Steering Committee

Chicu Lokgariwar

Independent Consultant

Chicu is an independent consultant working on water conflicts with a focus on stakeholder negotiations. A civil engineer by training, Chicu studied environmental conflict resolution as a Hubert Humphrey Fellow in 2007-08. Since 2008, she has worked on the assessment of environmental flows for the Upper Ganga and the Ramganga and studied Himalayan rivers with the Peoples's Science Institute, a civil society organisation. Chicu lives in the Himalayas and writes on water issues in the Gangetic Basin.

Eklavya Prasad

Megh Pyne Abhiyan, Bihar

Eklavya Prasad is a practitioner, presently, leading Megh Pyne Abhiyan (MPA) literally meaning Cloud Water Campaign, conceptualized, and sketched by him. Since 2007, MPA works in partnership with local NGOs in rural north Bihar on decentralized and alternative safe and secure drinking water, hygienic sanitation solutions along with participatory groundwater management, innovative farm based livelihood options for the flood prone areas of North Bihar. Eklavya has been guided by the experiences accumulated over nineteen years for working on several rural concerns in South and South East Asia and East and Central Africa. Through his camera, he has been able to capture the uniqueness in the North Bihar region and has also built a portfolio for the same. In addition, he has captured life and lifestyle along Mekong and Xekong rivers in Thailand, Lao and Cambodia. Currently, Eklavya is about to initiate work on groundwater in Dhanbad district of Jharkhand state.

Gorky Chakraborty

Development Studies Kolkata (IDSK), Kolkata, West Bengal

Gorky Chakraborty is a faculty at Institute of Development Studies, (IDSK), Kolkata. He primarily works on the development related issues in Northeast India. As a doctoral fellow he has worked on the chars (river islands) of the river Brahmaputra, Assam and on Look East Policy and Northeast India as a post-doctoral fellow at Rabindranath Tagore Centre for Human Development Studies at Kolkata. He has authored Assam’s Hinterland: Society and Economy in the Char Areas and co-authored The Look East Policy and Northeast India

Himanshu Kulkarni

Advanced Center for Water Resources Development and Management (ACWADAM), Pune, Maharashtra

Beginning with a PhD in groundwater in 1987, Dr. Kulkarni’s work on the occurrence and movement of groundwater in different regions of India is known globally. He is currently working on groundwater management across India’s diverse hydrogeological typology through the work of ACWADAM, which he co-founded and leads. ACWADAM has emerged as one of the leading think-tanks on groundwater in India and its neighbouring region. He has travelled extensively, including to the US on a Fulbright Scholarship and to Austria as a UNESCO scholar. Dr. Kulkarni believes in the concept of aquifer-based participatory groundwater management. This belief is slowly and steadily bearing fruit on many fronts in India. He has been actively involved in the advocacy for stronger programmes on groundwater management in India, through his inputs when he was Chairman, Working Group on Sustainable Groundwater Management for India’s 12^th Five Year Plan.

K. J. Joy

Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM),Pune, Maharashtra

K. J. Joy has a Master's degree in Social Work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He has been an activist-researcher for more than 20 years and has a special interest in people's institutions for natural resource management both at the grassroots and policy levels. His other areas of interests include drought and drought proofing, participatory irrigation management, river basin management and multi-stakeholder processes, watershed based development, water conflicts and people’s movements. He has worked with Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samithi (BGVS), New Delhi in its watershed development and resource literacy programme. He was a Visiting Fellow with CISED, Bangalore for a year and was a Fulbright Fellow with University of California at Berkeley. For the last 10 years Joy’s research shifted to water conflicts and has published several books and articles related to conflicts.

Manoj Kumar Misra

PEACE Institute Charitable Trust, New Delhi

Mr. Misra holds a Masters degree in Mathematics, Forestry and Wildlife Management. He was a member of the Indian Forest Service (1979-2001) before seeking voluntary retirement. During his tenure he has served at various places in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Delhi. He has also worked on deputation with the WWF India in New Delhi. Mr. Misra established the PEACE Institute Charitable Trust (www.peaceinst.org) in 2003 and has been the convener since early 2007 of Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan (YJA), a civil society initiative for the restoration of river Yamuna as an ecological entity (www.yamunajiyeabhiyaan.blogspot.in). He is an author of more than 150 scientific and popular articles, blog entries and contributions to published books. 

Nafisa Barot

Utthan Trust, Ahmedabad, Gujarat

Nafisa graduated in 1979 and specialises in nutrition from the University of Baroda. She is the co-founder and Executive Director of Utthan, a non-governmental agency working in rural areas of Gujarat to demonstrate sustainable, gender-sensitive processes for development. Her areas of interest are community mobilisation, gender empowerment, human rights, conflict resolution and peace building and livelihood security through Natural Resource and Disaster Management. She was honoured the T.N. Khushboo Memorial Award by Ashoka Trust for Research in 2005 for exemplary work in conservation and sustainable development. Nafisa was recently invited as a speaker by the Government of Tajikistan for an International conference on Water Cooperation, conducted by the UN, WWAP/ UNESCO and Oxfam. Nafisa has published many articles and presented papers at national and international conferences.

Partha J. Das

Aaranyak, Guwahati, Assam

Dr. Partha J Das is an environmental researcher based in Northeast India. He did his M.Phil. and Ph. D. in Environmental Science from Gauhati University specializing on water resources, climatology and hydrology. He has been carrying out action research for about a decade  in the thematic areas of climate variability, climate change adaptation, climate and water induced risk management, water governance, water conflicts, environmental impacts of large river dams in northeast India, wetland ecosystems services and management, and community based forest and wildlife  conservation.  He has published several research papers, abstracts, reports and articles on these subjects. He has also delivered invited talks and seminar presentations extensively on water issues, climate change and disaster risk reduction both in India and abroad. Currently Dr. Partha is heading the ‘Water, Climate and Hazard Programme’ of Aaranyak, based at Guwahati, Assam.

Philippe Cullet

National Law University Delhi

Dr Philippe Cullet is a Professor of International and Environmental Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies – University of London (SOAS) and a Visiting Professor at National Law University Delhi (NLUD). His main areas of interest include law and policy related to natural resources, the environment and water. His books include Research Handbook on Law, Environment and the Global South (Edward Elgar, 2019 – co-editor S. Koonan); and Right to Sanitation in India – Critical Perspectives (OUP, 2019 – co-editors S. Koonan & L. Bhullar), P. Cullet & S. Koonan eds, Water Law in India – An Introduction to Legal Instruments (OUP, 2nd ed, 2017 – co-editor S. Koonan).

Ramisetty Murali

Modern Architects for Rural India (MARI) Telangana

Ramisetty Murali has been actively associated with the work of Modern Architects for Rural India (MARI) a grassroots organization working in the state of Telangana on Environment and Rural Livelihoods issues for the past 30 years. He has extensively worked on restoration of traditional water harvesting structures (Tanks), Integrated Watershed development approach, sustainable agriculture, Rural Water Supply and Sanitation, Child Rights Protection and strengthening of Gram Panchayat system. He is currently heading MARI as its Executive Director. He is also holding the position of Regional Convenor of Freshwater Action Network South Asia (FANSA) which is a leading platform of CSOs engaged in advocating for equitable and inclusive progress and universal access to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Services. Murali has been contributing to the dialogue process on Water Conflicts in the Krishna River Basin.

S. Janakarajan

Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS), Chennai, Tamil Nadu

S. Janakarajan, an economist by profession, is a Rt. Professor from the Madras Institute of Development Studies MIDS, Adyar. He obtained his Masters degree from Madras Christian College, Tambaram and Ph.D from MIDS, Chennai. He has done his Post-Doctoral work at the Cornell University, USA, during 1992-93 and was a Visiting Professor at the Oxford University, UK for one year during 1995-96. He has presented many papers in international and national workshops and conferences, and has also published several books. His areas of interest are rural development and agrarian institutions, climate change and disaster management, water management and irrigation institutions, conflicts and conflict resolution, delta vulnerability, environment, urban and peri-urban issues, and markets. He is the President of South Asia Consortium of Inter-Disciplinary Water Studies (SaciWATERs).

Shripad Dharmadhikary

Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, Bidwani, Madhya Pradesh

Shripad Dharmadhikary completed his graduation in 1985 with a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. After working for a couple of years with industry he was a full time activist of the Narmada Bachao Andolan for 12 years. In 2001, he set up the Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, a centre to research, monitor and analyse water and energy issues. He is the coordinator of the centre. (www.manthan-india.org). His publications include Unravelling Bhakra, the report of a three year study led by him of the Bhakra Nangal project.  His current issues of interest include rivers, dams and environmental flows, impact of coal on water, and board monitoring of water, environment and developmental policies. He also writes regularly on the issues of water, energy and development, and blogs at http://shripadmanthan.blogspot.in/

Soma K. P.

Gender and Livelihood expert, New Delhi

Soma Kishore Parthasarathy, (JNU, CEPT and currently PhD Scholar IITB) has worked in the area of gender, poverty, and sustainable development for the past 3 decades. Her efforts focused on building grassroots institutions and capacities of grassroots leadership to engender initiatives towards sustainable rural development. During her tenure with GOI, DWCD, she initiated the process of gender training for policy makers, facilitated gender inclusive policy and programme development; formulation of the National Perspective Plan for Women. Soma has been with the planning commission as Consultant Gender Advisor to CIDA, to DFID and recently to UNDP; National Advisory Group member Mahila Samakhya (GOI). She straddles the space between people’s movements and policy in a quest to bring an integrated feminist view of natural resource, poverty and livelihoods to inform policy discourse on development, natural resources livelihoods, empowerment and micro finance. Recent engagements include a review of Commons policies from a gender lens, research on Women’s Inheritance Rights in India for International Land Coalition and Resource person in AWID Commons perspective building processes.

Veena Shrinivasan

Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bengaluru

Dr. Veena Srinivasan is a Fellow at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bengaluru. Veena’s research interests include inter-sectoral water allocation, impacts of multiple stressors on water resources, and sustainable water management, policy and practice. She leads several research projects that combine field hydrology, low-cost sensing, citizen science and simulation modelling to find solutions to critical water problems.Veena received her PhD from Stanford University’s Emmet Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources. She holds a Masters in Energy and Environmental Studies from Boston University and a B-Tech in Engineering Physics from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai