Water Histories of South Asia
Water Histories of South Asia

Author: Sugata Ray

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2019-06-10

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 0429515871

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This book surveys the intersections between water systems and the phenomenology of visual cultures in early modern, colonial and contemporary South Asia. Bringing together contributions by eminent artists, architects, curators and scholars who explore the connections between the environmental and the cultural, the volume situates water in an expansive relational domain. It covers disciplines as diverse as literary studies, environmental humanities, sustainable design, urban planning and media studies. The chapters explore the ways in which material cultures of water generate technological and aesthetic acts of envisioning geographies, and make an intervention within political, social and cultural discourses. A critical interjection in the sociologies of water in the subcontinent, the book brings art history into conversation with current debates on climate change by examining water’s artistic, architectural, engineering, religious, scientific and environmental facets from the 16th century to the present. This is one of the first books on South Asia’s art, architecture and visual history to interweave the ecological with the aesthetic under the emerging field of eco art history. The volume will be of interest to scholars and general readers of art history, Islamic studies, South Asian studies, urban studies, architecture, geography, history and environmental studies. It will also appeal to activists, curators, art critics and those interested in water management.

Unruly Waters
Unruly Waters

Author: Sunil Amrith

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2018-12-11

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0465097731

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From a MacArthur "Genius," a bold new perspective on the history of Asia, highlighting the long quest to tame its waters Asia's history has been shaped by her waters. In Unruly Waters, historian Sunil Amrith reimagines Asia's history through the stories of its rains, rivers, coasts, and seas -- and of the weather-watchers and engineers, mapmakers and farmers who have sought to control them. Looking out from India, he shows how dreams and fears of water shaped visions of political independence and economic development, provoked efforts to reshape nature through dams and pumps, and unleashed powerful tensions within and between nations. Today, Asian nations are racing to construct hundreds of dams in the Himalayas, with dire environmental impacts; hundreds of millions crowd into coastal cities threatened by cyclones and storm surges. In an age of climate change, Unruly Waters is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Asia's past and its future.

Water Architecture in South Asia
Water Architecture in South Asia

Author: Julia Hegewald

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-08-01

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 9004502661

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Water architecture in South Asia represents some of the most beautiful and spectacular building achievements of the region. This study provides a holistic approach to the subject, suggesting common links and regional contrasts between types of water structures and their contexts, with a comprehensive interpretation of the history and meaning of water architecture in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Five types of water structures are identified. Their development is traced from simple to more complex forms, considering how these accommodate secular and religious functions, and present expressions of sacred and royal authority. This publication is the first reference work on the subject. Many of the structures discussed and illustrated here have never been published before. Its comprehensive approach will have a wide relevance for other South Asian disciplines.

Women Water Professionals
Women Water Professionals

Author: Sumi Krishna

Publisher: Zubaan

Published: 2014-03-11

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 9383074302

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Water management is not an engineering matter alone, it involves ecological, socio- political, administrative and legal concerns. Gender is a key factor but has been neglected both conventionally and in recent water reform policies and structures. Yet, a cross-section of South Asian women have challenged socio-cultural norms and crossed personal and professional boundaries to make a profound impact on water and sanitation management. Their inspiring stories have scarcely been documented. This book is the first to profile women from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka – women at the grassroots or with NGOs, women activists, journalists, administrators, scientists, academics, action-researchers - who have faced challenges related to water with courage and determination. Complementing the 32 women’s voices is data compiled from an analysis of the situation of women water professionals in the region. Written in an engaging manner, this book will be of interest both to the general reader and to academics and practitioners in water management and gender/women’s studies. Published by Zubaan.

Riverine Neighbourhood
Riverine Neighbourhood

Author: Uttam Kumar Sinha

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9788182749146

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Rivers are the most visible form of fresh water. Rivers are ancient and older than civilizations - a "mini cosmos" spawning history, tales, spirituality, and technological incursions. Flowing rivers are the largest renewable water resource as well as a crucible for both human and aquatic ecosystems. This volume explores rivers and the role they play.

Dirty, Sacred Rivers
Dirty, Sacred Rivers

Author: Cheryl Colopy

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-10-01

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 0199977003

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Dirty, Sacred Rivers explores South Asia's increasingly urgent water crisis, taking readers on a journey through North India, Nepal and Bangladesh, from the Himalaya to the Bay of Bengal. The book shows how rivers, traditionally revered by the people of the Indian subcontinent, have in recent decades deteriorated dramatically due to economic progress and gross mismanagement. Dams and ill-advised embankments strangle the Ganges and its sacred tributaries. Rivers have become sewage channels for a burgeoning population. To tell the story of this enormous river basin, environmental journalist Cheryl Colopy treks to high mountain glaciers with hydrologists; bumps around the rough embankments of India's poorest state in a jeep with social workers; and takes a boat excursion through the Sundarbans, the mangrove forests at the end of the Ganges watershed. She lingers in key places and hot spots in the debate over water: the megacity Delhi, a paradigm of water mismanagement; Bihar, India's poorest, most crime-ridden state, thanks largely to the blunders of engineers who tried to tame powerful Himalayan rivers with embankments but instead created annual floods; and Kathmandu, the home of one of the most elegant and ancient traditional water systems on the subcontinent, now the site of a water-development boondoggle. Colopy's vivid first-person narrative brings exotic places and complex issues to life, introducing the reader to a memorable cast of characters, ranging from the most humble members of South Asian society to engineers and former ministers. Here we find real-life heroes, bucking current trends, trying to find rational ways to manage rivers and water. They are reviving ingenious methods of water management that thrived for centuries in South Asia and may point the way to water sustainability and healthy rivers.

Lines in Water
Lines in Water

Author: Eliza F. Kent

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2013-07-12

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 0815652259

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When asked to distinguish between different faiths, Mughal prince Dara Shikoh is said to have replied, “How do you draw a line in water?” Inspired by this question, the essays in this volume illustrate how ordinary people in South Asia and the diaspora negotiate their religious identities and encounters in creative, complex, and diverse ways. Taking the approach that narratives “from below” provide the richest insight into the dynamics of religious pluralism, the authors examine life histories, oral traditions, cartographic practices, pilgrimage rites, and devotional music and songs. Drawing on both ethnographic and historical data, they illuminate how, like lines in water, religious boundaries are dynamic, fluid, flexible, and permeable rather than permanently fixed, frozen, and inviolable. A distinct feature of the volume is its proposition of a fresh and innovative typology of boundary dynamics. Boundaries may be attractive or porous, firmly drawn or transcended. Attractive boundaries invite confluence while affirming the differences between self and other, whereas permeable boundaries facilitate exchanges that create new identities and in turn form new lines. Although people may recognize the significance of religious borders, they can choose to transcend them. Throughout this volume, the authors highlight the fascinating range of South Asian religious and cultural traditions.

Statemaking and Territory in South Asia
Statemaking and Territory in South Asia

Author: Bernardo A. Michael

Publisher: Anthem Press

Published: 2014-10-01

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 1783083220

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“Statemaking and Territory in South Asia: Lessons from the Anglo–Gorkha War (1814–1816)” seeks to understand how European colonization transformed the organization of territory in South Asia through an examination of the territorial disputes that underlay the Anglo–Gorkha War of 1814–1816 and subsequent efforts of the colonial state to reorder its territories. The volume argues that these disputes arose out of older tribute, taxation and property relationships that left their territories perpetually intermixed and with ill-defined boundaries. It also seeks to describe the long-drawn-out process of territorial reordering undertaken by the British in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that set the stage for the creation of a clearly defined geographical template for the modern state in South Asia.

Water Issues in Southeast Asia
Water Issues in Southeast Asia

Author: Lee Poh Onn

Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 9812309829

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Provides a summary of key points made during a two-day forum on water issues in Southeast Asia, held at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), based around a UN prediction that up to 7 billion people in 60 countries may possibly face water scarcity by the year 2050.

Taming the Anarchy
Taming the Anarchy

Author: Tushaar Shah

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-09-30

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1136524037

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In 1947, British India-the part of South Asia that is today's India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh-emerged from the colonial era with the world's largest centrally managed canal irrigation infrastructure. However, as vividly illustrated by Tushaar Shah, the orderly irrigation economy that saved millions of rural poor from droughts and famines is now a vast atomistic system of widely dispersed tube-wells that are drawing groundwater without permits or hindrances. Taming the Anarchy is about the development of this chaos and the prospects to bring it under control. It is about both the massive benefit that the irrigation economy has created and the ill-fare it threatens through depleted aquifers and pollution. Tushaar Shah brings exceptional insight into a socio-ecological phenomenon that has befuddled scientists and policymakers alike. In systematic fashion, he investigates the forces behind the transformation of South Asian irrigation and considers its social, economic, and ecological impacts. He considers what is unique to South Asia and what is in common with other developing regions. He argues that, without effective governance, the resulting groundwater stress threatens the sustenance of the agrarian system and therefore the well being of the nearly one and a half billion people who live in South Asia. Yet, finding solutions is a formidable challenge. The way forward in the short run, Shah suggests, lies in indirect, adaptive strategies that change the conduct of water users. From antiquity until the 1960‘s, agricultural water management in South Asia was predominantly the affair of village communities and/or the state. Today, the region depends on irrigation from some 25 million individually owned groundwater wells. Tushaar Shah provides a fascinating economic, political, and cultural history of the development and use of technology that is also a history of a society in transition. His book provides powerful ideas and lessons for researchers, historians, and policy