Society, Culture, Religion and History

The report is a compilation of abstracts of hydrological literature from select national and international Journals for the period 1991-95. Though a sizeable number of Journals are published in the field of hydrology and water resources, scientists involved in different studies and projects find it difficult to go through all of them.

Ek Phirangi Raja

In this essay, Romesh Bedi recounts the true story of Frederick E Wilson, a British army officer, who deserted the army after the Sepoy Mutiny of 1957, escaped to the Himalayas, and settled in Harsil, a remote village in Uttarakhand on the banks of the Bhagirathi.

Wilson makes a flourishing business from the export of skins, fur, musk from the region, and rips the local deodar forest, to cash in the growing demand for wooden sleepers during the expansion of the Indian railways by the British, which were sent down to the plains through the rivers. Wilson soon acquires a lease from the Raja of Tehri-Garhwal, for his timber business and keeps the Raja happy by giving him a share of the profits, and even begins to mint his own local currency, because of which locals start calling him Raja.

Centre for Environment Education (CEE), Northern regional office based in Lucknow has been working with Gender and Water Alliance (GWA) for trans-adapting the resource guide on ‘Mainstreaming Gender in Water Management’ in Hindi for India as part of the South Asia version. The Resource guide was first published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 2003. This is the second edition of the Resource Guide on Mainstreaming Gender in Water Management of August 2006.

In this lecture, the author makes connections between the concepts of certainty and uncertainty and draws parallels between these and the scientific or the positivist approach and the phenomenalist approach. The author argues that the excessive emphasis on certainty, which is an inherent assumption of the scientific approach embraces reductionism, compartmentalisation and has been the principle underlying all disciplines such as developmental economics.

The Sankalp 2010 Awards and Investment Forum is an annual Intellecap initiative committed to catalyzing entrepreneurship in the social enterprise space. Sankalp actively facilitates collaboration between established and budding entrepreneurs, investors, thought leaders and sector stakeholders interested in contributing effectively towards this fledgling yet fast-growing industry.

With a strong focus on double bottomline (social and commercial) enterprises Sankalp, in its second edition, aims to accelerate investment in this space through the showcase of pioneering, sustainable and innovative enterprises capable of long term social impact. Sankalp's primary goal is of bringing together various stakeholders sharing a common conviction that capital should be invested to create multiple bottom-line returns (financial, social and environmental) and not exclusively financial (profit-maximizing) or social (philanthropic) returns.

Thus having successfully established a niche for itself; Sankalp has taken the lead in recognizing those businesses that have mastered the balancing act between the profit and social objectives. Sankalp 2010 Forum and Awards shall recognize, award and connect the most investible social MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium enterprises) operating in 5 high impact sectors:

Guest post by Pranab, Sucharita & Priyabrat
Odisha State Center

With summer scorch intensifying, pinch of water woes and conflicts are becoming more painful in Odisha this year. While pollution continues to be the concern, scarcity and quality of drinking water across Odisha, both from rural and urban landscapes have become the major water news in vernacular media. With news of more and more tube wells going defunct/ drying up, water-supply systems becoming ineffective and quality of surface and ground water plummeting with metal and biological pollution, this issue of Water Feeder attempts to reiterate the urgency of thinking and action towards alternate management of our water resources. It also underlines grimmer months ahead, with summer intensifying further and hydrological year approaching its end.

This presentation describes the vision and strategy of PepsiCo, Roha, Maharashtra and its initiatives in the area of water conservation. The plant with three filling lines (bottling and canning) has tried to achieve positive water balance through water savings at plant level, water initiatives at community level and by promoting water conservation measures in agriculture.

Guest Post by Himanshu Thakkar

New Delhi: A workshop organised yesterday on the sidelines of a South Asia civil society gathering under the banner of Assembly of a Union of South Asian Peoples at Jawaharlal Nehru University came up with a set of recommendations to address the question of conflict over shared rivers in the region. The key message from the meeting, which addressed issues pertaining to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal and India, was that South Asia’s rivers should be a source of uniting peoples, not dividing them. The Assembly is being organised as a civil society counter to the official SAARC meeting to be held in Thimpu from 28-29 April 2010.

This report by the Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) draws attention to the fact that a very high percentage (40%) of the population in the world does not have access to basic level of sanitation, which has serious health consequences and puts a considerable economic burden on the poor. The report explores the issue of what can be the most appropriate financing mechanisms to meet the sanitation needs of the poor.

This report from the Right to Food Campaign traces the implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in West Bengal and points to the failure of the State in guaranteeing basic entitlements. It asserts that West Bengal is way behind other States, in implementation of this scheme, as per the data on NREGS website.