Water Realities: Reimagining Sustainable and Equitable Futures
—Governance, Conflict, and Justice
10th to 14th May, 2026
Background:
The “water crisis” is often framed as a problem of scarcity or mismanagement. Across India and much of the Global South, however, it reflects a far deeper hydrological transformation and a crisis of environmental governance and justice. Rivers no longer follow historical flow regimes, even as they are described as reclaiming their former riverbeds, revealing contradictions in how altered river systems are understood. Droughts and floods now coexist, often within the same year and the same basin, exposing the growing instability of water cycles. Groundwater aquifers and springs are drying up faster than they can recharge, not only in arid regions but also across diverse ecological zones. These transformations place disproportionate burdens on a wide range of communities, from fishworkers to farmers, from the rural to urban poor, already facing social and economic marginalization.
Official reports have repeatedly warned that a majority of India’s population faces high to extreme water stress and that inadequate access to safe water continues to threaten lives and livelihoods. Yet such assessments merely reduce the crisis to alarming statistics and a demand-supply challenge, invisibilizing unequal distribution of access, decision-making power, risks, and losses. Crucially, they underplay how climatic shifts in combination with large-scale infrastructure, land-use change, groundwater over-extraction, urbanisation, and engineering-centered governance have profoundly reworked India’s waterscapes, often intensifying dispossession, ecological degradation, and conflict.
It is against this backdrop that Sambhaavnaa Institute for Public Policy, the Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India (Water Conflicts Forum), Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, and Himdhara Collective are jointly organising a three-day workshop titled Water Realities: Reimagining Sustainable Futures—Governance, Conflict, and Justice in India’s Water Crisis
The workshop brings together scholars, community practitioners, journalists, and activists to critically engage with water, not as a scarce resource, but as a living entity, and questions of governance, environmental justice, grassroots experience, and community-centered knowledge. The workshop will examine how present-day policies, institutions, and governance around water are contested and could be reimagined. The process aims to move beyond technocratic and top-down imaginaries and solutions towards a dialogue for more equitable, democratic, and just water futures.
The workshop is designed for those who wish to work or are working on water-related issues and want to deepen their knowledge about water. This includes activists in various sangathans, movements, or struggles and NGOs; young researchers and students (master’s onwards); environmental lawyers; or media persons wishing to report on the subject.
Themes that will be discussed over the duration of the workshop:
- Reframing the Water Crisis: Hydrology, Society, and Meaning
- Hydrological transformation and climate variability; Biophysical and socio-cultural dimensions of water; Worldviews, values, and meanings attached to water; Crisis framings: scarcity, excess, risk, and uncertainty
- Governance, Knowledge, and Hydropolitics
- Water governance institutions and practices; Knowledge, data, and water science; Hydropolitics, scale, and control; Transboundary rivers, basins, and aquifers; Water conflicts: quantity, quality, allocation
- Water Infrastructures and Environmental Injustice
- Large dams, mega hydropower, river interlinking, Inland waterways, river engineering, urban water; Displacement, land-use change, disaster risk; Infrastructure, livelihoods, and institutions
- Equity, Rights, and Alternative Water Futures
- Class, caste, gender, patriarchy, ethnicity; Rural–urban divides and WASH; Labour, care, and everyday water-related work; Community initiatives; Rights, governance reform, conflict resolution; From supply augmentation to demand management
Methodology: The workshop will follow a participatory method, emphasizing collective learning and critical reflection. Sessions will include short thematic inputs by resource persons, participant-led discussions, group work, case study analyses, film screenings, experience sharing, and a field visit. The structure and venue are designed to facilitate both formal and informal exchange, enabling participants to learn across disciplines, regions, and areas of work.
Language: English and some Hindi
Who this workshop is for:
The workshop is intended for individuals engaged with water issues in diverse capacities, including independent practitioners and activists; Professionals working with policy and non-government organisations; Students and researchers (postgraduate level and above); Environmental and public-interest lawyers; Journalists and media professionals reporting on water, climate/environment, and development
Resource persons:
Manshi Asher—Manshi is an environmental justice activist, researcher, and writer with over 25 years of experience working with community movements in the Himalayan region. Her work focuses on land, water, and forest rights, community forest governance, and gender justice. She co-founded Himdhara, an autonomous collective supporting struggles around livelihoods and landscapes in Himachal Pradesh. Manshi works on the political ecology of green extractivism and climate disasters in the Western Himalaya.
K J Joy—Joy is a founding member of the Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM) and an activist-researcher with over 30 years of experience. He was a full-time activist with the Mukti Sangharsh Movement in South Maharashtra and has worked on watershed development and resource literacy with BGVS. He has been a visiting fellow at CISED (now ATREE) and a Fulbright Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. His work focuses on people’s institutions for natural resources management, water conflicts, drought and irrigation governance, river basin management, and the right to water and sanitation.
Shripad Dharmadhikary—Shripad Dharmadhikary is an activist and policy researcher working on water and energy issues. A mechanical engineering graduate from IIT Bombay, he was a full-time activist with the Narmada Bachao Andolan for 12 years. He later founded and coordinates Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, focusing on research and advocacy in the water sector. His work aims to shift water governance towards more equitable, just, and sustainable pathways, grounded in close engagement with grassroots movements. He is currently on a break, focusing on reflective writing.
Jiten Yumnam—Jiten Yumnam is a journalist, human rights advocate, and environmental activist based in Manipur. He has been the co-convenor of the Committee on Protection of Natural Resources in Manipur since 2012 and serves as joint secretary of Citizens Concern for Dams and Development. He is part of the Centre for Research and Advocacy Manipur (CRAM) and works closely with human rights groups across the Northeast. His work focuses on the political economy of resource extraction, indigenous rights, and resistance to human rights violations.
Participant Contribution
We hope that participants will contribute Rs. 5,000/- towards workshop expenses, inclusive of all on-site costs: boarding, lodging, and all materials used in the workshop. Travel of participants will have to be borne by the organization/the participants.
Dates and Venue: 10th to 14th May, 2026, Sambhaavnaa Institute, VPO Kandbari, Tehsil Palampur, District Kangra, PIN 176061, Himachal Pradesh.
How to reach: Please visit Getting here
For any other info, WhatsApp or call 889 422 7954 (between 10 am and 5 pm), and email [email protected]
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