World Water Day 2013 has been organized as a part of Catch Every Drop, a campaign around urban water issues in Bangalore. Several events have been organised across Bangalore during 22-23 March, 2013. For details of events lined up for 22nd and 23rd March, 2013, click here. 

At a recent pre-budget consultation with social sector related groups, Rohini Nilekani, Chairperson, Arghyam provided the following inputs to the Finance Minister:

1.Launch a Research Initiative to Mainstream Groundwater into Urban Water Supply
2.Integrate participatory groundwater management principles in watershed development.

To read the entire brief please click here

Introduction

The consultation was presided over by Dr. Mihir Shah, Member, Planning Commission, on October 16th, 2012. The purpose of the consultation was to share an approach Arghyam had developed in its work with two Gram Panchayats in Karnataka, and to obtain inputs on enriching this framework for further development.

The focus in the second quarter has been on formalizing the organisation structure in the two Gram Panchayats (GPs), as well as planning. There has been a rather long phase of planning, with each Head detailing the plans till the ward levels. As we watch the slow but sure transition of the GP into a formal organisation, we see many traits developing which policy makers have been long wishing for in panchayats - ownership, distribution of responsibility, interest in government programs and schemes, and the need to understand the present status of assets in the GP.

Arghyam has decided to look more closely at the sanitation space to identify certain areas where it can work towards attaining total sanitation in rural areas of India. In this context, with behaviour change being identified as one of the critical issues, Arghyam organized a one-day consultation on Behaviour Change Communication (BCC) for sanitation on 1 August 2012 at Bangalore to delve into the issue of poor usage of individual household latrines and the reasons behind this.

Over the last five years Arghyam was involved in a collaborative experiment to introduce the concept of Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM) in Mulbagal, a small town in Karnataka. This programme was designed to combine scientific knowledge, technical skills, institutional efforts and citizen partnership to create a model for sustainable urban water management. Arghyam has published a document titled ‘An Approach to Integrated Urban Water Management – The Mulbagal Experience’ which seeks to draw on the efforts, experiences and lessons over the last five years in implementing this programme.

The first quarterly newsletter, during phase II of the GP Organization building project, has been released.  The newsletter captures our work since the initiation of the second phase, including recommendations being implemented, as well as some challenges in managing such a restructuring exercise.

Arghyam has published a document titled “A Framework for Rural Drinking Water Quality Management (WQM): Collating Experiences from the Voluntary Sector”. This document is the second in a series developed by Arghyam following “Step by Step – Achieving Sustainable Sanitation”. The objective of such frameworks is to extract patterns and lessons from successful projects of grassroots non-government organisations (NGOs) and develop them into a set of guidelines for similar efforts.

21st – 30th March 2012

Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore

Every year, 22nd March is observed as World Water Day across the globe to remind the inhabitants of the earth of their responsibilities to protect, save and conserve this precious natural resource. This year to commemorate the World Water Day Arghyam has organised a special Art Exhibition titled “Water – The Thread of Life”, between 21st - 30th March 2012 at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath.