At the request of the Planning Commission, Arghyam and WaterAid agreed to co-ordinate and support a process of civil society consultation for inputs on rural and urban drinking water and sanitation for generating recommendations for the Approach Paper to the 12th Five Year Plan of the Government of India. In the case of the rural consultations the consultations took the form of a series of 6 regional consultations culminating1 in a national consultation in New Delhi on 13th and 14th December 2010. A local organisation in each region organised the consultation there, with WaterAid and Arghyam sharing the costs. The Water Community of UN-Solution Exchange provided documentation support for all the regional consultations as well as the national consultation. A wide range of participants was sought, covering organisations working on different thematic and geographical areas. The participants were primarily NGOs, Gram Panchayat members and people from academia or media with strong experience.