Anupam Mishra: The ancient ingenuity of water harvesting

http://www.ted.com With wisdom and wit, Anupam Mishra talks about the amazing feats of engineering built centuries ago by the people of India's Golden Desert to harvest water. These structures are still used today -- and are often superior to modern water megaprojects.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

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Science & Technology

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• TED
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• Anupam Mishra
• water
• agriculture
• history
• irrigation
• India
• TEDIndia
• Golden Desert
• engineering

[DonVoghano]

This guy is made of pure win.

[ZenMondo]

I find this fascinating. Being a fan of Frank Herbert's Dune series which centered around a culture that harvested moisture, seeing these real world solutions for living in the desert and thriving make the fiction seem pale in comparison.

[crudhousefull]

Omg. I absolutely love this guy. The old people are the absolute best. Dry cynical humor that cuts through any stupid argument that might be thrown in LOL

[mahendersari]

No mincing words in calling what is dirty.

[gokulking]

Great... thanks for sharing...

[gopjey]

excellent , unbeliveable and pure magic- what he explains in the present day context . harvesting moisture !!!!!!!!!!!, vow , if we could simply find methods to just reinvent some technic like this , drought and water wars can be totally eradicated .learning to respect is what is missing these days . let us learn to respect the gift of nature . gratitude .

[gopjey]

excellent , unbeliveable and pure magic- what he explains in the present day context . harvesting moisture !!!!!!!!!!!, vow , if we could simply find methods to just reinvent some technic like this , drought and water wars can be totally eradicated .learning to respect is what is missing these days . let us learn to respect the gift of nature . 

[ravindersanjay]

hats off sir !!!, This was for Rajashtan . Now we need some practical and cheap techniques for indian cities and other states of India.

[anuragchoubey]

@ruckenfigur den wat explains d fact american companies r rushing in india with their consumer products to sell to 1.2 billion masses which they say is d biggest consumer (even bigger dan chinese)??????????? During recession we all knw wat USA's economy was and d drop in demand in USA were as indian economy grew by 7.2% which shows indian growth was not entirely dependent on USA.

[anuragchoubey]

@hoppy1970 Do u usually watch ted talks wen u r drunk??????????? den u must be a very intelligent drunkard?????

[KarthikSoun]

Attention: Please switch off the proper english check programmer installed in your brain! lol... that was epic! I guess it is installed in our brain!

[himanshau]

great man