At the request of the Planning Commission, Arghyam and WaterAid agreed to co-ordinate and support a process of civil society consultation for inputs on rural and urban domestic water and sanitation for generating recommendations for the Approach Paper to the 12th Five Year Plan of the Government of India.
A local organisation in each region organised the consultation with WaterAid and Arghyam sharing the costs. The Water Community of UN-Solution Exchange provided documentation support for all the regional consultations as well as the national consultation. A wide range of participants was sought, covering organisations working on different thematic and geographical areas. The regional consultations were in the form of a 1.5 day workshop where participants were divided into groups focusing on particular thematic areas
Broad issues were recurring in all the consultations but also with a specificity arising out of local factors: geography, socio-economics etc. It will be one of the challenges for the Commission to be able to identify and tackle the most urgent high-level issues, at the same time giving scope for local solutions that are appropriate for the local condition. The discussions threw up local solutions to the problems that were raised. Details can be found in the attached report.
Mihir Shah (Planning Commission Member) along with Rohini Nilekani (Arghyam, Chairperson) and Lourdes Baptista (WaterAid India, CEO) at the National consultation in New Delhi
To facilitate detailed discussion, the meeting was organized around five themes –