The Arvari parliment
In November 1996, the villagers of Hamirpura got the shock of their lives when a Jaipur-based contractor came with a licence from the Rajasthan government to catch fish in the Arvari. A long battle followed, which ended with the villagers managing to stave off the fisheries department. But Hamirpura and other villages realised that in Arvari, they had created a resources which could be abused by the bureaucracy and unscrupulous industry, thus side-lining the very people who revived the river.
On January 26, 1999, when the nation was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the republic, the villages along Arvari chose to form an Arvari Sansad (Arvari Parliament) to manage the river for which they had toiled for years. On the bank of the river in Hamirpura, representatives from gram sabhas (village assemblies) of 34 villages gathered and declared the formation of the parliament and adopted a constitution to manage it (see Editor's Page;