Urban Water

Climate change is leading to rise in extreme events world over, and developing countries such as India have been experiencing not only higher death rates but also greater economic impacts due to natural hazards.

Piramal Sarvajal, the safe drinking water initiative of Piramal Foundation launched a tool named Composite Water Vulnerability Index (CWVI) at its recent webinar on ‘Sustainable water security for urban underserved’ hosted in association with Center for Water and Sanitation (CWAS) and Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT).

Radharamanpada is an unauthorised slum in Angul with 300 houses. The president of the slum sanitation committee Janaki Sahu, a 28-year-old mother of four, runs a street food stall on the main road. There are seven women in the committee of eleven, working on sanitation solution for populations that remain underserved.

A few of us did an exercise where we closed our eyes and thought of the first four words that came to our minds when we thought of water data in India. Here is what we came up with:

The UNICEF and the Scaling City Institutions for India (SCI-FI) initiative at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) in collaboration with the Panchayati Raj and Drinking Water Department (PR&DW), Government of Odisha (GoO), and the District Administration, Dhenkanal are making strides towards instituting district wide approach for Solid Liquid Waste Management (SLWM).

A quick search for the word data on India Water Portal results in a flood of queries - people are looking for water data - for specific villages, cities or for the entire country. 

The environment versus development debate has increasingly become more polarised, with discussions in the public domain revealing a stark contrast of views. Development has increasingly come to symbolise ‘doing something’ and ensuring ‘visible outputs’, largely in the form of infrastructure.

Tucked away in the slums of Dhenkanal, a small community offers a glimpse of how sanitation solutions have changed hundreds of lives for the better. Till recently, post rains in the absence of proper drainage, the clogged lanes were causing a lot of inconvenience to the residents of Parhatiya Sahi slum.

In a corner of the Kathagada locality in the Parhatiya Sahi slum of Dhenkanal stands a small neat house. Surrounded by a well-tended garden that is planted with fruit trees, flowers and grass, this is Reena Rani Singh’s home. She is a multi-purpose local leader and is a member of the local Self Help Group (SHG), Mahila Arogya Samiti and Slum Sanitation Committee (SSC).

About the conference: