Rapid urbanisation may have benefitted many in terms of employment and better living conditions, but has put immense pressure on water resource, the elixir of life, and the biggest challenge today is to come up with solutions for making urbanisation sustainable.
Towards this, the United States Consulate, Hyderabad, had funded a project that has come up with some creative solutions that can have a far-reaching impact on urbanisation.
The project taken up by a nine-member team of Indian students along with six students from University of Utah, USA, was released here with some workable solutions. The researchers admitted that the age-old practices of Indians in preserving water were indeed worth being reinvented and adopted in the present circumstances when water wars look imminent.
Though emphasis is on water, the report consisting of six projects also deals with empowering women, using IT and viewing the issue from anthropological perspective. The research teams visited community-based activists, media, government representatives, non-governmental organisations, academics, climate change professionals and studied ongoing planning and policy initiatives, and challenges faced by the local governments and businesses.
“In Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, water challenges are many, and how they are addressed in urban and rural areas will largely shape the future of those States and beyond,” said Benjamin B. Cohen, professor of History at University of Utah, who coordinated the project.
The projects offer some implementable solutions, he said, admitting that Telangana as a society had implemented water preservation techniques referring to tanks developed by the Kakatiyas. He said Mission Kakatiya taken up by the Telangana government only reinforces that the practice of water preservation existed in this part of India.
One of the workable solutions was presented by Vivek, Ashrita and Harita, who worked on inverse bore-well method for preserving rainwater, instead of the present rainwater harvesting structures promoted by the government. Hyderabad being a rocky area, water can be channelised better into defunct bore-wells or the functioning ones than having a mere water harvesting structure.
The team that conducted the project include Vaibhav Saxena, Kate Steinicke, Annaka Egan, Matt Kirkegaard, Amber Robb, Kaushik Mane, Ashrita Reddy, Vikram Gattu, Sukruti Gupta, Prathyusha Subraveti, Julia Maciunas, Sarah Martinez, Dalibandhu Pukkalla, Haritha Polina and Vivek Rakotu. The coordinators were Benjamin B. Cohen and Stephen A. Goldsmith.
