Water First

Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt has been closely associated with local level movements working on water and related environmental issues in West Bengal, India. Trained as a human geographer from Calcutta University, Kuntala has researched water and society in Lower Damodar Valley region. She has been a member of SAARC Track III water initiatives and been a resource person for Panos Institute’s flood enquiry. Kuntala has set up a Gender Water Network (see http: //www.rspas.anu.edu.au/gwn), and is a member of the Steering Committee of Gender Water Alliance. She has written widely about water resources, and has guest edited ‘Water for People’ special issue (51.1) of the journal Development. Kuntala teaches and conducts research also on community development in mining areas and has authored several papers and books. Her recent publications include the edited volume Fluid Bonds: Views on Gender and Water, Stree, Kolkata, 2006. Kuntala is currently a Fellow at the Resource Management in Asia Pacific Program at The Australian National University.

• Foreword - Peter P MollingaIntroduction: Placing Water First - Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt I. THE REGIONAL POLITICS OF WATER IN SOUTH ASIA National and Regional Water Concerns: Setting the Scene - Ramaswamy R. IyerThe Monsoon Rivers of South Asia: A Geomorphological Perspective on Managing Monsoon Rivers - Avijit GuptaThe Politics of Water in Colonial India: The Emergence of Control - David HardimanThe Regional Politics of Water Sharing: Contemporary Issues in South Asia - Douglas HillGlobal Conventions and Regulations on International Rivers: Implications for South Asia - Binayak RayRiver-Linking and its Discontents: The Final Plunge for Supply-side Hydrology in India - Rohan D′SouzaII. REGIONAL ISSUES, CHALLENGES AND APPROACHESWater Quality and Economic Growth in India - Robert J. WassonWhen a Public Health Story Goes Sour: Arsenic Contaminated Drinking Water in Bangladesh - Bruce CaldwellArsenic Contamination of Ground Water: Social Determinants of an Environmental Crisis in India - Atanu SarkarGender and Integrated Water Resources Management in South Asia: The Challenge of Community-managed Alternatives - Sara AhmedInstitutions for Integrated Water Resources Management: Lessons from Four Indian States - Vishal Narain and Saurabh Chugh Top-down or Bottom-up?: Negotiating Water Management at the Local Level in South Asia - Saravanan V.SWatershed Development Programmes and Rural Development: A Review of Indian Policies - Sucharita SenIII. INTERPRETING COMMUNITY ROLES AND INITIATIVESBeyond ′Dispositif′ and ′De-politicization′: Spaces of Civil Society in Water Conservation in Rural Rajasthan - Saurabh Gupta and Subir Sinha Submerged Voices and Transnational Environmentalism: The Movement Against the Sardar Sarovar Dam - Judy Whitehead Negotiating Water Management in the Damodar Valley: Kalikata Hearing and the DVC - Kuntala Lahiri-DuttEndogenous Water Resource Management in North-East Bangladesh: Lessons from the Haor Basin - Jennifer Duyne Barenstein The Ganga (or the Problems of Translation) - Annie BolithoIndex

This book provides a useful collection of chapters and will be of interest to readers in South Asia, as well as, development professionals, social activists and water systems engineers everywhere.