It’s been a busy last few weeks, starting with Katie’s arrival in Delhi (yes, we are finally together in one place!), travelling to the Narmada Valley, welcoming our video cameras (SONY PD170s!), meeting people in Delhi, and doing interviews. Here is what stood out to me in the past 2 weeks:
Events; some of them.
• Meeting Kailash who is the nicest camera rental person, has lots of experience making films and is in on the Delhi documentary film makers circuit. Thank you, Rahulji (Roy).
• Informal roundtable meeting with people who’d expressed interest and experience with Delhi’s water. Turned into heated debate on dams, “facts”…etc.
• Attended ‘Water Dialogue’ group meeting just before we caught our train to the Narmada Valley.
• The long train journey to the Narmada Valley and lots of chai facilitated great conversations on the Tehri dam with long time activist, scholar and writer Vimal Bhai.
• The MP government arrested and beat up NBA activists! A blatant violation of the democratic constitutional rights of Indian citizens: http://aidindia.org/main/component/option,com_facileforms/Itemid,430/
• Met an auto driver, he’s started an NGO to save water!
• Met with students who volunteered to explore and take pictures of Delhi for us!
Ideas; brought up in conversation (these have been paraphrased and may differ from what people actually said or meant).
• Pollution isn’t the main problem for the Yamuna, it is the dams, barrages and constructions that interfere with the river.
• Delhi doesn’t need more water, Delhiites need to change their lifestyles, “use and throw” cannot work for too long
• When people lose the responsibility to govern water access (community governance replaced by top down governance), they also lose their rights to water unless they continue to demand these…
• Delhi belongs to no one…
• To appeal to people you guys should try to be less activist-y and boring … just tell stories…
• The term ‘harvesting’ is kind of colonial and extractive, almost violent…
• Population adds to water scarcity, YES.
Is an increasing population the main cause of the water crisis, NO.
Why, because this takes attention away from issues of equity.
As long as we have a system where some people use 700 litres of water a day and others use 20 litres, the water crisis is created by over consumptive lifestyles in Delhi…
Well its great that someone has recognized it and is doing something about it!! This is the first step Awareness the next one is the toughest one of all which is to actually take concrete actions which enable the bulk of our population opportunity to flourish!! Thats the only long term viable solution for everyone concerned cause our lifestyle and lives are increasingly becoming interdependent.. Good Stuff Tarini!!