Tarini Manchanda
likes telling stories through film. Born and raised in New Delhi, India, she attended United World College in Pune and then graduated with a major in Environmental Policy from Colby College, Maine, USA. Her first film was “Narmada Rising” in January 2007, a documentary about a peoples’ movement against dam projects in India’s Narmada Valley. In doing this project she realised that making a film is more than just storytelling, it is a process of learning. In her travels with the Rethinking Globalization Program and internships with the Save the Ridge movement, Tarini came to realise that she knew very little about the source of the water she grew up using in her home in New Delhi.
She has seen and worried about her municipal supply of water running dry since she was 10 years old. Although her family can afford to buy water from tankers when necessary, they are accustomed to saving water in big buckets. Spending time outside Delhi, studying in Pune and Maine in the US, she wondered how other families in Delhi responded to the water crisis. In her time away from India she realised, ironically, that her education had trained her to value knowledge produced in institutions of the “developed” countries, above local knowledge, which was usually labeled “underdeveloped.”
In this process, she came to see the value of water harvesting as an example of the local solutions that are possible in the face of horribly grim local (but globally connected) crises. In turn, she has learned that injustices surrounding water access in Delhi are directly and indirectly caused by consumption-based lifestyles, lauded for their “developed” nature, lifestyles much like her own. Finally, she is making this film to decolonize her mind, and to explain and understand how it is that large scale and imperially influenced solutions create injustice and destruction. In place of the large scale, Tarini wants to explore local solutions with smaller impacts that require people overcoming the self doubt created by the label of “underdevelopment.”
Katie Gillett
is a Floridian photojournalist-turned-filmmaker who began her documentary career for the express purpose of working with Tarini on a future project. She graduated from Boston University in 2009 with a self-designed degree in “International Development & Multimedia Journalism.” (Even though she named it herself, having the word “development” in the title still makes her uncomfortable.)
Most of her studies focused on social justice in Latin America, until her journey on Rethinking Globalization broadened her geographical and cognitive horizons. She will forever remember the day she saw water activist Rajendra Singh speak in New Delhi about how millions of people have been displaced from their homes due to large-scale dam projects. Singh’s talk, combined with the influence of Smitu Kothari, encouraged her to see the deeper links with her own thesis work about resistance to internal displacement in Colombia. Because of their influence, she realized that violence in Colombia is largely development-driven, which the mainstream media ignores in its portrayals. Since then, she has been sold on cross-cultural education and alternative media sources.
Katie hopes to use her visual storytelling skills to make the abstract, seemingly disconnected issues surrounding the global water crisis relatable, accessible, and possibly even fun.
Moriah Mason
is a dancer-slash-activist from Pittsburgh, PA who believes in the power of art to bring about social change. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in New York with a dual focus in international development and modern dance and choreography.
She felt particularly moved by her time spent in a cotton-growing area of Maharashstra, India, hard hit by debt and farmer suicides. This experience forced her to look very deeply at her own role in these suicides as a consumer of Indian cotton and a citizen of a nation that drives down the world price of cotton with its domestic subsidies. Since returning to the U.S., she has been trying to figure out how to stand in solidarity with the struggles of the activists she met. She was involved in a major research paper about agriculture in India, and is looking forward to expanding her focus to include water issues.
Moriah’s fundraising and marketing skills and undeterred dedication are a motivating force in getting this project off the ground.
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