“Arguments can end merely in conclusions and only stories make sense.”

-Ivan Illich

A Note on Process

We believe that process is part of the product. For us, the filmmaking process is a learning process; we (the filmmakers) are here to learn as much as you (the viewer). The point of this film is not to speak for others, but to let the people we meet along the way speak for themselves. Here is how we’re approaching this film:

“X is what we were looking for, and Y is what we did, but Z is what we found”…

as opposed to:

“We know X, and we are going to go around and talk to people about X, and visit places in Delhi to look for X… and then we are going to show you X….”

That being said, we do have some goals going into the project:

• We want Delhiites dealing with water issues to be able to tell their stories to a larger audience.
• We want to show that multi-billion dollar projects proposed by huge international institutions are not the only answer to this crisis.
• We want to show off and celebrate people who are taking their issues into their own hands.
• Most of all, we want imaginative, resourceful solutions to be shared and implemented by more people

“Why are narratives of movements always linear? Why do they always present one story? What about the plural narratives that exist among the participants of the movement? And what about writing about movements, representing the plurality of narratives? A woman thinks differently from a man, a younger man thinks differently from an elder woman, so on and so forth…there are different ways in which people’s life stories, people’s struggles, and life could be ‘written about’.”

-Smitu Kothari, March 2009