Popular lecture series
by Water Supply Department, Government of Gujarat
Background:
The distribution of fresh water resources in India is uneven and
2/3rd of India is drought prone. The availability of fresh water
per capita is decreasing. Demands on available water from
intensive agriculture and industry are increasing very fast.
This has led to mining of underground water. The situation is
getting grim because of deteriorating ground water quality.
Water pollution of surface and ground water has deteriorated the
availability of drinking water. Increasing population pressures,
growing competition across sectors, environmental degradation
and diminishing resource have all put tremendous pressures on
water availability. These increasing demands would make many
drought prone States as water stressed. Today water is being
looked upon as an economic good and market forces have come into
play in the sector.
Water resource management is facing a challenge. It requires
reforms, technology and innovations in the ways water is used,
conserved and recycled. The area of concern is pollution of
ground and surface water resources, chemical and bacteriological
contamination. Ultimately it is important that how each of us
use water judiciously and value it, so that sustainability of
sources, systems and institutions managing it is ensured.
Problems and solutions are both complex and any reform (change)
has to encompass commercial, technical, institutional and social
aspects.
Water supply and sanitation sector poses one of the most
important and development challenges in the 21st Century. Over
one billion people around the world still lack access to safe
drinking water while over 2.4 billion do not have access to
sanitation and more than 5 million people die every year from
water related diseases. Moreover water supply and sanitation is
key to achieving the broader goals of economic growth and
poverty alleviation. Millions of Indians still trudge long
distances for drinking water, who have lived all their lives in
the edge of drought and despair.
Water resource’s management falls in domain of many departments
and fragmented demand management has to get together for a total
solution. With this in view, Water Supply Department, Government
of Gujarat, has started a popular lecture series to address
these issues to the players in this sector. It is on third
Wednesday of every month when eminent personalities from Water
Resource sector addresses one of the issues. We hope that these
lectures would lead to exchange of fresh ideas and information
and also help in bringing these issues into public domain and
thereby encourage more meaningful involvement of the civic
society. This effort would go a long way to integrate obligation
of the State and citizens’ initiative for getting engaged in
obtaining water security for each of us.
The lectures delivered by such eminenet personalities are
available for download. Please click on link below to go to
Index page ( In Gujarati and English language )
