Online Water at a click
http://www.indiawaterportal.org
Want to know how much rainfall your area received in 1910? In India, this data is difficult to obtain for the average citizen. But at this site you can get this information at a click. Datasets for various meteorological indicators between 1901 and 2002 is just one type of resource provided by http://www.indiawaterportal.org.
Run by the Bangalore-based non profit trust Arghyam, the portal has links to a variety of information on water-related issues, including research, news and parliament debates. It has sections on rainwater harvesting, urban and rural water management, watershed development, groundwater and sanitation. There is also a collection of community radio programmes on rainwater harvesting. The programmes are in Kannada for the people of Tumkur district.
There are case studies on grassroots initiatives in water management. Not all of it is pedantic text.For example, a rainwater harvesting initiative by a community in Thane is presented through a slide show. There is a section on policies, which has government documents, some accompanied by links to commentaries.
The site is evolving. India Water Portal aims to collate whatever information that is available, including data and maps already on the Web. The creators of the site say the next step will be making the data well-indexed and searchable. The real value-add would come when there is space for everyone to comment on individual datum, point out gaps and inconsistencies between different studies.