I finished submitting the manuscript titled " Breaking down knowledge silos in science and practice of water management in India" in the Delft 2021: Advancing Socio-hydrology series of Research Topics within Frontiers in Water Journal." This paper is a joint effort of Indian scholars and practitioners working in the Indian river basin context to engage towards integrating knowledge pluralities to advance philosophies, science, and practice of water in India. We are expanding the community of water scholars and practitioners through the Indian Youth Water Network (IYWN) collective in bringing new voices, new ways and methods of knowing. We are connected in our effort to braid physical processes and understanding with socio-cultural knowledge to conduct research on Indian water systems. This paper answers the call to work towards decolonising education, knowledge, and ways of practicing and perceiving the science and practice of water in India. Here specifically I contributed towards ideation, overall synthesis and coordination in the paper. Additionally, through our ongoing research work in the Kaveri Delta collective with colleagues at IFP guided by Dr Senthil Babu, we also submitted insights to support arguments in the paper on current dominant discourse of water science in India  shifting problems to heavy engineering and infrastructural modes of solution marginalising engagement with alternative narratives, knowledge forms or other complex drivers of problems. 

On July 16 and 17, a team from the Observatory of Rural Dynamics and Inequalities in South-India shared the results of the "Depleted by debt" project with residents of the study villages. Key findings included the extent of malnutrition following the pandemic and lockdown; very high household financial fragility and unequal access to financial services based on caste and gender; kinship and social networks; forms of employment; land ownership patterns; environmental conditions; type of agricultural production; and the uneven effects of climate change. Discussions with participants revealed that the households identified by the study as the most vulnerable are still struggling to cope with the impact of the pandemic. They face persistent reductions in incomes and spiralling debt. Defaults on microfinance loans have left many women, disproportionately Dalit and landless, owing thousands of rupees in interest and penalty fees, facing threats from loan officers, and being denied formal loans.

The ANR ATCHA project is coming to an end. I did 5 last days of fieldwork in the Berambadi watershed! In this area of South Karnataka. ATCHA studies and models irrigation, changing cropping patterns in relation with climate change. My previous investigations with Dr Venkatasubramanian G led me to develop the hypothesis that many farmers migrate, not so much because they are poor but mainly because they want to raise enough money to dig a borewell. Thanks to our interpreter Arkesh, I interviewed about forty farmers, which led me to conclude that my assumption was incorrect. We indeed observed that the link between migration and irrigation is only one way: irrigation slows down migration by providing income, but it is not migration that enables irrigation, since its income is insufficient. However, it does, enable the repayment of instalments and "juggling with debt" (I. Guérin, 2014). We should therefore not excessively isolate the different modes of livelihood with the aim of analyzing them in silo, but rather consider everything within the household system of activities.

Renaud Colson is Associate Professor at the Law & Political Science Faculty of the University of Nantes (France) and Honorary Lecturer at Cardiff University. He holds a Master’s degree in Legal Theory from the Université Saint-Louis Bruxelles, a Master’s degree in Private Law and a PhD in Legal History from the University of Nantes. He has held several visiting positions in universities and institutions all around the world and joined IFP to study environmental law and environment rights in India under several aspects, from local legal response to the Indian contribution to global climate governance.

Sundara Skanda Poorvajan Sareswaran who is writing his Ph.D-thesis under Prof. S. Arunasundaram (Sanskrit College, Chennai), has joined the Indology department from 1 st June 2022 for a period of three year. He will pursue his studies and use his expertise in Śaivism in the framework of the project “Transcribing Indian Cultural Knowledge and Heritage”.

S. Anandavardhan who worked in IFP from 2nd January 1987 to 31 st October 2016, joined again the Indology department from 1 st May 2022 onwards, for a period of three year. He will use his expertise in Śaiva manuscripts and rituals in the framework of the project “Transcribing Indian Cultural Knowledge and Heritage”.

Aneesh Raghavan, who recently submitted his PhD thesis on the first book (vimarśa) of Mahima Bhaṭṭa’s Vyaktiviveka with Pondicherry University, will join the Indology Department on 1st September to work for nine month, together with S. Lakshminarasimhan, on the completion of vol. 5 of the Pāṇinīyodāharaṇakośa, a dictionary compiling the examples of traditional Sanskrit grammar, several volumes of which have appeared in the past. Aneesh, a regular visitor at the IFP, will also participate in the various events and projects conducted by the Department.

Matthew Leveille, currently doing his PhD at the University of Virginia (USA), will come to India as an AIIS fellow in September, and will join the Indology Department for ten months, until July, 2023. His work is focused on the stotras (“songs of praise to the deity”) by the famous 16 th -century South Indian polymath Appayya Dīkṣita, particularly his Varadarājastava, and on his Śaiva-Vaiṣṇava religious imagination. He will work with scholars at the IFP and EFEO, and additionally intends to travel for fieldwork to Kanchipuram and Thanjavur to learn of the temple cultures and to seek out manuscripts. He is also interested in Sanskrit and Tamil literature relevant to Appayya’s thought and poetry.