Springs of life

The ides of weg is ek sasnied wo years as when Chani w discoming the minimum of World W. Pr ffice the Ro Netherlands Embay, New Delhi Mr. Paul e Welwald in d joined the dicti Ponow what are we would take up amder the banner of WWI The disemiton became me, one thing led to other, and by the end of it Ganesh and I had decided that it was time we wrotestata paper on the water ressurces of India Dhe Ras and Paul laughed and asked us if were ready to take up the challenge and here we are today, writing the preface to a completed manuscript of Springs of Life

It has been nearly two decades since both of us began working in the area of water and development, and we felt that this was a good time to take a sabbatical and work on this white paper. For the past twenty years we had been working sectorally but now we wanted to get a multi dimensional picture. A couple of months after we began working on this project. putting together whatever we had in our library, visiting other libraries and taking a quick review of the literature, we were not too happy with the result. As Ganesh said, there was no excitement. That evening we decided that the very next day Ganesh along with Binayak would leave for Gujarat by road. This was in December 2003. They left the next morning with no agenda, no plan, just the thought that they would go to Gujarat for 10 to 12 days. They returned with dozens of stories about water, and full of excitement at what they had seen and heard. It became very clear that this is what we would have to do in order to infuse life into the book we were writing. We decided that with the meager resources available they would try to see as much of India as possible, traveling everywhere by road and we were convinced that the learning from this journey would actually make the book come alive.

Throughout 2004 and the early part of 2005, Ganesh, Binayak and our faithful Gypsy travelled around 25,000 kms across the length and breadth of the country. The plan was simple with no agenda, and no fixed programme. Only a rough duration would be decided for the trip, even the route was not fixed, and much depended upon the detailed Lonely Planet guide on India and the road map book. The idea was to stop and see things on the way, talk to people, stay in villages, and document and photograph interesting life experiences around water. We wanted to understand how India at the grassroots in the villages, small towns and urban centres copes with the issue of water. We deliberately avoided contacting NGOs and government project officials and visiting their projects, as Ganesh said, "it would have been like going to the zoo, and we have done enough of that". I joined them whenever it was possible, because the office also had to be run, and the literature review and research work had to be done at the same time.