Adopt multi stakeholder approach to develop mechanisms to engender programmes and activities, particularly that of the Programme of Action and the Water Vision at all levels, from grassroots to the global.

Zonal level networks be established where they have not been constituted.

Form a national level Steering Committee (core group) to develop the constitution and institutional structure of the national network. 

Establish linkages between networks at all levels i.e. state, zonal, national and also with IWP/SASTAC and Global Water Partnership.

Evolve a detailed plan of action for finalization of the Country Status Paper on "Women and Water".

Present the voice of women and water in India at the Kyoto forum scheduled for March 2003.

Session 1: Gender and Water
The Chairperson for this session was Dr. Radhika Ramasubban and the paper presenters were Prof. S. Vedula, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Dr. Jasveen Jairath, Project Director, SaciWaters, Hyderabad and Dr. Shantha Mohan, Fellow, GSU, NIAS. The highlights of the presentations are as follows:

Prof. Vedula, in his presentation provided the backdrop and overview of the status of the country's water resource, both natural and technical. It is in this overall context that the role of women in the management of this resource and the disparities and disadvantages they face in accessing and controlling the resource be understood. He provided information regarding the Water Reserves on Earth, in the country, developments made in the sector, critical problems faced and the options for addressing them. Following are some of the main points presented by him. 

Ninety seven per cent of all water in the world is contained in oceans. Of the fresh water reserves in the world 75 per cent are in Polar ice and glaciers, 25 per cent ground water, 0.3 per cent in lakes, 0.06 per cent as soil moisture, 0.035 per cent in atmosphere and 0.03 per cent in rivers. The water availability per capita for India is about half of that of USA and Japan. Further, the total flow of all rivers in India is only 6 per cent as against the flow from all rivers in the world.

In India the Major River Systems constitutes 85 per cent while medium and minor systems together constitute only 15 per cent of the total water resource. Further, 80 to 90 per cent of water carried in the four-monsoon months runs waste into the sea, thus limiting the availability of usable waters. The critical problem faced is that the total Surface Water availability is just 4 per cent of world’s resource while its population is about 16 per cent of that of the world. 

In order to address the concern certain measures were taken which include the evolving of a National Water Policy and National Perspectives in 1980, setting up of the National Water Development Agency (NWDA) in 1982, the National Water Resources Council in 1983 and the National Water Policy in 1987. As per the National Water Policy the water allocation priorities are Drinking water, Irrigation, Hydropower, Navigation, Industrial and other uses.

Water is a national asset and more than 90 per cent of the water occur in inter-state and inter-national rivers.

Water to the sea needs to be minimized by building additional storage and preserving and enhancing the environment

A nodal agency should be set up for the compilation and supply of hydrological data

Nationally accepted criteria for water use and development within the framework of the National Water Policy needs to be evolved

As per the criteria there should be comprehensive basin planning for optimum development

A single organization should be established for a river basin as a whole for planning and development

Multidisciplinary Units should be set up in each state to prepare basin and master plans

Rehabilitation and Resettlement issues need to be addressed with sensitivity

Systems studies in planning and development is essential as they are both economical and of immense value in decision making

Massive campaigns should be organized and print and electronic media used for creating public awareness.

Session 2: Gender and Policy
This session was chaired by Mr. P.S. Rao, Management Consultant and papers were presented by Dr. Chhaya Datar and Ms. Seema Kulkarni of SOPPECOM, Pune on Watershed Development Policy needs Equity Component for Sharing of Enhanced Water and Dominant Constructions of Women and Its Implication on Women’s Participation in Water Policy respectively.

Dr. Chhaya Datar in her presentation highlighted the importance of watershed as the corner stone for integrated and decentralised water resource management. She stressed the importance of good governance in terms of user groups access and control over the resource, particularly that of women.

Watershed provides the ground for experimenting with issues like social justice, non-discrimination in access to and control over resources, etc. When viewed from a social justice and human rights perspective, distinction needs to be made between the two discourses in water and use of water. One in which water is treated as an economic good and the other the Human Rights discourse. While the former is being widely promoted in reality dialogue in relation to this resource needs to be anchored around the latter as it centre-stages the livelihood base of water, its affordability, etc. Both these concepts have to been taken into account in watershed development and its management. Till recently, in watershed development more importance has been given to the technological and conservation aspects than to the distribution aspect. Watershed in fact provides the scope for a holistic approach as water is made available for various purposes like drinking, livelihood, and agriculture and sometimes for industries too. Though funding is available for capacity building in technical, maintenance and to lesser extent in management aspects of the sector, women have been included at the peripheral level. 

She gave the example of an Indo-German Watershed Development project funded through NABARD. The project area consisted of around 1,200 hectares. Of the total project cost of 96 lakh rupees, only 4 lakh rupees was allocated for the women’s component. Of it 1.2 lakhs rupees was provided for social development and the remaining 2.8 lakhs for economic activity. Further, in the scheme of the whole project, the women’s component starts midway. Only after about 50 per cent progress is achieved and the construction activity has begun that funding for the women's component is released. Thus, women are not included from the stage of conceptualisation and planning. This is because land rights and the landless labour rights are not seen in perspective. Hence, in watershed also it is only the landlords/owners who are treated as the main actors and women as marginal partners. Though permission has not been granted for starting land-based activity on common property or investing in asset formation for women, it has been done so for giving individual loans. This despite the fact that institutional mechanisms in the form of Self Help Groups (SHGs) have been established. The distressing aspect of these projects is that subsidies continue to be given to landowners to the extent of 80 per cent, while the marginalised sections of the society, particularly women are excluded from access to these benefits. There is a need to network, campaign and negotiate for the rights of these sections. The argument therefore is to integrate social justice issues in the entire watershed development activities. 

Ms. Seema Kulkarni in her presentation argues for a gender sensitive policy that is based on an understanding of women’s needs and priorities in the context of water. She also calls for restructuring the current water policy to be more inclusive of the resource poor, both men and women and suggests a few approaches and alternatives that can address the concerns of these vulnerable sections. Following are the highlights of her presentation: 

In the water sector, despite the fact that women are active cultivators and agricultural labourers, they are viewed specifically as water managers in the domain of domestic water use. This categorisation that female water use is drinking water and male water use is agriculture, affects the image of women and restricts her as user of drinking water. Emphasis on bathing and washing space paces pushes her back into the domestic domain and reiterates gender division of labour. Confining women to their gender specific roles arrests the process of empowerment that would come from clear entitlements over water as productive resource and overlooks women's roles in the productive activities and in the market sphere. Therefore, there is the need to establish women’s individual rights over water. But establishing women’s claims over water is seen as further increasing the competition of a rapidly depleting scarce resource. For this, action research goals needs to be defined so that it would help in overcoming the barriers in getting clear entitlements over water for women. 

The Irrigation policies and interventions until recently never distinguished between the different categories of water users. She referred to the three key principles of the new water policy and made the following comments. 

The crucial issue is that if water is treated as a purely economic good, tied with economic efficiency then women and other resource poor men may not be able to use this resource to meet their livelihood needs unless it is affordable.

Cost recovery principle needs to take into consideration differentials in intra-household access to incomes. Women often are not in decision-making positions to decide on particular pricing mechanisms and neither do they have access to resources to pay for the water charges much as they may prefer to pay for improved services. 

Separation of land rights from water rights is crucial and therefore clear entitlements for women are important. Women’s rights can be ensured through a concerted effort of ensuring access and control over water and related infrastructure; support to defend these rights through appropriate institutional mechanisms and capacity building.

She raised important questions that need to be defined. Some of them are: 
Who constitute the water users? How water is conveyed to different users in the society? Why women should have rights for water? How are these rights and entitlements to be defined as an agenda? How to facilitate the process of making women's voice and concerns inclusive in the water policy? 

Dr. P.S. Rao summarized the discussion and the highlights of the issues that emerged are as follows:

Water is to be treated as a fundamental right of individuals, therefore women need to have independent right to water. They also need to educate and motivate women and other vulnerable groups to articulate and negotiate for their rights. The bias in perspectives favoring technical to equity and social justice needs to be corrected. Equity issues need to be addressed in the allocation and distribution of funds.

Women must be encouraged to actively and effectively participate in local institutions like the village water supply committees to centre-stage the concerns of women at all levels of planning, decision-making and implementation.

Title for water and title for land are inter-related, therefore women have to be empowered to access and control productive assets like land. Simultaneously the hindering factors like the male biased Inheritance law, the market impacted by globalization and privatization and the State issuing pattas in the name of the men need to be addressed. Also the rights of the marginalized and landless to water need to be defined.

Drinking water is to be given importance in terms of focusing on the gender issues where woman is concerned. Access to and choice of technologies, planning and engineering design and the way in which that design facilitates, decision-making about the location of the improved facility, etc. is very crucial to solve the drinking water problem. 

The policies, programmes and schemes need to be addressed so that they do not stereotype or strengthen the stereotype of women in their reproductive and productive roles.

Thus, there is a need for decentralization and a multi stakeholder dialogue with regard to water rights. The Jammu and Kashmir experience of centralized decisions due to trans-boundary water management impacting local level water needs is a point in case. The institutional set up is that of a bilateral treaty, signed exclusively between India and Pakistan and the Indus Water Commission governs the water distribution and allocation in the Indus basin. In both cases J and K has not been a party. Further, attempts to campaign for rainwater harvesting has been stopped by State interference. Water scarcity in the area has in fact driven women into prostitution. 

To change the entire scenario, networks should demand for land reforms, good governance characterized by accountability, transparency and corruption free. 

Session 3: Management Issues in Gender
The chairperson for this session was Ms. Radhika Gupta, Program Officer, Winrock International India, New Delhi and papers were presented by Ms. Gowri, Sahayoga on 'Women and Water Network', Ms. Srilatha, Ministry of Water Resources, Govt. of India on 'Impact of Women's Participation in Effective Management of Water Resources', Dr. D. G. Deshkar, GWP-SASTAC on 'Capacity Building of Women in the Agriculture Sector-Need of the Day' and N.K. Tiwari, AFPRO on 'Transformation towards Self-Reliance'. 

Ms. Gowri in her presentation highlighted the role of women in the management and distribution of water. She elaborated on the following. Women being the main custodians of water required for domestic use within their families, they are responsible for collecting, storing and regulating the use of water depending upon its availability in a given habitation. However, with the increase in population and the scarce water resources, the availability of water decreased, particularly for the poorer families, whose only source was limited to the rivers or community wells located at far distances. With the intensification of developed agriculture and irrigation, the extent of women's participation in this sector engaging in productive activities has also increased. This has in turn resulted in increased drudgery for women. 

Despite, their multiple roles in both productive and domestic activities related to water, they lack decision-making powers. It is essential that women play an active role in the decision- making processes in order to enhance their participation in the management of water, both at the macro and micro levels. There is a need to empower women in matters of taking decision pertaining to water be it in the domestic front or in agricultural operations.

Dr. D.G. Deshkar, highlighted the following issues during his presentation. He pointed out that while women use water for domestic and productive purposes, the former is seen as the primary domain of women and the latter treated as secondary. The main reasons for this being the lack of access to and control over land and other resources, technical skills, extension education, enabling environment that encourages them to assume economic and social responsibilities, scope to operate independently and participate in the decision-making processes. In the absence of trained women professionals in the sector, he reiterated the need for intensive training and skill development among women. Quoting WALMI's experience, the factors identified that hinder women’s participation in trainings were the discouragement meted out to them by male heads of families, the reluctance of women to be trained by men, and the distance of the training centres from their habitats.

His recommendations include capacity building and skill development for women at all levels, an increase in the number of training centers and frequency of training, an increase in the number of women trainers and professionals, create an enabling environment through NGO intervention to change the traditional mindset of men, bring about reforms in the inheritance and succession laws to facilitate the 'Right to Land' for women.

Mr. N.K. Tiwari, in his paper focused on the difficulties faced by women in accessing and fetching water for domestic use, which is around 40 litres a day for an average person in rural India. He highlighted the need for developing low cost simple to install and easy to maintain technologies, which would mitigate the burden of women. He stated that rural water supply programmes were seriously affected due to the lack of regular maintenance of hand pumps and thereby the need for the development of new models of hand pumps like India Mark III which women themselves can operate and maintain. 

He shared his experience of training men and women in hand pump maintenance and the strategies evolved to promote and enhance the participation of women. Men were found to consider the skills imparted as not financially lucrative. Women were found to be more committed to the activity as it was they who were directly affected. They spent about one to four hours in collecting water, make an average of nine trips to a water source and collects 192 liters of water on an average each day for six persons (32 liters/head). Their day to day experience has enabled women to take up the challenge of hand-pump repairs and maintenance and have formed an association of hand pump mechanics.

The issues that emerged from the discussion were summarized by Ms. Radhika Gupta and are presented below:

Women face barriers in their day-to-day lives in the form of social and cultural norms that impede their empowerment thus preventing them from voicing their concerns in mainstream dialogue. There is a need to devise strategies which help to provide the space for women within existing milieus and also facilitate a change in the patriarchal attitudes and values that inhibits women from playing a role in the water sector. 

Women need to be recognized as prime players in this very male dominated sector. For this, women need to take up the challenge and enhance their skills and capacities so that they can adapt themselves to the new role as an important actor in water resource management. 

The existing institutional mechanisms including those provided by the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments, also do not center-stage the women's agenda nor give importance to women’s participation in decision-making within these institutions. Therefore, there is the need to demystify stereotypical and biased views about women's capabilities thereby promoting their participation in formal institutions

Session 4: Best Practices and Experience Sharing
This session was chaired by Ms. Bharti Bhavsar, Senior Co-ordinator, SEWA, Gujarat and Co-ordinator, Women and Water Network - North India and papers on best practices were presented by Dr. Kamalam Joseph, CWRDM on 'Mainstreaming Women in Irrigated Agriculture', Ms. Savita Gokhale, Tarun Bharat Sangh and Ms. Jacintha Pinto, JSYS on 'Livelihood Systems and Water', Ms. Vanaja, WASSAN on ‘Women and Watersheds – Current Status’, Mr. Gopinath, FEDINA on ‘Dalit Women’s Challenges to Caste Discrimination through Access to Water’ and Mr. Shiva Bisangkhe on ‘Women’s Participation in Water Management - A Case Study of a Village in Nepal’.

Dr. Kamalam Joseph in her paper highlighted the insights gained in the process of mainstreaming women in irrigated agriculture. She explained in detail the process model of the water programme adopted by CWRDM. While there is a need for the total intellectual and physical participation of farmwomen in the whole process of agricultural development the dilemma arises as to whether women should be mainstreamed or treated separately so as to avoid the danger of them being marginalized. Group formation, need assessment, field experience and exposures, technological transfer and starting of micro-enterprises are essential components of the process. There is also the need to facilitate women to acquire technical, managerial and organizational skills through training in order to achieve their optimal participation. NGO intervention and establishment of networks is an important factor to promote their effective participation. The major benefits from such interventions were accounted to be both tangible and intangible. The tangible benefits included economic benefits from the sale of agricultural produce and better standards of living and the intangible benefits included the change in attitudes of women, organizational strength, empowerment, autonomy, improvement in social relations, communication and leadership qualities. 

Ms. Savita Gokhale during her presentation pointed out that though women traditionally carry the responsibility of managing the water needs of the household single handedly, the decision-making power about the same has always rested with men. Water has seldom been a free good for women. They are excluded from the many opportunities to create wealth with water as much of the income for the very poor depends on access to water. The developmental programs of both the government and non-government in this sector are unfortunately extremely male centric and welfare oriented. The government has focused on women’s access to water only for drinking and domestic use and has subsumed their other water needs. This has been due to gender being dealt in a segmented manner by academicians, researchers, policy makers and technologists. Further, globalization and obligations of International Trade Agreements pose a new threat to women and their role in sustainable development. To make water sector women friendly she suggested that gender be addressed in a pragmatic and sensitive manner. Water management policies and legislation should be formulated to strengthen poor women and men’s access to multiple use of water. Also institutions need to be restructured to be more inclusive of women and the poorest members of society. She shared four case studies, where women have managed water and other natural resources efficiently and urged that these models be documented, given adequate publicity and social recognition. 

Ms. Jacintha Pinto explained the role of women in Jala Samvardhane Yojana Sanghas for community-based tank management set with the development objective of improving rural livelihoods and poverty reduction. It was done on the realization that tanks cannot be utilized to its optimum potential unless the communities own them and are involved in their management. The project bases itself on the core values of partnership and transparency. It envisages the establishment of an enabling environment for the sustainable, decentralized management of tank systems; the strengthening of community based institutions and the improvement of the tanks. Recognizing the fact that women have been marginalized from local decision-making processes there are built in mechanisms to integrate women’s concerns and needs in the decision-making processes. Measures have also been taken to mainstream gender concerns in every activity and level of the institutional framework. Some of the activities meant for enhancing participation of women include capacity building, training and technical assistance in agriculture, horticulture, fishery, livestock, income generation, maintenance of tanks, networking with other line departments and formation of women’s federation at the village level. Women's active participation in decision-making in processes would enable them in articulating their issues and asserting their rights.

Ms. Vanaja in her presentation based on field experiences focused on the strategies for ensuring gender balance in watershed programmes, particularly in the context of the nature and extent of exclusion women face. Though women’s proximity to and interaction with the natural resources is relatively more, they neither possess the rights over them nor do they play a key role in their management. Although watershed development programmes provide an opportunity to conserve, improve and manage natural resources in a participatory manner, the key questions are whether they provide equal opportunities for participation and sharing of benefits for women and men. The gender inequities in opportunities and access to and control over decision-making institutions lead to women’s needs and issues neither being prioritized nor addressed. Further, the representation of women in decision-making bodies is minimal, both quantitatively and qualitatively. One way of addressing the issue of exclusion of women is to make a mandatory provision for their representation from the Self Help Groups in the decision-making committees. Concerted efforts are to be made to bridge the gap between policy and programmes. Finally, there is the need to develop indicators for collectively monitoring of programmes and demystify technology to make it more women friendly.

Mr. Gopinath in his presentation examined the potential of dalit women, the victims of caste prejudice, to challenge discriminative social practices through their struggle for access to and control over water resources. He argued that adequate access to water resources along with other development measures would empower dalit women to exercise their ‘agency’ and effect changes in social relationships in the rural milieu. Access to and control over water resources for Dalit women not only enables them to improve their status within their own community but also within the network of relationships among various caste communities. He highlighted that Dalit women face double oppression, due to the pernicious caste system and that of gender subordination. They continuously strive for livelihood, human dignity, equality and social justice. In the absence of a political will to implement land redistribution, water could become an effective rallying point for negotiation with oppressive forces including the State. He narrated experiences with grassroots organizations involved in the mobilization of dalits and dalit women to struggle for their rights. While there are common issues relevant to women of all sections, there are also specific issues concerning women of different sections and a nuanced approach is required for analysis as also for policy and practice prescriptions.

Mr. Shiva Bisangkhe in his presentation discussed the gender division of labour, women's access and control over resources, their participation in irrigation management activities and their rights to water with reference to a case study of a village within the command area of Marchwar, Nepal. He also analysed governmental policies and laws on gender issues in irrigation management and suggested measures to overcome gender imbalance.

The registered Water Users Associations generally have only two women members as mandated by the Water Resources Regulation Act of 1993. Even these women are excluded from the meetings and decision-making processes. Among those who attend remain silent and passive. Women's role in irrigation management activities may be seen as different means to actualize and protect their water rights. But as only males participate in these activities female farmers are seen as having irrigation water using right but with no corresponding obligations. 

There are no concrete Nepalese legislation relating to water rights and the Water Resources Act of 1992 has vested the ownership of all water resources available with the state. This has lead to further weakening of water rights of the individuals. The minimum requirement to be fulfilled by farmers to acquire and maintain their water rights are intimately linked with rights to land. Therefore, it is impossible to have rights to water without having rights to cultivated land in the command area of the irrigation system. This deprives women, who generally lack rights over land from participating in irrigation activities. The state initiatives are gender unaware as the planning and the design of irrigation systems both by government or the private sector is largely guided by the national policies. He suggested specific action plans to make irrigation management in Nepal more gender sensitive. 

The following are the issues highlighted during the discussion and summarised by Ms. Bharti from the presentation of the best practices. 

Water needs to be viewed from a holistic perspective and not from a sectoral one in terms of irrigation, industry, drinking water, water for domestic use and so on. Safe and clean drinking water is a basic right of every individual and getting quality water at the doorstep improves the quality of life in terms of improved health and hygiene conditions, increased enrollment of girl children in schools, reduced dropouts, etc. Women’s access to and control over the management of water resource enables them to engage in productive and wage earning activities. It is the problem of inadequate access to water that prevents them from actively participating in the labour force and withdrawing girl children from attending schools. It is seen that where women are the managers of the water resource, they have also engaged in continuous and regular work. They are able to distribute the water equitably to all, transcending all divisions based on caste and class. 

There is a tendency among researchers and development activists to view communities and women as homogenous groups without contextualising the realities that they survive in. Women belonging to each section of the society try to actualize the context with other groups in relation to water as for example the dalit women. Particularly in India where caste plays a very dominant role, there is a need to understand with sensitivity the phenomenon of the production relation that operates. Water though is unifying is the sign of both prosperity in life on the one hand and a symbol of exclusion on the other.

Too much contextual sing of the realities also leads to fragmenting the women on their common exploitation and oppression irrespective to class divisions. The need is to evolve at a balance, so as to strengthen the women’s movement to overcome these oppressive conditions. Instead of making contextualisation a type of an unbridgeable gap, the movement should become sensitive to the different types of issues women face from different sections of the society.

Access to and control over water brings about the empowerment of women. It leads to apart from control over water confidence building, political empowerment and bargaining capacity among the women which spills over into other spheres of their lives and also recognition of their capacities by the rest of the communities.

Empowerment through control over water in watershed programme is lacking due to the top-down nature of the design of the programme itself. In reality it is an anti-poor people programme and in fact is a large landowner based programme. 

Gender balance needs to be maintained through the integration of capacity building of women in all activities related to programme implementation.

The concept of equity needs to be center-staged in watershed and regulation of ground water use programmes, thereby evolving an alternative thinking on to restructuring the programmes to enhance resource poor women and men’s access to the water resource and their active participation. The aspirations of women need to be articulated and integrated in planning and implementation of programmes in the water sector.

The second day began with Ms. Seema Kulkarni summarizing the proceedings of the previous day and highlighting the priorities and gaps that emerged from the presentations and discussions. Following this, experiences were shared by Ms. Sudhamani, Director, Water Users Co-operative Society, Mysore, Ms. Sarita, Institute for Research and Action, Bihar and Ms. Bharti, SEWA, Gujarat. 

Ms. Sudhamani shared her concern over the depleting ground water resource and its impact particularly in rural areas where the depth at which it is available has increased from 40-50 feet to 150-200 feet. This has increased the Nitrate and Chloride contents in ground water resulting in disabilities amongst newborn babies. As high as 2856 villages in Karnataka are affected by it. In this light she urged the need for women to be trained about availability, storage and judicious use of water. Also, the need to start all such initiatives from the grassroots level. Further, it is the people themselves who need to take the initiative rather than depend on external agencies to do it for them. She shared the experience of the community she represented and the success of the initiatives taken by them with regard to water management, such as planting trees, harvesting rain water, etc. The Water Users Co-operative Society of which she is the director has also been successful in distributing the available water equitably to all its stakeholders and the strategies adopted for the same. She expressed her concern over the schemes of the government which are linked to ownership of land therefore depriving women from accessing them in spite of 30 per cent of the total budget being earmarked for women. She stressed the need to delink the right to water from being land based.

Saritha shared her experience of working in three regions of the waterlogged area of Northern Bihar, the region where the Khosi Dam has affected the drying of the Ganga and the drought prone area of the newly created Jharkhand State. The major demand in all these areas has been "give us back our river" and in addition in the Jharkhand region is the issue of conservation of water and drought. She opined that, innumerable number of schemes and programmes offered by both government and non-government agencies have made people dependent on external funding for any developmental work. Therefore, reducing the importance of peoples initiative in such works. An alternative approach was adopted in these areas, where people have been facilitated to identify their potential and utilize it for their development. Due to these interventions, they have become more independent to the extent of even raising financial resources to resolve their water-related issues. She narrated an example, where a 45-kilometer long field channel was built through people's initiative without any external funding with contribution of both labour and funds by the people. She also explained the strategies adopted to involve the government and access financial and technical assistance from them. Finally, she emphasized the need for massive campaigns on issues related to water at all levels. 

Ms. Bharti shared the work of SEWA in the water sector in the drought-prone state of Gujarat. SEWA's work in this area started with the launching of the “Women, Water and Work” campaign in 1995. Ever since it has focused its attention on addressing the problems related to ground water, quality of tank water supplied and its impacts on women in terms of their health. The main thrust of the organization has been the articulation and demand for clean drinking water as a basic right. As most of these areas are dependent on rainwater, increased depletion of rain and ground water were other areas of concern. She shared the experience of SEWA in evolving alternative strategies for addressing these issues. Women have played a primary role in the process of centre-staging their concerns and demands. In the process they have been able to build their capabilities, both technical and managerial, and successfully use them for maintenance of the available water resources. She stressed the need for ownership of resources and highlighted the way this sense of ownership among women has had a positive impact in terms of maintenance of structures, equitable distribution of water, etc. She also shared the manner in which these women were involved in advocacy and their involvement in the formulation of a white paper on water, which would feed into the water policy of the state. 

The discussion that followed highlighted the use of water as a tool of control by the dominant over the weak, particularly women therefore stressing the need for grassroots initiative, development of women-friendly alternative technologies, strengthening networks, evolving institutional mechanisms and policy reforms that facilitate women's participation in the sector.

Women and Water Network
The second day of the workshop was to deliberate on the feasibility of evolving a national level network and the organizational issues related to it. For evolving a national level women and water network the participatory group discussion method was adopted. The participants formed four groups and each of them discussed in detail the issues listed below:

The session for group presentations was chaired by Mr. Arjimand Hussain, Economic Editor/ Fellow, CSE, New Delhi. The highlights of each presentation are given below: