1.) Urban Water System in Gurugram - Pathways to Sustainable Transformation
The two days long workshop was held in Gurugram during September 29-30, 2018 on ‘Urban Water System in Gurugram: Pathways to Sustainable Transformation’. This workshop was aimed at engaging with various stakeholders such as planners, policy makers, government officials, NGOs, RWAs, academicians, citizens, migrants and marginalised urban poor in order to contribute to the discussion on the crises of water in the region and its interface with development, planning and governance. This workshop was organised around five distinct sessions, each focussed on a particular aspect of urban water management in Gurugram.
A) Urban Planning and Water System in Gurugram;
B) Sustainable Technological Solutions for Urban Water Management;
C) Urban Design and Water;
D) Gurgaon Water Forum (GWF) - Work-in-progress, and
Over the past three decades, driven by private interests of real estate and a demand driven by the international corporate lobby looking to establish itself in India, Gurugram has seen vast swathes of open agricultural lands that permitted water percolation to the ground water table, being converted to hard paved surfaces as either asphalt road or constructed building of residential or commercial nature and so rendered impervious to water. This has meant that groundwater recharge which was a natural phenomenon in the region is now greatly depleted.