Lifestyle

The handbook was created as a result of several organisations expressing their interest in conducting an exercise similar to ASHWAS. The purpose of this handbook is thus to serve as a template for those wishing to carry out a similar effort in the other parts of the country.

The goal of Film Southasia, an organisation within Himal Southasian magazine, set up in 1997 when the first edition of the festival of southasian documentaries was organised, is to popularise the documentary so that it entertains, informs and changes lives.

These are some of the questions which led Tarun Jayaram, the film-maker to explore traditional water systems in the country. From the documentary’s opening moments, the director engages us with a beautifully shot array of footages ranging from pilgrims taking a holy dip of Ganges to beautiful baolis and tankas of Rajasthan to the ancient town of Hampi in Karnataka, while establishing how rivers have been an integral part of Indian culture and how its rich tradition of harvesting rainwater needs to be re-established to deal with the present day water crisis. Over the refreshing images and soothing audio, it advocates the need for community participation in rejuvenating the traditional methods of rainwater harvesting. 

It is a compilation of ongoing, successful strategies piloted and upscaled by a range of development agencies in different parts of the country. The handbook is presented in four volumes under a common framework and focus on initiatives related to: participatory natural resource management; rural entrepreneurship development; use of information communication technology and institution development.

About 400 million rural poor reside in about 200 poorest districts of the country that constitute rainfed areas. Scientific research has revealed a vast untapped potential in rainfed agriculture where crop yields are lower than their potential by two to five fold. A large number of innovative projects and ideas have been tried to address this issue, although documentation has been uneven and fragmented. Drawing upon such experiences, the handbook points towards new vistas and untapped opportunities in meeting the challenge of enhancing food security with limited water resources and improving the carrying capacities of rainfed areas to match the rapidly increasing populations in these regions and elsewhere.

  The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy draws on the experiences of the Tamilnadu Women’s Collective (WC), a state-level federation of women’s groups from 1,500 villages, in the context where communities all around the world are struggling to find ways to cope with changes affecting food and water security because of the phenomenon of climate change.

The report argues that many a times, new food and water security policies at the national and international level tend to be narrow, look at each of these issues in isolation and  undermine food and water security strategies adopted by individuals and households from marginal groups. Adaptation strategies to address food security focus almost exclusively on increasing agricultural production, while ignoring health and cultural aspects of the food being produced, and the role of agriculture as a means for rural viability.

The Bagmati Embankment separating riverside on the left and countryside of the right near Ibrahimpur – Electric poles suggest the height of the embankment

One often hears about the civilizations buried under earth and attributes various reasons for such disappearance of life from a particular place. Excavations reveal the way of life the people might have had before they chose to leave their villages and towns and allowed the nature to take its own course. These accounts are available in books and we all believe the process told to us by historians and archaeologists. These are all conjectures that are revealed by scientific investigations but how many of us have seen, not read, how the civilizations get buried under the debris created by nature? There are places in Bihar where one can see the process of disappearance of civilization and the villages getting buried under the sediments brought by rivers.

 Mountain areas and communities are susceptible to climate change. This work also yielded evidence of the coping strategies developed by the communities to deal with an unprecedented and only partially understood threat. This paper describes these strategies and attempts to assess the vulnerability of the communities in each valley.

Content courtesy: The Hindu

Organizer: World Comics India

Venue: Art Gallery (Annexe Building), India International Centre (IIC), 40 Max Muller Marg, Lodhi Estate, New Delhi

The Ganges

Jalyatra - Exploring India's traditional water management systems, by Nitya Jacob is an ecological travelogue that looks at links between water, society and places It describes in detail what existed, how it fitted into the socio-cultural milieu and was appropriate for the local climate and geography. It then examines reasons for their decline, as indeed most have, in recent decades.

While recording the dismal state of traditional systems, the author stumbles upon small initiatives that have brought about significant transformation across regions. It refers to noisy hidrums and gharaats, the river-run flour mills of Uttaranchal, the technologies whose potential has yet to be fully realised. It looks at water harvesting structures of southern India—the eris and ooranis. However, it admits that the average person is singularly uninterested in protecting the environment.

Jalyatra captures the efforts of NGOs and enlightened individuals striving to revive these systems. It makes the case for a mass movement to revive traditional water management systems, especially village ponds, across the country as the way to ensure water security in India. In Chambal, the author meets Brij Mohan Gujjar, dacoit turned water conservationist, who is doing valuable work on the check dams designed to control the flow of water in the ravines; and in Shillong, Lan Potham shows him the uses of the easily available bamboo to construct the shyngiar which irrigates his areca nut plantation.