Anupam Mishra: The ancient ingenuity of water harvesting

With wisdom and wit, Anupam Mishra talks about the amazing feats of engineering built centuries ago by the people of India's Golden Desert to harvest water. These structures are still used today -- and are often superior to modern water megaprojects.

To promote smart water management, Anupam Mishra works to preserve rural India’s traditional rainwater harvesting techniques.

Anupam Mishra travels across water-challenged India studying rainwater harvesting methods and learning from the people behind them. He presents his findings to NGOs, development agencies and environmental groups, pulling from centuries of indigenous wisdom that has found water for drinking and irrigation even in extremely arid landscapes through wells, filter ponds and other catchment systems.

A founding member of the Gandhi Peace Foundation, Mishra is working to bridge the gap between modern water management technology and india's heritage of water harvesting, so that every community is self-sustainable and efficiently safekeeping an increasingly scarce and precious resource.

"In [him] lives a spirit, of quiet service, that once existed freely in our politics and our activism, a spirit that has been completely excised from one sphere and remains gravely threatened in the other."

Ramachandra Guha, in The Hindu