Hyderabad: Water Literacy Centre launched at WALAMTARI

Hyderabad: Working on a model successfully tried out at Maharashtra, V Prakash, Chairman, Telangana Water Resources Development Corporation (TWRDC) launched the Telangana Water Literacy Centre on Friday at Water and Land Management Training Institute (WALAMTARI) in Hyderabad.

This has been done to promote water conservation movement in the State. The Corporation Chairman also donated a sum of Rs one lakh on his own for the centre, a prize money which he had received recently as it is not a State-financed programme.

Following his example, the co-organisers also chipped in with a total sum of Rs 80,000 additionally to donate to WALAMTARI.

'The water conservation movement in the State is largely in the hands of the water warriors and civil society organisations. We need a basin approach as against the existing political or administrative unit one.

All our irrigation projects including Mission Bhagiratha have struggled to produce the desired results because of the lack of this basin approach.

"The youth of the State will be involved largely in this activity along with the NGOs, who are major players to prevent our society to be pushed into the disastrous state which it sees itself at present owing to the current policies and practices of water management," Prakash stated.

Under the guidance of 'Water Man' Rajendra Singh, who was present on the occasion, more centres would be opened across the State in Karimnagar, Warangal and Khammam this week, the TWRDC chief informed.

Delivering the keynote address, Singh drew attention to the crisis that cannot be handled by the government and engineers alone. He emphasised the need to liberate water management from the current bureaucratic approach. We need a community-based approach not contractor-based one, he underlined.

Informing the gathering that all universities in the State are to launch water literacy centres soon, he complimented the TS model of water literacy as being more holistic than the one which they tried out in the past three years through Yashwantrao Chavan Academy for Development Administration, Pune.

By launching people's science of water management and sustainable development of water bodies, the downfall of mega projects is inevitable, he affirmed. "We need Jal Nayaks, Jal Yodhas, Jal Premis, Jal Dhoots, Jal Karmis and Jal Sevaks at village level," he added.