• Technology / IT

IIT Guwahati collaborates with Australia India Water Centre and Western Sydney University to support the water management reforms in India.   With the aim to provide a structured platform for capacity building with strategic and long-term investment to support the water management reforms in India, ‘India Young Water Professional Programme’ was launched at a virtual conference yesterday   

• nationalherald
• November 30, 2021

by Prashant Kapadia/NHN

GUWAHATI, 30^th November 2021: As a collaborative initiative among the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Australia India Water Centre, and Western Sydney University, The first edition of the India Young Water Professional Programme was launched virtually on 29th November 2021.

His Excellency Mr. Manpreet Vohra, Indian High Commissioner to Australia, His Excellency Barry O’ Farrell, Australian High Commissioner to India, Ms. Debashree Mukherjee, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Jal Shakti, Professor T G Sitharam, Director IIT Guwahati, Professor Basant Maheshwari, Western Sydney University and more than 100 participants joined the launch of the Program.

The launch of the India Young Water Professional Program marks a significant milestone in the Australia-India collaboration in the field of water conservation. This program will be implemented by the Australia India Water Centre (a consortium of Australian and Indian universities). This initiative aims to provide a structured platform for capacity building with strategic and long-term investment to support the water management reforms in India. The objectives of the India Young Water Professional Programme are to equip water professionals with the necessary skills, knowledge, behaviours, and networks that will better enable them to contribute to the development and management of water resources in India, and to address the competency needs and priorities of the water sector in India. 

Speaking on the occasion, India High Commissioner HE Manpreet Vohra said that water is a key priority area of collaboration between India and Australia and both countries are working actively on this front. He said that the Young Water Professional Program is a significant milestone in the India-Australia relationship and will go a long way in institutional strengthening and capacity building.

Shedding light on the importance of this collaboration Shri T.G. Sitharam, Director, IIT Guwahati said, “This launch of the Young Water Professionals (YWP) program will be a great milestone for AIWC, IIT Guwahati, and Western Sydney University. I thank everyone who made this possible. AIWC is committed to working together for a common goal aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030 framework to explicitly contribute to SDG 2 Zero Hunger; SDG5 Gender Equality, SDG 6 Clean Water and Sanitation, SDG 10 Reduced Inequities, and SDG 13 Climate Action. India receives more than 1000 mm annual rainfall and is blessed with the monsoon. ‘India is not running of water, In fact, water is running out of India’. However, the shortage in India is of storage not of water. Even though Independent India since 1947 has built more than 5800 large dams, the storage is abysmally small. We need to look at newer opportunities through campaigns like “catch the rain, where it falls and when it falls” launched by our Honourable Prime Minister Shri. Narendra Modi Ji under National Water Mission.”

This program is unique and different from typical capacity building and training programs. It is focused on the Engaged Training and Learning Model. About 70% of the program is focused on project-based learning through Situation Understanding and Improvement Projects (SUIP). The Program focuses on gender equality and diversity because sustainable water management can only benefit from the views and skills of all members of society. A total of 20 participants have been selected for the first edition of this Program (10 men and 10 women) from central and state implementing agencies of the National Hydrology Project.

ABOUT IIT GUWAHATI: Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati established in 1994 has completed 25 years of glorious existence in 2019. At present, the Institute has eleven departments, five inter-disciplinary academic centres and four schools covering all the major engineering, science and humanities disciplines, offering BTech, BDes, MA, MDes, MTech, MSc and PhD programmes. The institute offers a residential campus to 412 faculty members and more than 6,000 students at present. Besides its laurels in teaching and research, IIT Guwahati has been able to fulfil the aspirations of people of the North East region to a great extent since its inception in 1994. The picturesque campus is on a sprawling 285 hectares plot on the north bank of the Brahmaputra, around 20 kms from the heart of the Guwahati city.

 IIT Guwahati is the only academic institution in India that occupied a place among the top 100 world universities – under 50 years of age – ranked by the London-based Times Higher Education (THE) in the year 2014 and continues to maintain its superior position even today in various International Rankings. IIT Guwahati gained rank 41 globally in the ‘Research Citations per Faculty’ category and overall 395 rank in the QS World University Rankings 2022 released recently. IIT Guwahati has retained the 7th position among the best engineering institutions of the country in the ‘India Rankings 2019’ declared by National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) of the Union ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD). IIT Guwahati has been also ranked 2nd in the ‘Swachhata Ranking’ conducted by the Govt. of India. Recently, IIT Guwahati has been ranked as the top ranked University in 2019 for IT developers by HackerRank in the Asia-Pacific region.

Among other frontier areas of research and innovation, IIT Guwahati is working towards augmenting critical science research initiatives in Genomics, Developmental Biology, Health Care and Bioinformatics, Flexible Electronics, Advanced Functional Materials, Sustainable Polymers, Rural Technologies, Disaster Resilience and Risk Reduction, and Water Resources and Management. In its silver jubilee year, IIT Guwahati is poised to scale newer heights through all round growth and development.