan (GoR) has recently come up with a strategy for rural sanitation based on its experience of implementing Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) in the state. In Rajasthan, TSC was initially launched in four districts in 1999 and scaled up in all the thirty two districts in 2004-05.
IWP
Posted on 04 Apr, 2012 09:46 PM

Although significant progress has been made in terms of individual household toilet coverage in the state, usage by the population is still low at 12.9 per cent (DLHS 2007-08). Access to toilets for schools and angawandies has seen a marked increased but rural solid and liquid waste management has seen little or no attention.
Best meal of the day': Akshaya Patra's kitchen in Nathwara, Rajasthan is the newest of its high-technology ones across India
In a country of 1.2 billion people, fast moving towards economic superpower hood, it is a reality check, and a hard one too, that the mover and shaker of things here remains nothing but food. Indeed it is food alone that spawns a giant ripple effect – starting from the levels of education and health to eventually how development in the country finally shapes up. For, you cannot build a country on empty stomachs.
Madhusmita Hazarika
Posted on 19 Mar, 2012 10:23 AM

Article and Image Courtesy : One World South Asia

Author : Madhusmita Hazarika
Rural water access: Governance and contestation in a semi-arid watershed in Udaipur, Rajasthan: A paper in EPW
Recent policy has encouraged a shift towards community management of water infrastructure through the creation of decentralised institutions.This also implies a shift from large to small structures and institutions. This however presumes the existence of a homogeneous 'community', and does not necessarily acknowledge the effect of various separate groups within such a community on these institutions. This paper published in Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) examines the impacts of this shift towards decentralised irrigation management on different groups residing in six villages in Rajasthan.
Lalitha Kamath
NC Narayanan
Posted on 21 Feb, 2012 05:19 PM

Study area

This study is carried out in micro-watershed No.19, which comprises six villages in Jhadol tehsil of Udaipur district in Rajasthan. A minor irrigation project completed in 1980 serves these six villages

Rainfall, storage levels in reservoir and groundwater use
Changing currents: Plumbing the rights: A film highlighting water as a common good
Changing currents: Plumbing the rights ia a film that highlights water as a common good.
Culture Unplugged
Posted on 10 Jan, 2012 08:55 PM

Source: Culture Unplugged
A late twentieth century folk tale - How rainwater harvesting creates a river in Alwar, Rajasthan
The Alwar district of Rajasthan had become a desolate scene in the mid-1980s. A "dark zone". And sand had replaced water and trees. Then a group of volunteers led by Rajendra Singh took the cue from an old man. They started making johads, earthen dams that impound rainwater. By the hundreds. The result was a miracle, a river, the Arvari.
Soumitra Dey
Posted on 28 Jul, 2011 03:30 PM

Video courtesy: Soumitradey

 

 
A late twentieth century folk tale - Part 1

Water turns the tide - A barren district of Rajasthan is seeing development, thanks to rains last year and floods in 2006
In 2010, this part of the Thar saw rains as never before. Rainfall was recorded 98 per cent more than the average of the past 50 years.
Ankur Paliwal
Posted on 12 Apr, 2011 11:31 AM

Article and Image Courtesy: Down To Earth
Author: 

A barren district of Rajasthan is seeing development, thanks to rains last year and flood in 2006.

Administration has revived a man-made pond in Nagarda village that was drying up (Photo: Sayantoni Palchoudhuri)Administration has revived a man-made pond in Nagarda village that was drying up.
Photo: Sayantoni Palchoudhuri

Using media to address water issue in Rajasthan - Video Volunteers
A Video Trainer for Video Volunteers, Tara Misra spent a year at the Jal Chitran - the Community Video Unit (CVU) in Jodhpur, Rajasthan.
Video Volunteers
Posted on 28 Jan, 2011 12:00 PM

During her yearlong stay, Tara trained at least twenty people into video production some of whom have succeeded in finding work in the local market as photographers, cameramen and wedding video makers. In this blog she gives a vivid account of the CVU, its producers and their work.
Climate change impacts, mitigation and adaptation - Science for generating policy options in Rajasthan
This paper on climate change impacts in the context of Rajasthan seeks to address the issue of society's need for robust knowledge to pursue strategies for mitigation and adaptation to address the challenges associated with global warming and climate change.
Anil K Gupta
Deep Narayan Pandey
Rajasthan State Pollution Control Board
Vijai Shanker Singh
Posted on 20 Dec, 2010 09:14 PM

This paper by Rajasthan Pollution Control Board on climate change impacts in the context of Rajasthan seeks to address the issue of need of the society for robust knowledge to pursue strategies for mitigation as well as adaptation in order to address the challenges associated with global warming and climate change.

Accordingly, here a brief review of the available literature and an annotated bibliography of published research on climate change impacts, mitigation and adaptation in order to facilitate the identification of policy options in Rajasthan is provided.

Also included is the literature on how human societies contribute to environmental change and how, in turn, become vulnerable to these changes. It also explores the available knowledge on how likely ecosystem goods and services are impacted to climatic oscillations (environmental sensitivity) and the ability of rural communities to cope (social resilience) with those changes.

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