My first case study is India’s Greatest Planned Environmental Disaster: The Narmada Valley Dam Projects, categorized by Environmental Justice, is a case study of Indian government creating big dams on Narmada River with hope of a better future of Indian citizens. This river passes through three different states: Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. Link to the webpage: http://www.umich.edu/~snre492/Jones/narmada.html . Purpose behind this project was to provide Indian citizens with more water and to ease their poverty troubles. This project is another example of development’s downsides, relating it to the module. Even though dams were built to improve Indians’ lifestyles, still there was a lot of carelessness involved. Indian government did not decide how the bills will be paid; also they were unaware of the side effects of big dams. Instead of providing water and better health these dams became a good source of flooding, water-logging, salinity, diseases etc. causing citizens’ health to weaken even more. Usually development’s downsides reason is environment but in this case it was Indian government being careless and trying to convert their ideas into actions without proper evaluation.

The second case study I chose was Kenya : Groundwater Governance. The link to the study is http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2011/06/16583819/kenya-groundwater-governance-case-study This relates to the module by being an example of sustainable development. The study explains the importance of groundwater specially in a water scarce state. It tells us how implementing policies and regulating the number of wells and boreholes helps in keeping the water source safe and renewable. It also highlights some of the weaknesses of the policies but mainly, we can learn that when a resource is so important and scarce, there is need to take actions to conserve it, which is why Kenya’s government implemented Water acts and policies to ensure sustainability of the groundwater as a water resource for the country. From the case study, we learn that keeping the governance of groundwater is also important because it is a source for agriculture and Kenya’s economy majorly depends on agriculture as well.Connecting it to the module, we can see that the module says the same: we need to change some ways of using scarce resources in order to keep them sustainable.

I am from Jaipur, India and its development level is similar to both case studies. Jaipur being in a desert state, is a water scarce place as Kenya, therefore, most people in Jaipur use groundwater as their major water source for all activities. Looking at recent statistics, the state is going to face a shortage of water with extremely low groundwater levels if nothing is done. Also, Kanota dam is the only one near Jaipur. It does help but the returns on the overall costs of the dam have not been much, therefore having a similar development’s downside as Narmada dam. I think we can learn from both the case studies, firstly if government is implementing a project it should evaluate all consequences and costs properly and secondly if a resource is scarce, it needs to take actions in order to conserve it for future generations. Geographically speaking, depending on location, some countries have more natural resources than others, and if they evaluate and implement plans properly they can use it to their advantage and add to the country’s development whereas other without the resources would take more time to develop in those areas. Overall, it made me realize evaluating places with regard to time and otherwise (especially government policies regarding environment) is essential for development.