Veditum 2022 wrap up - events, discussions & new projects
Veditum's story on the BBC + more walking along River Sindh + Documentary related updates + Curated water & people stories.
On the MyIndianLife podcast with Kalki Koechlin
Veditum’s founder Siddharth Agarwal was invited to the MyIndianLife podcast by the BBC World Service, which is hosted by actor and artist Kalki Koechlin. We’re glad to have this kind of a platform to share stories and issues of rivers and communities. Give it a listen?
The podcast intends to share life of young Indians today. All the episodes are incredible stories from India, and our episode (09) is titled - River Walker. Link here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0dr5j0d
Moving Upstream: Ganga
Screenings:
Our documentary Moving Upstream: Ganga screened at institutions, festivals and independently as well through November and December 2022.
We started off with an independent screening at Shoonya Space, Lalbagh, Bengaluru on 30th October 2022.
Then we had by 2 screenings of the film at the Rivers of Life festival at Azim Premji University, and a screening at the ATREE - Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology & The Environment campus in the first week of November.
In the first week of December, we showed the film at the Quotes of the Earth festival at India International Centre, New Delhi.
All screenings were followed by intense discussions around the ideas of walking, rivers, and slowing down. Bring our film to your campus / neighbourhood / institution? Write to us at asid@veditum.org
If you like our work, please consider supporting it!
Moving Upstream Fellowship
All groups selected for our Moving Upstream: Sindh have now completed their walk along the river Sindh. Most recently, Aoun & Vaishnavi spent time exploring the stretch near the source of the river.
Events:
We hosted an online storytelling session, where our Moving Upstream Sindh fellows Aishani, Aoun, Bageshwer, Rahul & Vaishnavi shared stories and learnings from the field. You can watch a recording of the session here:
Stories and videos:
Siddharth stitched together an audio visual, combining videos and voiceovers by the fellows speaking at the storytelling session. Watch and listen to get a sense of the connection that they have formed with the river. More such videos are in the making!
The story by Bageshwer & Pooja (fellows from Moving Upstream: Sindh) for the Sanctuary Asia magazine is now available to read online.
Please use this link to read: https://www.sanctuarynaturefoundation.org/article/walking-with-the-river
New fellowship:
We’re working towards our next fellowship opportunity and are exploring possibilities in the Eastern parts of India. Do you have any ideas? Are you interested? Tell us!
Sand Mining Monitoring - new project on environmental accountability
At Veditum, we’ve been learning about our environment, people and their issues for the past many years. Based on this collective understanding and intelligence, we have initiated a new project as part of our environmental accountability initiatives.
Sand Mining Monitoring - a new platform built by Veditum India Foundation in partnership with Ooloi Labs, and supported by Rainmatter Foundation. This platform aims to function two main purposes:
Act as a public facing archive of all sand mining related information in India - official, community / user generated, news reports, court documents and more.
Build capacity for action on instances of illegal and / or devastating sand mining activity in India.
We’ve recently started inviting individuals and organisations to learn about and use the platform, and will share more publicly in the coming days. If this interests you, please write to us at smm@veditum.org and do share with those who you think might be interested.
Publishing, interviews, events
Rivers of Life festival at Azim Premji University
“Rivers of Life is an initiative by Azim Premji University, the first of a series that aims to depict nature in all its forms depicting the splendor of our rivers through the vivid imaginations of young interns. Their work, intermeshed with generous contributions from civil society groups, come together to form a multi-layered narrative of the river. The exhibition will help students understand the lifecycle of a river, its civilisations, a source of livelihood, and biodiversity.” - from the Rivers of Life website.
We were also invited to share our work through exhibition panels, talks and screenings. It was wonderful to see our work displayed along side stories of riparian communities and some incredible people, organisations and movements from across the country.
India Rivers Week 2022
India Rivers Week, the annual event by India Rivers Forum was held in the month of November 2022 on the theme - ‘Rivers as waterways in India: Bane or Boon?’. This year’s event was co-organised with Pune based Manthan Adhyayan Kendra.
The event saw 5 sets of discussions - starting from traditional waterways usage, to plans, impacts and governance around the current and proposed design of waterways, and finally an envisioning for what a sustainable design for inland waterways could look like.
Recordings and reports will be made available soon. You can follow the updates at this link: https://indiariversforum.org/indiariversweek2022/
Veditum India Foundation is a consortium member at the India Rivers Forum, and Siddharth is the convener of the forum.
Community, Collaborators, Suggested Reading
Updates from friends and collaborators
Checkout the series of year end overviews published by SANDRP - South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People. They’ve extensively covered issues of rivers, environment governance and people’s movements. Read here: www.sandrp.in
Our friends at Buddhijeev, inspired from their time with us, have initiated a project called ‘Ghummakadi - an experiment in slow travel’, where they are walking through Bihar. Read more about their experiences on their blog: https://buddhijeev.substack.com
Suggested reading
Read: A once in a lifetime bird - https://www.theverge.com/c/23138305/ebird-cornell-lab-birding-climate-change-research
Listen: Imprints: Lake and archive diving with Atreyee Bhattacharya, a podcast by Mongabay India - https://india.mongabay.com/2022/12/podcast-imprints-lake-and-archive-diving-with-atreyee-bhattacharya/
Read: Following the forgotten trails of China’s vanished tea porters, by Paul Salopek, Out of Eden Walk - https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/out-of-eden-walk/articles/2022-10-250-pounds-grief/
Support our work
If you like the work we do at Veditum, do consider making a tax deductible donation to support out work. No amount is small!
Click the button below to make a donation to Veditum
Thanks for reading through! We’ll be back in a month with more updates, including stories, an update on our new environmental accountability project, and news about screenings and opportunities. Until then, take care and follow us on social media if you’re active on these platforms: facebook, twitter, instagram.
Warmly,
Siddharth Agarwal
Veditum