Sinking Cities: River, City and Politics of Water

People’s Resource Centre invites you to an online dialogue on the theme “Sinking Cities: River, City and Politics of water” to discuss how cities can become more responsible towards the rivers.

Cities across India are threatened by an extreme water crisis. In recent years, cities like Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi and Patna have suffered increasingly from the scarcity of drinking water, while also having struggled to cope with the deadliest flash floods in the most unlikely seasons. Over the years urban centres have faced major water crisis due to various reasons like untreated dumping of sewage and industrial waste into the river, rapid concretization and urbanisation of land etc. This is likely to lead to serious vulnerabilities to climate and ecological crisis, with increased frequency and intensity of flash floods, flash droughts and extreme temperatures.

Amidst this crisis, a new government program ‘National Urban River Management Plan’ aims to manage and ‘redevelop’ the urban rivers. With the Sabarmati riverfront development project as the inspiration for this plan, it seems highly likely that the river banks of identified urban river stretches will be cemented and straightened to match the aesthetics of a ‘modern’ city planning. This will add to the vulnerabilities to the events like a flash flood and further marginalize the communities inhabiting and protecting the riverbanks for centuries.

[Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81316053597]