What made water engineering so effective in ancient India - the time of Ponniyin Selvan?
Category: water
Crafting a narrative – where, when, with whom, and from whom does water/climate resonate?
How and where to make climate change an electoral issue?
The curious case of Delhi – water-starved but unwilling to vote for water governance
What is the appropriate time and the appropriate scale at which to deal with water issues in a democracy? A Question of Scale Let’s start with scale first. If it is to do with provision (and division) of waters – the answer is to deal with it at high a level as relevant. Consider Delhi …
Water is NOT a voting issue at the national level – Why do we expect our policy makers to risk political capital on it?
Voters prioritize many issues - expect meaningful policy only on those issues which are politically possible.
Provision vs Management – the Eternal choice of the Indus Waters
(A version of this piece first appeared in Firstpost on Apr 09, 2019) Last time we saw how the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) defanged the dam as a geopolitical source of advantage. But the more relevant question to ask is – will securing the Indus secure India’s water future? To answer that question, we need …
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How India lost the hydro-disciplining battle against Pakistan – the road from Partition, War, Drought and the signing of the Indus Water Treaty.
Why did India deactivate its own hydro-disciplining tool against Pakistan? Travel from Partition, through the Cold War, China's takeover of Tibet, Drought to the signing of the IWT.
The British transformation of the Punjab – disruption and imbalance.
How the British Raj created a 'tap' that could be turned off. How they undermined local resilience in favour of large-scale non-local intervention. How they increased the vulnerability of the land. And, of course, the Russians.
The Story of the Indus – Can the Indus Waters be turned off?
The Indus Valley provides a fascinating and disturbing example of what geopolitics, colonisation, finance and climate can do to a region. This vulnerable land, which the British transformed with philosophy, canals, land and tax reforms into what it is today - a fault-line between two nuclear nations. Today, with tensions rising, the question asked is “can the tap on the Indus waters be turned off?”
What can we do about India’s water crisis – Part 5/5
Solution#2 for cities: Decentralized Sewage Treatment What to do and when to do it: Managing water in Indian cities is hard. Our water philosophy has thus far largely rested on grabbing a higher share from reservoirs or desalination – i.e., we’ve pinned our hopes on centralized provision rather than decentralized management. However, in the land …
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What can we do about India’s water crisis – Part 4/5
Solution#1: Rejuvenating cascading systems of tanks in one set of interconnected of tanks. What to do and When to do it: Let’s start with the “When”. The best time to embark on this exercise is right after a major drought. At that time, borewells are likely to be dry, and there will be strong popular …
Continue reading What can we do about India’s water crisis – Part 4/5
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