Vidhi Parmar

UR2008

DAY 0 + 180

My project titled ‘DAY 0 + 180’ tries to show that the current inter-state dependency on a single water source is unnecessary and unsustainable.  For years Ahmedabad thrived on the banks of Sabarmati and when the river died, instead of learning from our mistakes, we simply turned to another, farther river-Narmada. Armed with our technology, we created the present system which depends heavily on a single source as opposed to the traditional multiple sources system. By mapping the present system, I derived different scenarios in the near future amidst a severe water shortage. Immediately after an apparent day 0 a city would try to extract ground water, recycle wastewater and/or turn to rainwater harvesting. A further time after that it finds sustainable alternatives like creating ground water recharge zones which can store water in the ground as well as on the surface. The city learns to count ‘water miles’ the way it counts food miles to lower the energy spent in collecting and distributing water at a large scale.


Report Content

The projects aims to map the different faces of water during its journey in the campus. CEPT University extracts groundwater from 2 bore wells and after it is used, water is let in the drainage pipes.

It explores the different qualities of water and their locations in the campus. The qualities are identified as invisible, powerful, adaptive and life giving.

The city in the past settled around the water bodies and identified the importance of lakes. Once the city started growing, the lakes started disappearing. This was because of many reasons- out of 100 lakes 37 vanished because of water scarcity over the years, 26 because of illegal encroachments, 42 due to laid out TP schemes by AMC (because they consider lake as a piece of land), 16 due to roads constructed dividing the lakes into half and thus receding the water, 5 because of considering the l

We had anticipated that the reason urban lakes were not being treated properly was due to lakes not being identified. However, to our surprise we found the definitions of AMC including most if not all the lakes. We concluded that the reason lakes still get encroached and built upon is due to a lack of regulations in place.

Narrative poem

The present system of canals, dams and rivers and its timeline. The Sardar Sarovar Dam project was conceived way back in the 1940’s. The affected areas and the zones benefiting from it are about the size of Netherlands in area.

The elements of the present system.

The present system heavily benefits bottled water companies which have created an informal, parallel water supply system while maintaining the same source. Many farmer groups and NGOs complain that the industries extract more than their fare share of water which is not accounted for.

The second scenario is immediately after an apparent day 0 when a city would try to extract ground water, recycle wastewater and/or turn to rainwater harvesting. The waste water is brought back into use after filtration forming a closed loop.

Instead of the present dependency on a single use, it is better to have multiple decentralized sources spread throughout the region. The central Gujarat region has extensive, thick and hydrologically connected aquifers which are ideal for such an intervention.