Sara Ahmed ()

SARA AHMED has been working on the political economy of water in India since 1986. Her doctoral dissertation (University of Cambridge, 1991) focused on culture and the politics of ritual purity and participation in the 'cleaning' of the River Ganga at Varanasi. Between 1992-2002, she was on the faculty of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) Gujarat, teaching courses in rural development policy, environmental management issues and gender, development and institutional change. Sara has contributed to the Gujarat state-level Task Force on Legislating Participatory Irrigation Management (2000-01), the White Paper on Water for the Gujarat government (commissioned by UNICEF, 2000) as well as the Gujarat Water Vision 2010 (World Water Forum, The Hague, 2000). Currently, she is working as an independent gender and water governance researcher with the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition (ISET-USA) and partners in South Asia on vulnerability, adaptation and resilience in the context of climate variability and disasters (drought, floods and coastal storms, see: www.i-s-e-t.org). She is also just completing a three year action research project on water conflicts in micro-river basins in India, looking at the role of dialogue, multi-stakeholder processes and social learning with two NGOs (Utthan and Guide) and the Institute for Social Studies, The Hague, with support from the Indo-Dutch Programme for Alternative Development (see: www.riverdialogue.in). Sara hopes to start work on a new IDRC funded project to look critically at women’s participation in water user committees with research partners in Maharashtra and Gujarat as part of a larger programme on decentralization and gender rights in South Asia, Africa and Latin America (see: www.idrc.org).

Sara’s recent publications include the edited volume, Flowing Upstream: Empowering Women through Water Management Initiatives in India, Centre for Environment Education, Ahmedabad and Foundation Books, New Delhi (2005) and an undergraduate course manual on Gender, Agriculture and Rural Livelihoods published by the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai (2005, see: www.mssrf.org). She is currently working on a Reader on Gender and Water Issues in South Asia with Margreet Zwarteveen and the Crossing Boundaries Project coordinated by SaciWaters.

Sara has been a member of the National Steering Committee of the Global Environmental Facility’s Small Grants Program in India since 2001 and is on the Executive Committee of PRAVAH, a network of NGOs and individuals in Gujarat, engaged in policy advocacy on decentralized, gender-just water and sanitation alternatives. Apart from her work on water, livelihood security and gender rights, Sara actively supports several non-profit and grassroots groups working on human rights, conflict transformation and peace-building.