Introduction
Last week, the India Sand Watch team at Veditum made its way to the beautiful and historic city of Bhopal to take forward on-ground work to protect rivers and riparian habitats in Madhya Pradesh. We hosted a legal data sprint at a law college on 22nd August, followed by a 2 day convening on the weekend of 23rd and 24th August.
The overall convening and sessions were co-hosted with our partners and collaborators at Awaaz Leadership Labs, Varta Varan, India Water Portal, Wildlife Conservation Trust, and The Habitats Trust.
The legal data sprint took place at Career College of Law, and the convening was organised at the beautiful workshop space in the Eklavya Foundation office building.
We were joined by many river enthusiasts – environmentalists, river conservationists, activists, students, researchers, journalists, academics, architects, government officials, artists, film makers, and others. The participants were largely based in Madhya Pradesh, particularly the Bhopal region, while others travelled from Delhi and Bengaluru.
Our exercises and conversations focussed on the challenges being faced by rivers of Madhya Pradesh, to find possible solutions for them, to collectively take positive action, and to co-imagine a future with healthy rivers.
Read on for details on the various events we hosted over three days in Bhopal, as well as fun snippets on some local explorations we did!
Legal Data Sprint at Career College of Law
Our first activity was a data sprint at the Career College of Law, hosted in collaboration with Varta Varan. Our team was joined by Sankalp Srivastava from the Varta Varan team for a day long event with students from the college, focused on archiving court documents on sand mining from Madhya Pradesh. These were judgements and reports from cases at the Madhya Pradesh High Court and the National Green Tribunal.
36 students participated in the sprint and some professors also attended the session. This was the first time that they were participating in a Data Sprint. Through the session, students were introduced to the issue of river sand mining, the illegalities and violences in the sector, and its impacts on ecosystems, people and society.
They were also introduced to the different acts, laws and policies within which sand mining governance takes place in India and Madhya Pradesh. Sankalp explained the value of legal research and legal data, while the Veditum team introduced the India Sand Watch project and data. We also shared insights from research carried out by Sunidhi Chhetri – one of our summer interns, where she had analysed the role of courts in addressing illegality in the sand mining process in the state of MP.
After the initial briefing, the students began archiving court documents to the India Sand Watch platform, while the team moved around the room troubleshooting where required. Some students paired up, and by the end of the Data Sprint, we had 23 new court documents that were analysed, annotated and uploaded to the India Sand Watch data archive.
The session introduced a variety of new topics and ways of thinking to the law students, including issues around sand mining, legal data, environmental governance and law, and the immense potential of data in research, evidence building, and even storytelling around environmental challenges.
Would you like to organise a data sprint with India Sand Watch at your university? Write to us at sandwatch@veditum.org
Convening Session 1 – Introduction
The convening brought together people and organisations working on rivers in Madhya Pradesh, including architects, students, activists, journalists, and filmmakers. After initial introductions to Veditum’s work and the India Sand Watch project, participants introduced themselves and their various connections to rivers and environmental advocacy in the state.
We then detailed our plans for more focused work on river sand mining in Madhya Pradesh, inviting people to collaborate and work with us to protect MP’s rivers from illegal sand mining. Their individual and organisational experiences added an additional perspective to our thinking and the work that we are undertaking.
To introduce attendees to our approach to this systemic issue, and provide space for diverse thought and understanding on the subject, we undertook an interactive exercise. Participants moved around the room to collaboratively build on and add local context to the Sites of Violence framework developed by India Sand Watch.
Using this as a starting point, we subsequently developed a stakeholder map at the various sites of violence, through a discussion on who is impacted by violence at different levels, and who influences or causes impact at each level. The updated framework will soon be shared with everyone.
The session also introduced the participants to the overall governance structure of the sand mining sector, focusing on District Survey Reports (DSRs), which are foundational documents critical for transparency and ecological security during the process of mine allocations and mining.
Given the on-ground work and experience of the participants, many had observed sand mining on the rivers they work or live near. The India Sand Watch team highlighted the importance of reporting these observations on the India Sand Watch data archive, to build an evidence archive across time and space.
This would allow for deeper investigations and understanding building by combining this observational data with other forms of data, such as the DSRs or news reports. The participants have already begun uploading their observations onto the platform!
Checkout the current set of mining observations on ISW at this link: Mining Observations
By the end of the session, the participants were able to better understand the official, ecological, and social contexts in which sand mining is taking place in the state, equipping them to be able to take holistic, collaborative positive action on the issue.
The session concluded with an intention setting by the group to collectively work on addressing this grave ecological issue plaguing the state’s rivers, and a promise to meet again the coming year to discuss a broader range of river related issues.
The understanding and resources shared during the convening are being collated into a report which will be released soon!
Convening Session 2 – Data Sprint
After the 1st session concluded and lunch was served, we hosted another Data Sprint – this time with a new experimental format devised by the Veditum team!
Through our work at India Sand Watch and Veditum, we are consistently offering ways of thinking, frameworks, and toolkits for better accountability in the sand mining sector. We’re also working to make these openly available for citizen action.
One such toolkit assesses the quality of District Survey Reports (DSRs), which we had used to develop a preliminary understanding of the availability of these pivotal documents for the state of MP in May 2025. The idea was to make such analysis possible for regular citizens to undertake for any state, using a template and tutorial which we will be releasing soon.
You can find the framework and our earlier review for MP at this link.
This data sprint was our first public attempt at engaging people in this process of assessing DSRs using the toolkit, and it began with an introduction to environmental governance and the role of the DSR. This was followed by a tutorial on how to use the toolkit to review the availability, accessibility, status and readability of each DSR for the districts in a state.
The 25 participants were divided into 11 groups. They searched for DSRs and filled details for each criteria in the shared template. Within the duration of 2 hours, they were able to do the assessment for 44 out of 55 districts of Madhya Pradesh.
During the discussion at the end, participants shared their observations and questions and engaged in a lively discussion on what makes a public document truly accessible, and the value of public information in accountability.
This Data Sprint served as a testing ground – not only for the toolkit, but also for the ideas we are developing around introducing accountability by assessing and critiquing the quality of government documents that are crucial for sand mining governance.
Learn more about our previous data sprints on this link.
Interested in doing such an assessment for your state, or co-hosting a data sprint? Email us at sandwatch@veditum.org.
Bonus 1: Grasslands Walk
Rhea and Aishani from the team attended a fascinating and very fun walk on grasses and grasslands near Kerwa dam. The walk was facilitated by grassland restoration ecologist Fazal Rashid, who had attended the proceedings on day 1 of the convening.
Fazal led us up a rocky cliff to a vast grassland where we could observe the specially adapted vegetation and grasses growing on this unique ecosystem – leading us to wonder how plants grow in these rocky environs with very little soil. The fascinating answer lies in the production of a thin layer called the bio-crust – look it up, it’s very interesting!
Along the walk, we engaged in conversations about the region’s geology, rivers and riparian vegetation, micro-habitats, and local wildlife, as well as Bhopal’s historical and cultural associations with grasslands, and the distinctive Bhopali accent!
As Fazal said, ‘Its time to get high on grasses and grasslands!’
Convening Session 3 – Media Workshop
The final event, on Sunday, was a media workshop hosted by the India Sand Watch team and resource persons from Mongabay India, Wildlife Conservation Trust, and India Water Portal.
After an exploration of the current landscape of reporting on sand mining in MP, participants were introduced to the India Sand Watch data archive as a repository of evidence that could be used for better, data-backed reporting on sand mining.
Participants were also shown the Sites of Violence framework, and encouraged to think about, address, and report on the problem of sand mining at a broader, systemic level – and at each of the stages of the process of sand mining where violences occur. They were also shown the newly introduced visualisation tools on the platform that could enable stronger data-driven journalism on the issue of river sand mining.
Our partners at the event also took time to introduce their work and share tools and learnings for more-informed reporting on sand mining, and equip journalists with useful tips on researching, fact-checking, pitching, and publishing their work.
Manish Chandra Mishra from Mongabay India led an interactive discussion on the challenges faced by media persons when researching, reporting, and publishing pieces about mining, and shared possible solutions for the same. Tarun Nair from WCT-India talked about the effect of sand mining on river ecology, which often goes underreported. Aditi Sajwan from India Water Portal led a session on pitching stories to editors, followed by a role-playing activity where participants pitched stories to each other.
The participants appreciated the workshop, which introduced a new way of thinking and reporting, and felt they had learned a lot. Some journalists that attended the session have already committed to writing about the issue of sand mining on local rivers. The Veditum team is putting together the learnings and insights from the workshop into a media toolkit for better reporting on sand mining!
Are you a journalist reporting on the environment or rivers in India? Write to us at sandwatch@veditum.org to be added to our press mailing list!
Bonus 2 – Bhimbetka Rock Shelters!
On our last day in Bhopal, the team took some much needed time off to explore one of the regions most fascinating historical sites – the ancient rock shelter at Bhimbetka, which feature some of the world’s oldest and most extensive prehistoric cave paintings dating from the Paleolithic to the historical period.
Along with Tarun from WCT and Manish from Mongabay, we explored this incredible historical landmark – marvelling at the depictions of the region’s natural history, from deer, birds and wild boar, to battles and celebrations by people. We also observed plenty of present day wild inhabitants of this rocky landscape – watching bats and snakes, marvelling at intricate spiderwebs and listening to birdcalls through the patter of light rain!
Sid filmed a call for contributions to our ongoing fundraiser for our work on rivers while we were at Bhimbetka – check it out below!
If you would like to contribute to the fundraiser, please do so at this link.
If you find our work to be of value, consider supporting our work through a donation. Donations and grants make our work possible.
Click here to donate: www.veditum.org/donate