Political

Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts (Forum) in India, in collaboration with the Chalakudi Puzha Samrakshan Samiti and Kerala State Resource Centre of the Forum, is organizing a Training Programme on Understanding and Resolving Water Conflicts from 5 to 8 April 2010 in Kerala (the exact location in Kerala would be announced later).

VIJAYAWADA: School children will be with one another to list the number of animals and plants they can recognise in a competition being held by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Forest Department at Kaikaluru on Tuesday.

The Yamuna Biodiversity Park (YBP) invites all citizens to celebrate the World Wetlands Day on the 2nd of February. This date marks the signing of the ‘Convention on Wetlands’ in 1971 at Ramsar, Iran. The 2010 Wetlands Day theme is “Caring for Wetlands – an Answer to Climate Change”. The theme highlights the fact that wetlands, with their biodiversity, can help mitigate climate change.

The training modules is available for the above program, besides they are also suitably modified based on the requests and needs of the organisation and department.

The training modules is available for the above program, besides they are also suitably modified based on the requests and needs of the organisation and department.

In 2010, theatre continues to be one of our core areas of intervention – trainings, workshops, working with groups and communities, performances, post-performance discussions… The performing media initiative of media matters now has a repertoire of plays being performed by its youth theatre groups, the most recent being Main, Asha... (on sex selection) and Kataar! (on right to information).

Consolidating these experiences, we organize our annual six-day residential workshop – an opportunity to interact and work with both, 'development actors' and 'theatre activists'.

Our previous workshops have been attended by participants representing CBOs, NGOs, Government departments, theatre groups and educational institutions from across states – Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

About the Book –

Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are supposed to provide solutions to many of the existing problems related to infrastructure projects – in both execution and operation. Currently, there are PPP projects in almost all the sectors including roads, ports, airports, water, sewerage, solid waste management and transport among others. It is, therefore, important to do a reality check on PPP projects and their efficacy in addressing the problems faced by the public sector water supply services and other infrastructure sectors as well.

The report looks at various aspects of PPPs, beginning from why PPPs have come to be regarded as the major approach for infrastructure development in the country, the circumstances that lead to the change in approach from direct privatisation to public-private partnerships, the current status of the PPP projects that are being executed in India, especially in the water sector, to the current estimates and projections of investment requirements for infrastructure development in India by governments and International Financial Institutions (IFIs).

In one year the small village of Gadrata, Rajasthan earned 0.15 Million US$

The secret: Rainwater Harvesting

Seekar, Rajasthan, India

This is the success story of the small village of Gadrata and its hamlets (overall about 50-55 families) in the Seekar district of Rajasthan and how water means gold!

A few years ago Smt. Amla Ruia, Chairperson of Aakar Charitable Trust and a resident of Mumbai, Maharashtra, motivated and supported the villagers of Gadrata to build a Check Dam to solve their water problems. Until that time groundwater levels in their wells were in serious decline.

The Sachetana Drinking Water Plus project implemented by the BAIF Institute of Rural Development (BIRD-K), in three districts of Karnataka, aims to solve the problem of endemic fluorosis in the region, by providing an alternate source of water and by improving the quality of groundwater.

This report is a mid-term assessment of the project in Mundargi taluk of Gadag district of Karnataka, undertaken to understand and document the decentralized fluoride mitigation strategy adopted in the project villages and to analyze the impact on the groundwater levels and water quality as a result of the project's efforts.

The Jal Bhagirathi Foundation has been working for the past eight years with programmes in the Marwar region of Thar Desert to empower distressed village communities enabling them to revive the traditional community management systems and practices with special focus on creating social capital as sustainable means for bringing water security.