Centre for Urban Water Resource, an urban vertical of DHAN Vayalagam Tankfed Foundation, is working in rejuvenating the water bodies in Vandiyur tank cascade system in Madurai district through the project REVIVAL, in partnership with HCL Foundation. Well, urban context provides a different set of rules and regulations for any intervention, the restoring and rejuvenation intervention posed the hurdles in the form of complete dysfunctionality of the tank cascade network and water bodies subjected to encroachment.
In urban context…
“…the restoring and rejuvenation intervention posed the hurdles in the form of complete dysfunctionality of the tank cascade network and water bodies subjected to encroachment”
In this scenario, it is obligatory to enable communities, the importance of the water bodies, in order to ensure the sustainability of the interventions post-implementations. CURE which successfully completed its phase I of the project REVIVAL, entered into phase II activities, envisaging the tank rejuvenation co-developed by involving the local communities to meet their redefined future functionalities.
Bringing about change is never a day’s job, perseverance and patience must compliment the hard work in order to see the vision in the reality. To do so, CURE, time and again, organizes water events on the prominent days to educate and involve the community, stakeholders’ and the young minds towards saving the water bodies in the urban spaces. Celebrating the International Day of Democracy on 15th September 2020, CURE organized a webinar on ‘Water Democracy’. The webinar is facilitated and resourced by DHAN in-house experts – water theme, environment theme and Panchayat theme – having stronghold at grassroots action. The topics on which the webinar progressed were: ‘Democratic Water Governance’, ‘Is Bottled Water Democratic’, ‘Water and Casteism: Then and Now’, and ‘Scope for Water Security at Gram Panchayat’.