The week started off on a high note with the students being dropped in the middle of a grievance day program (as observers) at the district collector’s office. In a short span of a few hours the students got a sense of the complexity of governance – in terms of process and structure in large democratic nations like India. Other field visits (to Indcoserve) helped them understand the linkages of governance across different scales of administrative units and the nature of problems encountered in fragile, vulnerable districts such as the Nilgiris which has a large number of diversity in people – both indigenous communities and other public.
The water story unfolded in Kotagiri with the students getting a hands-on understanding of the technical concepts behind water, watershed, wetlands and their status, while the sanitation aspect of water and waste was taken down to Coimbatore where the Keystone team is actively working on sanitation projects ranging from FSTP to community toilets. Tracing the flows of water and waste in different cultural contexts and socio-cultural connotations of clean and unclean (in terms of water and waste) made for involved cross boundary exercises in this week, stimulating good discussion. The Coimbatore experience allowed for an understanding of water flows and sanitation process chains in urban and peri-urban contexts in different spaces and economic strata – malls, markets and slums.
By Sharada Ramadass
