Is Water the Next Oil?

Water is more vital for human life than oil – and environmentalists, corporations, communities and governments increasingly recognize its unequal distribution around the globe could lead to severe environmental degradation and intense conflicts in the years ahead. Anyone who cares about water should observe the management of oil during the past century and not repeat the mistakes, argues Rohini Nilekani.

Kelvinator GR8! Women Awards 2007

ohini Nilekani started as a writer. She worked as a journalist for several years writing for many for leading publications such as Sunday and India Today. Her first novel, a medical thriller called STILLBORN was published by Penguin Books.
She is Founder-Chairperson, Pratham Books, a non-profit publishing house set up to create high quality, low cost books for children. Since 2004, Pratham Books has published 150 new titles and distributed 2.5 million books in ten Indian languages, mostly to underserved children across the country.
For the past eight years, however, Rohini Nilekani has been actively involved with several non-profit organizations. As a committed philanthropist, she funds projects focussed in the areas of water, education, health, ecology, microfinance etc.

Breaking their shells

IN THE northern plains of Bihar, which are so used to being part of a flood economy that the railway stations have permanent stalls for flood relief personnel, we at Arghyam are supporting a small, yet bold, initiative in the districts of Madhubani, Sahara, Supaul and Khagaria.
A small, but committed group of five NGOs have come under the banner Maegh Pyne Abhiyan to work with the leftover
people live on the embankments of canals during the flood season.

Femme De Force – DAUGHTER, WIFE. MOTHER – India Woman today is so much more than this.

SHE IS THE FORCE THAT’S INSPIRING THE NATION AND THE WORLD.
The woman you see here is Rohini Nilekani, wife of Infosys CEO, Nandan Nilekani. But more important, she is a woman with strong beliefs about how one can “give back to the society in small measure what one receives in such abundance”. A former journalist and author of probably India’s first medical thriller on the lines of Robin Cook, Stillborn, she heads an organization Arghyam, which is doing path-breaking work in water management and most of it can be attributed to her vision.

They read better today

More than 95 per cent of 69,800 children in government schools can read better today; 45,000 children who could not read before can now read without any hitch. The 45-day accelerated reading programme, conducted jointly by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Akshara Foundation across primary classes in over 1,400 government schools in Bangalore, has done wonders for children.
Announcing the results of this highly-successful programme, primary and secondary education minister Basavaraj Horatti said; “We will now take this programme across the state. People expect the government to solve sill problems, but they must learn from organisations like Akshhra Foundation which has joined hands with us to tackle this problem of poor reading skills among government school children.”