Friday, Dec 17, 2004
Friday, Dec 17, 2004 |
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Rajasthan
By Sunny Sebastian
JAIPUR, DEC. 16. Prince Charles of Britain is playing Santa Claus this season for India. An year after his visit to New Delhi, Mumbai and different places in Rajasthan, the Prince carried forward his India initiative last week by convening a meeting at Clarence House in London, of prominent business leaders, corporate donors and "practitioners'' engaged in community-based water projects to devise strategies for providing safe drinking water to rural Rajasthan. The day-long meeting, termed "a private workshop'' by the conveners, the Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) and the Global Water Harvesting Collective, discussed ways and means for supporting public-private-community partnerships on water in Rajasthan. It was followed up in the evening by a fund-raising dinner. At the dinner hosted at the Windsor Castle, a good number of 275 persons who attended pledged financial support through larger donations in future apart from the 20,000 dollar per table contribution for the event. The Prince's Xmas largesse is an obvious outcome of the year-long consultations between IBLF and the organizations it is supporting in India such as the Arpana Trust, the Barefoot College (SWRC, Tilonia) Tarun Bharat Sangh, the Jal Bhagirathi Foundation, Wells for India and a few others in the heritage and crafts sector, in the wake of his visit here. During his India visit in November 2003, Prince Charles had been to areas where water harvesting projects, implemented by SWRC in Ajmer district, TBS in Alwar and Jal Bhagirathi Foundation in Jodhpur, had shown tangible results. And not surprisingly the December 8 workshop had Bunker Roy, the founder of the Barefoot College, Rajendra Singh of TBS and former ruler of Jodhpur, Gaj Singh, chairman of the Jal Bhagirathi Foundation, making presentations with case studies. The workshop zeroed in on areas like access to water for drinking and sanitation in the light of the UN Millennium Development Goals -- which aims to halve the proportion of people without safe access to water by 2015 -- the community partnership and sustainable solutions like roof top rainwater harvesting, construction of small dams for ground water recharge and providing of functional toilets in schools. The Prince who gave his remarks at the end of the day recollected his visit to India and Rajasthan. "He spoke about making a meaningful contribution towards these institutions in Rajasthan which are working in the area of water and community development. It was obvious that the projects he visited here had a lasting impact on him,'' Prithvi Raj Singh, managing trustee of the Jal Bhagirathi Foundation, who was at the workshop, said. As it was envisaged the participants lent support to the Prince's idea of setting up a fund to promote water harvesting -- and that is icing in the Xmas cake!
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