October 5, 2022
Podcast

Rohini Nilekani on the Secret to Successful Governance | Grand Tamasha

Rohini Nilekani is an author and philanthropist who has worked for over three decades in India’s social sectors. She is the founder of Arghyam, a foundation for sustainable water and sanitation, and she also co-founded Pratham Books, a nonprofit which aims to enable access to reading for millions of children. With her husband Nandan, she […]

October 22, 2021
Podcast

The Importance Of Water Data With Peter Gleick & Rohini Nilekani | Dalberg

This is an edited version of an episode on The Water Data Podcast produced by Dalberg Advisors and Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment. The hosts, Veena Srinivasan and Nirat Bhatnagar, speak with Peter Gleick from Pacific Institute and Rohini Nilekani about the role and importance of water data, trends in the […]

March 4, 2021
Interview

Climate Action and Impact: A Decade of Insights

This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani in conversation with Prashanth Prakash at the launch of ACT for Environment at the ACT Summit. The ACT Summit brings together India’s leading startup founders, venture capitalists and changemakers to talk about how we can leverage inventive startup assets and ideas to enable social change. In 2021, […]

September 29, 2020
Article

Distributing the Ability to Solve

Water is the key sector when it comes to climate change related challenges. It is ever changing and complex, with equity, quality and quantity issues rising routinely. Usually, water issues have to be dealt with locally, in context. For example, even if you planned to bring water from a faraway river to a city, it […]

September 18, 2020
Article

How to Leverage Trained Water Professionals

If we have to effectively tackle the current and future pandemics, and collectively address climate-related emergencies, flexibility, adaptation and resilience are not just words. They are critical skills that communities must build quickly. The water sector is a good place to innovate in service of this imperative Water is a key sector to overcome public […]

May 9, 2020
Panel

Resilience, Hope: India in the Time of COVID-19 & Climate Change

This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani in conversation with Jairam Ramesh (former Minister for Environment and Forests) and Navroz Dubash (Professor at the Centre for Policy Research). Moderated by Barkha Dutt, New Worlds is a three-part digital series by the India Climate Collaborative to discuss resilience and recovery in the face of our […]

May 6, 2020
Interview

Rohini Nilekani on Water, Societal Platform Thinking and COVID-19 Response

Rohini talks about the water sector, the COVID-19 pandemic and her vision for the city of Bengaluru. You can read the full interview at the India Water Portal. PDF

October 22, 2019
Others

Water Solutions: Leveraging Impact Through Smart Philanthropy

Organised by Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and curated by Arghyam, ‘Water Solutions: Leveraging Impact Through Smart Philanthropy’ was a day-long ecosystem convening held in order to bring together like-minded philanthropists and practitioners to deep-dive into solutions and opportunities for action at scale in water. The event kept in mind a strong solutions focus; with information and […]

August 15, 2019
TV Show

We The People | Corporate Social Responsibility: Should It Be Mandatory?

India, has become the first country to make Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) spending mandatory through a law. New amendments to the Companies Act have been approved by parliament to make make it impossible for companies to escape CSR. The government also plans to include a specific penal provision in the Companies Act in case of […]

February 9, 2019
Interview

Our Cities, Our Rivers: Re-imagining the Relationship

As 1.3 billion people seek better lives in a monsoon-dependent economy, the white and green revolutions may have produced grains and milk, but water is in some parts of India today more expensive and less accessible than milk. Ground water resources are depleting. NIITI Ayog sees a crisis by 2020. Where do we stand? How […]

March 22, 2018
Article

The people’s struggle to find solutions to water challenges

With the summer looming, water comes more easily to the urban mind. Even for those who had been reasonably secure all year long, it is an uncertain time. Maybe it is time to build a sump, to invest in a rainwater harvesting system, or to try, again, to dig a private borewell. View PDF

February 9, 2018
Interview

Water Philanthropy in India: A Conversation with Rohini Nilekani

Rohini Nilekani in conversation with Dr. Ravina Aggarwal, Director, Columbia Global Centers | Mumbai This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani’s conversation with Dr. Ravina Aggarwal, Director, Columbia Global Centres in Mumbai. Their discussed the state of the water crisis in India and how philanthropists can help address this issue. Although I had started […]

January 4, 2017
Interview

INKtalks: Rohini Nilekani: From Starting Infosys to Saving Water

Philanthropist Rohini Nilekani talks to Lakshmi Pratury about setting up Infosys in the early 90’s, her attempt to encourage children to read more books, and her foundation, Arghyam, which works with water and sanitation issues. My marriage and my family’s journey with Infosys happened almost at the same time, and I think we were so […]

December 24, 2016
Article

A Mirage or an Opportunity? 21st Century Water Governance.

If water governance does not improve in India, we seem headed straight towards disaster. Our groundwater tables are abysmally low in many parts of the country; many of our main river basins are closed. And the expressed demand for water might not even be half-met in the next decade. So the question of how to […]

December 23, 2016
Interview

India’s Uber Rich: How they Should Behave.

This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani’s conversation with Vikram Singh Mehta at the 2016 Times Lit Fest in Delhi. When my family happened to get rich a few years ago, I had to grapple with the question of what to do with this wealth. As someone who was a journalist, and who grew […]

October 5, 2016
Keynote

Water Conflicts Workshop

This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani’s talk on Understanding and Resolving Water Conflicts, organised jointly by the Forum for Water Conflicts in India, TERI, and ATREE on October 5, 2016 One of the most important questions in the country and possibly around the world, is the management of conflicts around this key resource […]

September 18, 2016
Article

Cauvery row shows why India needs a low-water economy

All over the country, every day, there are a million conflicts around water, right from the jostling over the local tap to the sharing of big rivers. Once in a while, one spills from the courts into the streets and, amplified by media, flows across the troubled conscience of the nation. The Cauvery dispute is […]

July 1, 2016
Article

Water and cities: Information, innovation and implementation

We have to get smarter about our cities. Especially when it comes to the most basic of public services—water supply. Not one Indian city, including the capital, New Delhi, can claim that every resident has access to safe water from a tap in their home. View PDF

May 31, 2016
Article

Revitalise our aquifers: India can be water secure, but for that we need to act urgently

This parched country will be blessed with rain soon. It is the final but worst stretch of the hot, dry summer. A good time to commit that, post monsoon, we will never forget one of the most widespread droughts in recent memory. Three years running, many states have declared drought conditions. A normal monsoon may […]

December 3, 2014
Panel

Thirsty for Change – How Can We Unite to Solve the Clean Water Crisis?

This interactive session at the 2014 Social Enterprise Conference sought to define the clean water crisis, discover innovative models and solutions that are driving change, and share your call to action for the millennial generation. In addition to hearing from experts on how they are taking advantage of opportunities across the entire space, it challenged […]

March 26, 2013
Panel

IIHS-UC Berkeley Conference | Building Urban Infrastructure in India

The “urban” economy plays an increasingly vital role in India’s economic development. The joint two day conference hosted by IIHS and the University of California, Berkeley on 26th and 27th March, 2013, brought together leading scholars from India and globally to discuss the many critical questions relating to the effective and equitable functioning of the […]

March 22, 2013
Panel

Connect The Dots: Water Matters

This is an edited version of Water Matters, an interactive panel discussion with Rohini Nilekani. The event, held at Max Mueller Bhavan on 22nd March 2013, World Water Day, was part of a campaign on sustainable water conservation in Bangalore run by The Alternative, a media platform on sustainable living.  Bangalore is running short […]

November 12, 2012
Keynote

An Approach To Integrated Water Management

By Lisa Tsering, Staff Reporter. Dec 03, 2012. BERKELEY, Calif., United States Grounded and detail-driven, water activist Rohini Nilekani is committed to helping India solve its water crisis one village at a time. Nilekani, the founder and chair of Arghyam, an NGO based in Bangalore that works to improve water and sanitation in small towns across […]

September 1, 2012
Article

Aqua Dreams – Rohini Nilekani looks with satisfaction as Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh launches India Water Portal

Rohini Nilekani, a philanthropist, journalist, author and social activist, has understood water management with all its complexities, and has channeled her efforts through Arghyam, which she founded. It’s no surprise that in late 2010 Arghyam was requested by the Planning Commission to collate civil society inputs on drinking water and sanitation for the approach paper […]

October 15, 2011
Interview

Our mission is safe and sustainable water for all

in the third of Mint’s “Joy Of Giving Week” interview series, Rohini Nilekani, chairperson and founder of Arghyam, talks about the foundation she set up to address the problem of one of India’s scarcest resources—water. View PDF

March 21, 2010
Article

See life through a water prism

SIMPLE INNOVATIONS LIKE THE TAP HAVE DISTANCED PEOPLE FROM PROBLEMS AT THE SOURCE. World Water Day has come again. Did we do anything differently about our use and abuse of water since the last Water Day? At the gross level, it appears not. Because, in the context of India, this past year was one of […]

May 7, 2009
Article

Uncommon Ground – A Conflict Of Paradigms

The demand for limited fresh water has brought the issue to the centre of the debate on development. At summertime, thoughts turn naturally to water. For millions of citizens, especially women, it is a time of extreme shortage, and for ever more creative coping mechanisms. Many states have improved access to lifeline water, but there […]

February 23, 2008
Article

Kannada Portal for information on Water – www.indiawaterportal.org/kannada – Kannada

Kannada Portal for information on Water – www.indiawaterportal.org/kannada – Kannada View PDF

August 3, 2007
Article

Payments for Ecosystem Services

It is clearly time for a new social contract with the farmer and the tribal, if not as a moral imperative certainly as a strategic one. Two symbols come to mind immediately when we look at India as it is instead of through the aspirational prism of an India shining or poised. One: the disenfranchised […]

May 31, 2006
Interview

50 Leaders re-shaping Indian Education – Acceptable Capitalists

Nandan Nilekani, managing director, Infosys Technologies Ltd and Rohini Nilekani, promoter trustee of the Akshara and Arghyam Trust foundations and trustee Pratham. Rohini has promoted the Akshara Eoundation to improve learning outcomes in municipal schools in Bangalore and the Arghyam Trust Foundation to research ways and means to improve water availability to socio-economically disadvantaged citizens, […]

March 22, 2006
Interview

With technology you need water too

which Mr K N Shanth Kumar, Editor, Deccan Herald and Prajavani released the book Nashisuttiruva Neerina Gnana at Nayana hall at Kannada Bhavan on Wednesday, Dr Ananthamurthy detailed ancient and mythological references to water in order to highlight the necessity for sustainable use of this natural resource and preservation of water bodies. Rohini Nilekani, Chairperson, […]

March 22, 2006
Article

Save Water: Calling Newspapers/ Magazines – Kannada

Call to Save Water – Kannada View PDF

December 17, 2005
Article

Answer is blowin’ in the wind – Today, the situation is such that even the mighty Cauvery is not enough to slake the thirst of this city.

In all the crises that have overtaken the city, one that looms grey and large is the effect of excess ram. Overflowing lakes, tanks and drains have almost made us forget that other and worse crisis that often affects the city – water scarcity. When rainfall is inadequate, the water supply dries up alarmingly. And […]