Seven IRC titles used in article for Indian bureaucrats

Seven of the 27 references used by Nandita Singh in an article Women,Society and Water Technologies, Lessons for Bureaucracy in Gender, Technology and Development, Vol. 10, No. 3, 341-360 in 2006 are earlier IRC flagship publications. Based on an ethnographic study in rural India the author provided lessons from the past for bureaucrats in India.

The responsibilities of designing technologies for supplying water, creating institutional frameworks for their execution and implementing the programme at the people's end for their benefit all lie with development bureaucracies. But the extent to which these bureaucracies can be sensitive to the socio-cultural contexts of the communities and the women for whom the programme interventions are designed and implemented remains problematic. This article explores the gender dimensions of the socio-cultural context of water and how this may play a role in the adoption and management of improved water technologies. A perspective on the lessons for planning bureaucracies is offered to make the concerned technologies more efficient, effective and sustainable.

The IRC titles are:

• Cairncross, S., I. Carruthers, D. Curtis, R. Feachem, D. Bradley and G. Baldwin. (1980) ‘Evaluation for Village Water Supply Planning’, Technical Paper Series 15. IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, The Hague, Netherlands

• IRC/IDRC. (1988) ‘Handpumps: Issues and Concepts in Rural Water Supply Programs’, Technical Paper Series 25. IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, The Hague, Netherlands

• Schouten, T. and Moriarty, P. (2003) ‘Community Water, Community Management: From System to Service in Rural Areas’, ITDG Publishing, London

• Smet, J. and van-Wijk, C. (eds) (2002) ‘Small Community Water Supplies: Technology, People and Partnership’, Technical Paper Series 40. IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, Delft, The Netherlands

• van Wijk, C. (1998) Gender in Water Resources Management, Water Supply and Sanitation: Roles and Realities Revisited, IRC, The Hague

• van Wijk-Sijbesma, C. (1995) Gender in Community Water Supply, Sanitation and Water Resources Protection: A Guide to Methods and Techniques, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, The Hague

• van Wijk-Sijbesma, C. (1962) Caste in Modern India and Other Essays. Asia Publishing House, Bombay . (1985) ‘Participation of Women in Water Supply and Sanitation: Roles and Realities’, Technical Paper 22, IRC, The Hague

The online version of this artcile can be found at: http://gtd.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/10/3/341

Nandita Singh, Department of Land and Water Resources engineering, Royal Instititue of Technology (KTH), Teknikringen 76, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden

Source: Christine Sijbesma, 15 Jan 2008