Surface Water

A civil society consultation was held on “Regenerating natural resources and rural livelihoods in rainfed areas of India” by WASSAN at Hyderabad in December 2010 to discuss priorities for the twelfth five year plan. The Planning Commission, Government of India has been steering the process of development in India by conceptualizing five year plans and had sought inputs from civil society organizations, activists groups, networks of CBOs / NGOs, donors and others for preparing an approach paper for twelfth plan.

The objective of the consultation workshop was to contribute to the process of defining broad contours of twelfth plan with a focus on rural livelihoods the thrust area being policy framework, funding support, institutional arrangements etc., by -

• Consolidating the lessons from good practices in promoting and protecting rural livelihoods in the country, that could be integrated in twelfth five year plan.
• Systematically articulating issues and concerns (bottlenecks) in promoting and protecting rural livelihoods, which could be addressed in the twelfth five year plan.

India is predominantly an agricultural country and even with current orientation towards services, still agriculture contributes ¼th of total GDP of the country, 15 percent of total export and 65 % of total population’s livelihood.

Guest Post by: Parineeta Dandekar

At the first sight, Daarche Paani (‘water at the doors’) appears unreal.. on a small flat plateau called ‘Sadaa’ in konkan, an elegant cobbled walkway leads a puzzled visitor to stairs carved in stone, which go down to an ancient grove, and here is an intricate system of tanks, channels and falls which supplies water to the Panderi village and goes down as a free flowing stream, to irrigate a plantation of arecanut, pepper and mangoes in a village called Gudaghe. When I visited the place, I could see three eminent visitors, a silent lady washing her load of clothes, a fairy bluebird splashing at a tank and a huge moonmoth in one of the trees.

Stone walkway and ancient mango trees leading to Daarche Paani.
Photo: Parineeta Dandekar

This paper published in the Economic and Political Weekly, provides a critique of the writings by John Briscoe on the implementation of the Indus Waters Treaty and argues that it is a biased and a one sided presentation of issues, which ridicules and ignores the attempts made by India at negotiating with Pakistan and reaching a peaceful agreement over the water issue.

Building the Tehri Dam in India - 

Dear all,

IUCN, with Zoo Outreach Organisation, have today published a new report, 'The status and distribution of freshwater biodiversity in the Eastern Himalaya', which is available online here

India’s Groundwater Challenge and the Way Forward
P S Vijay Shankar , Himanshu Kulkarni , Sunderrajan Krishnan

The groundwater crisis is acquiring alarming proportions in many parts of the country. Strategies to respond to groundwater overuse and deteriorating water quality must be based on a new approach involving typologising the resource problems and redefining the institutional structure governing groundwater. This approach is based on the notion of groundwater as common property.