A capacity building workshop

February 26 – March 01, 2013

In the decade of the second wave of economic reforms in India, the conflicts over natural resources continue to get exacerbated with increasing privatisation and corporatisation of these resources on one hand and exclusion and marginalisation of the larger public and their access to them. While the ‘land’ question has remained central to the debate over the scramble over resources for growth centric development, much of the media debates over the past year fail to include ‘water’ as an intrinsically linked resource facing serious crises of diverse kinds.

In the era of economic growth water is seen as a scarce resource required not as much for human need of drinking and day to day use, but more for sectors like energy, commercial agriculture, industrial development – these are the water guzzlers of today. Additionally these, apart from affecting the distribution of water resources and affecting its availability (quantity), have impacted the quality of water. Pollution and contamination of water resources have created newer crises – in industrial areas, in the metropolitan cities of the country and in the hinterlands where pesticides and chemical fertilisers are used abundantly. The need of the hour is to look at Water a fundamental human right and on the ecological side look at the preservation of water resources and environment flows.

The Sambhaavnaa Institute of Public Policy and Politics is organising a 3 day capacity building programme with grassroots activists and researchers working on issues of water to aim to understand the key emerging issues and the current debates and discourses on the issue of ‘Water’ in India from February 26 to March 01, 2013. The sessions at the workshop will be led by Shripad Dharmadhikary (Manthan Adhyayan Kendra), Ravi Chopra (People’s Science Institute) and Himanshu Thakkar (South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People) along with others.