Gender imbalance in the water sector has been a subject of concern to academicians. The strength of women professionals in the water field is not as big as that of women professionals in areas such as information technology .Conscious of this malady, the Anna University’s Centre for Water Resources (CWR) has been running a programme, Integrated Water Resources Management. “We started it in 2006. One batch of post-graduate course students has passed out,” K. Karunakaran, Director of the CWR, says, adding that the programme will go on till 2011. The programme, comprising Master’s and Ph.D. courses, is funded by the Netherlands Government.
Over a period of five years, 50 women PG students and five women Ph.D. scholars are given the fellowship. Though the Netherlands Government provides scholarship to 10 PG students a year, the Centre admits 15 students for the course and the five students are not entitled to the fellowship, the Director clarifies. The CWR has been permitted by the University to conduct an exclusive selection process.
R. Sakthivadivel, former CWR Director and currently Visiting Professor, says there is no other institution offering such a programme exclusively for women. Among the five Ph.D. students, three are engineering background and the rest from environmental stream. These five students have been given topics relating to water and sanitation issues pertaining to south Chennai. The topics have been finalised after an exhaustive process of consultations with all those concerned. Dr. Karunakaran says six partner institutions from other south Asian countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are involved in the Netherlands Government-funded programme. He notes that the Centre, which is keen on improving productivity of water, is also running an undergraduate course in agricultural and irrigation engineering.
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