Page 26 - 6th NamamiGange NewsLetter
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Dr. Anthony R. Acciavatti
Heros of Ganga
Dr. Anthony R. Acciavatti, Adjunct Professor, Columbia travelled on foot, by
University in the City of New York is a historian, car, in boats (and even slept in them sometimes), visited sarais,
cartographer, and architect. He is a principal of towns, villages, historic sites, and agricultural landscapes. He
Somatic Collaborative and a founding editor of Manifest: A spoke with and interviewed villagers, city dwellers, farmers,
Journal of American Architecture and Urbanism. His work has industrialists, academics, activists, government officials, and
been published in the New York Times, Cabinet, Architectural the Minster of environment and forests in the Central
Design, and Topos among other places. Dr. Acciavatti is the Government of India. In sum, he engaged with range of
author of Ganges Water Machine: Designing New India's constituencies that are intrinsic to the formation, the
Ancient River (awarded the 2016 John Brinckerh off Jackson occupation, and the future of this landscape. It is this deep
Book Prize), the first comprehensive mapping and history of excavation that informed his insightful understanding of the
India's Ganga river basin in half a century. He has spent the last territory of the Ganga. Limited by the fact that there has not
decade hiking, driving, and boating across the Ganga in order been a systematic mapping of this terrain since the 1950's,
to map it and to understand the growing conflicts over water Acciavatti developed tactics to capture the fluidity of the river
for drinking, agriculture, and industry. Combining fieldwork he experienced: he created maps that worked on a temporal
with archival research, the book is an atlas of the enterprise to scale, allowing information to intersect itself and be visually
transform the Ganga. Along with the book, Ganga Water layered. He worked through methods of mapping that showed
Machine is an internationally travelling exhibition. His correlations among otherwise disparate pieces of information.
research has been supported by grants and fellowships from These techniques of super imposition and mapping based on
the National Science Foundation USA along with the Graham time rhythms allowed Acciavatti to truly create a hybrid
Foundation and Princeton University, and his work on the between almanac and atlas.
Ganga has also been supported by a J. William Fulbright
Fellowship as well as grants and fellowships from the Ford NMCG while acknowledging the efforts and studies carried out
Foundation and Harvard University. by this unknown Hero of Ganga who dedicated 10 years of his
life researching about river Ganga, invited him to deliver an
Dr. Anthony Acciavatti immersed himself in travel. He expert lecture on 4th May 2018 to enhance the knowledge
traversed and experienced as much of this landscape from base of the NMCG employees and other related stakeholders.
Gaumukh (Uttarakhand) to Patna (Bihar), as he could. He
