The year was 1977. Laporiya, a remote village in Rajasthan, was experiencing its worst drought, leaving its farmers unemployed.

Eventually, the situation worsened to the extent that it started to affect the social structure of the agrarian community as well. Children were pulled out of schools and colleges, brothers fought over land, and many migrated to cities in search of jobs.

Fast forward to 2019, and Laporiya’s water problems have ceased to exist. It is probably the only arid village in the state that has abundant water reservoirs, and even when the ponds and wells in the neighbouring villages dry up during the summers, Laporiya faces no such issue.

The dramatic transformation of the village was driven by its residents and spearheaded by Laxman Singh, a man who had to drop out of high school four decades ago due to water scarcity.

“I was a teenager and very angry about the situation. I kept on blaming my father without realising the loses he faced in food production that year,” Singh tells The Better India.

Looking to do something, Singh identified a broken bund (a small stone dam) that had been dry for almost thirty years and decided to repair it.

After the government introduced centralised water providing systems, people stopped paying any heed to the natural water bodies like bunds, which help to conserve soil and water from where the farmer usually take water for their farming activities, he adds.

People mocked him, ridiculed his plan, and some even advised him to help his father instead of wasting his time on this ‘frivolous idea.’

There were a few villagers who agreed to help, but only if they would get paid.

But a determined Singh did not budge and managed to convince his friend and a village priest to help him.

One fine morning, the trio walked up to the bund with spade and bricks. On their way, they spoke to every person about the initiative, and by the time they reached the place, the team grew to six people.

Seeing the small team work tirelessly for hours to repair the 1.5 kilometre and 15-foot-high bund, around 20 people, joined a week later. It was only a matter of time before the entire village joined Singh.

Soon, he formed an NGO named Gram Vikas Navyuvak Mandal Laporiya to organise such activities in a more structured way.

Two months later, the bund was filled with rainwater, and by 1984 it was providing water for 1,800 acres of farmland. The pond is named ‘anna sagar’ (anna is food in English), and the water is used only for irrigation purposes by the farmers.

Encouraged by its success, Singh, along with the local community, decided to work towards reviving several ponds and lakes in Laporiya.

While recharging the water bodies, Singh realised his lifelong dream and dedicated himself to this work alongside helping his father.

A school dropout, Singh likes to call himself an ‘accidental water expert.’

“While I haven’t received formal schooling, I have learnt a lot on the field over the past forty-odd years. As for my village, it was resilient by force and not by choice. It was everyone’s responsibility to step up and work in unison. I was only a pushing factor,” he says.

He also invented his own water-saving method named ‘chauka’ to conserve rainwater and recharge the groundwater levels. The simple yet effective approach has helped close to 58 villages in Rajasthan become self-sufficient in terms of water.

Changing the Fate of Laporiya

‘Chauka’ is the Hindi word for square, and this structure derives its name from the shape of the water pit. Not only does this system store rainwater, but it also recharges the groundwater in pasture lands and fields.

Nine-inch-deep channels are constructed in a series of square pits and are bordered with two-feet high bunds. Trees are planted on the borders for cattle to graze. The chauka collects the rainwater, and once they are full, the water flows in adjacent chauka, thus avoiding an overflow.

These small mud walls work as water-harvesting structures by slowing down the flow of rainwater and giving it enough time to seep into the ground, thus recharging underground water tables. After the final chauka is filled, the excess water is diverted to the nearby ponds.

“When we started, the water level had sunk to 500 feet. Today, the levels are stable at 15-40 feet,” Singh claims.

This chauka system has been applied to 400 bighas (one bigha is approximately one acre) of land in the village, and the pasture alongside is a vital link that connects the entire ecosystem says Singh.

“The pasture is known as ‘gochar’ and provides extremely healthy fodder for the animals. The more they feed on the natural vegetation, the better is their dung. This dung acts as a natural fertiliser to grow food organically. The natural food consumed by humans will enhance their overall health. We must not disrupt this natural cycle that helps the nature, man and animals coexist in harmony.”

The chauka system has undoubtedly revived the groundwater.

Along with the anna sagar, two other ponds—phool sagar and dev sagar—were rejuvenated by Singh and the villagers. The water in the former is used to water plants, while the latter has been turned into a tourist spot.

The chaukas and ponds provide sufficient water in the village, and the farmers now harvest crops twice in a year. During the kharif season, the farmers grow crops like moong, maize, jowar and wheat and seasonal vegetables, while during the rabi season, lentils are grown without the need for excess irrigation as the groundwater tables keep the moisture level of the soil intact says Singh.

Singh’s son has now taken over the activities from him and grows vegetables and lentils organically earning up to 25 lakhs per year. Like Singh’s family income of every family in the village has increased.

“Back in the 80s, I had taken a loan of Rs 200, and with no pumping motors or tractors, farming was a strenuous process. I used to grow chillies, and all the profits would go to my lender. I was able to pay off the debt this way in the next couple of months, and this was possible only because there was water available,” says Singh.

Acquiring Gir bulls was another community-led step that increased the per capita income of the village. The villagers contributed financially, and 80 bulls were sourced from Gujarat to improve the breeds of cows.

The Gwal Committee appointed by the villagers through election looks after the community-owned bulls. As per Singh, the village churns out 2,400 litres of milk per day, and every cow-owning household earns anything between Rs 10,000 to Rs 60,000 per month.

An 80-hectare area is also demarcated in the village to increase the green cover and accommodate 130 birds. The area is prohibited from all kinds of human activities and is fenced from all sides.

To spread awareness about water conservation, Singh now organises padayatras (rallies) to other villages.

Singh has come a long way since 1977, from being an enthusiastic teenager determined to revolutionise his village to a wise man in his sixties who is bringing a gradual change in Rajasthan.

“Today, when I look back at those days of struggle it is hard to believe that I pulled of such huge stints. At the same time it also proves that nothing is impossible. If a school dropout like me was able to transform an entire village, then with the latest technologies and brilliant minds we can solve all kinds of problems,” he signs off.

Also Read: Can a Tree Grow with Just 1 Litre of Water? This 68-YO Farmer Has Grown 50,000!

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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Mandu’s tryst with history is old. The parched little hilltop town in Madhya Pradesh, traces its roots to the Paramara dynasty in the 8th century CE. Though, not much is known about the history of the town, what makes it interesting are the ancient water conservation systems in place.

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The reason why the water management techniques at Mandu are relevant in contemporary times is because we are running out of water. Cities are quickly running out of groundwater and are now heavily-dependent on tanker supply for their water needs.

The comprehensive water management system

The elaborate water harvesting techniques which catered to the needs of the people in those times, still continue to serve those who live in the city. The water management system at the fort complex at Mandu comprised of about 1200 water tanks which collected rainwater and supplied it to the rest of the fort through different channels.

These 1,200 tanks are spread across 70 monuments in the fort complex. However, over the years now, water conservation techniques are visible in only 700 water tanks across five of these monuments

One of these monuments is also the most iconic and visited spots in the city — the Jahaz Mahal (Ship Palace). Built in the 15th century by Ghiyas-ud-din Khilji, the Mahal, as rumour has it, housed a harem of 15,000 women.

The Jahaz Mahal is surrounded by two artificial lakes called the Munj Lake and Kapur Lake. These lakes, on either side of the fort, are connected by a canal that ensured equal distribution of water in the two lakes when it rained heavily. When both lakes fill up during the monsoons, the Mahal looks like a ship sailing in the sea, thus the name, Jahaz Mahal.

Jahaz Mahal also had several wells in the premises and most of these were large stepwells also known as baoris. While Andheri Baori maintained a cool temperature in the palace, 265 feet deep Ujala Baori was built away from the palace complex. The water in both these tanks were used for drinking purposes among other uses.

Water transportation within the palace complex

When all the channels were functional, they formed an important feature in the water management system at Mandu. There were underground channels that supplied water from the man-made lakes and tanks. Some of the water channels were built on the floor surface of the fort complex and intricately designed.

Several cisterns inside the fort complex stored water from the lakes and tanks. Some of these cisterns served the purposes of ‘royal bath’ (also known as Hamam Ghar) with steps being constructed on the sides of the cisterns for the ease of non-swimmers.

The water from Andheri baori was connected to the Hamam Ghar through three different tunnels. The first tunnel was above a cooking stove which heated up the water. While, the second one was meant to convert this water to steam and the third supplied the cold water.

The water tanks on the roof-tops were important reservoirs in the fort complex. These roof-top tanks had pipes and channels to maintain regular supply of water for domestic use and other purposes like gardening.

When rain was scarce and these rooftop tanks did not hold much water, the designers devised a pulley system. This pulley system comprised of silver baskets which served the purpose of vessels, carrying water from other tanks, manned by two people all day.

Perhaps, we can take some inspiration and even adopt some of these techniques in modern architecture to solve our water woes!

You May Also Read: Modern India Can Learn a Lot from These 20 Traditional Water Conservation Systems

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

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W hen Ram Kumar, a resident of the Bijawar block in MP’s Chhatarpur district, was a child, his summers were marked by water problems and the departure of male members to urban areas.

The recurring droughts forced my father and uncles to migrate, while my mother would walk several miles to fetch water from a neighbouring village, begins Ram in a conversation with The Better India

The men would return during monsoons to work on their farms only if the rainfall patterns were enough to provide water and refill the Barana river basin, which is a major source of water for the village.

The issue of drought, scanty rainfalls and migration continued till Ram graduated from college. Then, in 2013, the situation changed drastically.

Not only did the problem of water scarcity vanish, but the plot of land owned by his family started yielding up to 25 quintals of produce as against 3-4 per acre.

How did this happen?

Singh and the other farmers in the block, thank the water conservation steps taken by Avani Mohan Singh, the founder of an NGO named Haritika, which was founded in 1994 and works in rural areas to turn water-scarce regions into water abundant ones.

So far, Singh has worked in 500 villages across Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha and impacted close to ten lakh families.

How It All Started

The son of an IAF officer, Avani grew up in different towns and cities across the country. From Assam, Delhi, Pune, Gorakhpur to Kanpur, he has lived in rural and urban areas.

After completing his Masters in Zoology from Gorakhpur University, he pursued a one-year course on Environmental Education from the Centre for Environment Education, Ahmedabad.

The course was “life-changing. I worked with various environmental organisations tackling issues like water, farming, tree plantation, and so on. The extensive fieldwork was my wake up call to work for the development sector, he tells The Better India.

However, due to family pressure, he decided to take up a well-paying job in a pharmaceutical company in Mumbai.

While I continued with the job for some time, I did not let my passion fade away. I would interact with the founders of NGOs working in the same area to understand the operations and expertise required. Finally, in 1994, I found the courage to quit and start Haritika. Of course, my family members were severely opposed to the idea; some even called me insane for leaving the job. But I did not budge, he adds.

Understanding the Problem

If there was anything he learnt from his personal experience of living in multiple regions and the fieldwork he had completed, it was how people were clueless about managing water resources.

Low rainfall in rural areas leads to rampant extraction of groundwater so that the population can meet its household and agricultural needs. Meanwhile, the ponds and lakes go dry due to waste dumping and pollution, and when there is rainfall, there is no way to conserve water and this, in turn, disrupts their lives. It is a vicious circle, explains Singh.

Singh also throws light on the plight of Bundelkhand, where he has carried out the majority of his projects. Located in Central India, close to 70 per cent of the land is used to grow food. Of this, only 10 per cent of land is highly fertile. As a result, the remaining land requires more water and care. Several farmers end up taking loans and live in debt forever.

Sanitation is another problematic area. Open defecation was rampant, and I came across so many cases where women and girls would feel unsafe every time they had to relieve themselves. So, I decided to work in this field as well.

Working towards the Solution

After collecting his savings and leaving his house, Singh moved to Jhansi’s Rund Karari block. He single-handedly carried out a survey to identify households without toilets and drinking water supply and took up the task to supply both.

The NGO was new and thus getting funds from corporates was not possible, so I approached the District Rural Development Agencies (DRDA), Jhansi that oversees the implementation of different anti-poverty programmes.

With funds from the DRDA and the beneficiaries, Singh was able to install toilets and construct pipelines for drinking water within a year.

The success gave his work much-needed validation and the confidence to address more significant problems. He also understood the importance of government schemes and how they could help him in the mission.

Schemes Used For The Upliftment of the Locals

One of the most significant schemes that Singh has implemented to improve the plight of farmers drastically is the Integrated Watershed Development Programme.

The scheme focuses on water conservation methods and farming techniques that can increase the yield. Under it, we have helped several farmers to shift from single-cropping to intercropping. Haritika trained the farmers, and the government provided seeds for free.

Haritika also revived the already constructed water harvesting structures like dams, ponds and nalas with the CSR funds of organisations like Wateraid, Coca Cola India, Mahindra & Mahindra, UNICEF, HDFC Bank and so on. He also got their tractors to remove the silt formed on the water bodies.

In fact, to create a sense of ownership, all the rejuvenation activities undertaken by Haritika, involve the villagers. For example, 15-20 per cent of the funding required for every activity is contributed by the villagers.

Under the Drought Prone Areas Programme, the state government granted 65 lakhs to the NGO to implement the scheme over a period of five years. This scheme also aims to minimise the problems arising from drought.

Field bunding was one of the steps taken to reduce the water runoff from the fields. Earthen bunds (or walls) are constructed on the side of sloping lands to retain the water washed from the fields.

Wells were dug in individual farmlands. The wells retained the rainwater, charged groundwater tables and at the same time provide water to farmers. In addition to that, community wells were also 440 dug in 40 villages in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

With

With financial assistance from National Bank For Agriculture & Rural Development, Haritika helped 36 villages in Jhansi and Chhatarpur develop fruit orchards on 2000 acre of wasteland, thus providing a livelihood to the tribals. The farmers earn up to one lakh every from selling fruits like guavas and mangoes.

For every project, Singh and his team shift temporarily to that particular village until it is completed.

It is hard leaving my wife and son behind in Jhansi. But the satisfaction I get at the completion of the project is all worth it. I hope to continue the projects under Haritika for as long as I can.

Inspired by the activities of Haritika, Ram joined the NGO in 2015 as a Programme Manager.

I could have stayed back in my village and joined my family in farming. But I saw the difference made by the NGO, and that motivated me to be a part of it and help others, he says.

Singh has dedicated almost half of his life towards working for the betterment of others without asking for anything in return.

We, at The Better India, are proud of his actions, and hope that he inspires more people to join him in his mission.

Also Read: Mumbai Man’s Eco-Recycling of Greywater Helps 200 Villages End Water Scarcity!

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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Back in 2010, when Sachin Marti returned to his native village of Bhuigaon in Nala Sopara, Maharashtra, during his vacation from TISS, he saw some children walking back with huge containers filled with water despite the many water bodies in the village. Intrigued, Sachin asked the kids why they did so, to which they replied, “We might die if we drink the water from bavkhal (traditional ponds).”

This was a wake up call for the then 23-year-old who had never given much thought to the source of the water he and his family consumed. For the first time, Sachin was face to face with the water crisis in the Virar-Vasai Region (VVR), part of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR).

To help spread awareness about water conservation, the alumnus of Tata Institute of Social Sciences joined the Yuva Vikas Sanstha (YVS), an NGO that was already working toward mobilising the citizens of the region.

What started in 2011 as an effort to stop people from throwing waste in the water bodies, has now grown into a full-fledged mission to restore not only the existing ponds but also revive the ones that have dried up.

Sachin has been leading the NGO’s water project in the region for the last ten odd years, and so far, the NGO has been instrumental in reviving eight ponds which have helped increase the water tables across five villages.

What were once waste dumping grounds, filled with all kinds of dry and wet waste are now freshwater ponds teeming with aquatic life.

Understanding the Problem

For nearly two centuries, people residing in VVR have been using ponds to meet their various water needs like drinking, irrigation and animal husbandry.

“These traditional ponds are nothing but holes created inside forests to capture rainwater and allow the green space and groundwater tables to flourish. The ponds were either owned by individuals or communities,” Sachin, who works as a Project Manager at the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat India in Mumbai, tells The Better India.

However, due to the development boom in Mumbai during the 90s, the real estate expanded to this side of the MMR as well. As the population grew in numbers, the green space declined simultaneously.

“The inhabitants started exploiting the water bodies for their personal needs like washing clothes, bathing and some even use it for open defecation,” he adds.

Finding The Solution

With no concrete figures available on the number and condition of the ponds, Sachin and his team started with a detailed survey of the VVR, “The surveys are being carried out to estimate the quantity of water that we can extract without affecting the overall ecology.”

The NGO is also uploading the results on KoBO Collect, an app that maintains data to be presented to the government, “We will map these ponds on Google Maps, and the app will help in establishing the need to conserve water. This way, we can rope in the government to maintain the revived ponds.”

Next on the agenda was desilting the lakes to free up space, and cleaning the pods. Desilting is the removal of materials like weeds, sand, mud from the pond beds. The extraction is done using local workforce and earth excavators. The collected waste is either given to the local municipal body or the farmers. Asking the farmers to desilt the lakes was comparatively easy as the silt helps in farming. “The ponds were either a part of the farms or residential areas. The silt acts as organic manure that improves the quality of the produce. With farmers’ permission, we desilted the pond.”

The third step of involving the locals in the cleanup drives was a daunting task considering that old habits die hard.

“From sanitary, medical to plastic waste, the residents throw all kinds of waste in the ponds. This further pollutes the groundwater too. Just cleaning the ponds is not sufficient, the real challenge is to sustain the cleanliness and here is where the role of community is important,” he says.

To ensure that ponds do not get polluted again, Sachin ropes in water experts too.

After the cleanup, they plant trees around the pond which helps maintain the ecology and also treat the water naturally. Sachin has also started asking the people residing very close to the ponds to create rainwater diversions. The rainwater collected on the roof of the house usually goes to the drains through pipes. The people have now changed the direction of these pipes to divert the roof water to the ponds.

For his water conservation drives and research on water bodies, Sachin often gets invited to speak about the model he implements. Recently, the Oxford University asked him to present a paper on lake beautification.

In the next five years, Sachin aims to survey the ponds in 20 villages in the VVR and prepare a report on the water quality which he wants to present to the government.

Sachin believes that if he and his team can restore and revive all the 500 odd ponds in the region, then water problems in the VVR can be solved.

You can write to Sachin Marti at: sachin_marti@yahoo.com

Also Read: Working Tirelessly For 25 Years, This Hero Solved Water Woes in 500 Villages!

Feature Image Source: Hiraman Bose

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

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Last year, 10,000 farmers from Maharashtra’s Nashik district staged a protest demanding government intervention to mitigate their woes. The scanty and unseasonal rainfall coupled with depleting natural water reservoirs had resulted in a drought-like situation across the district and severely affected agricultural production.

Wondering how to grow your own vegetables at home? Look no further! Check out different kits by Upaj Farms here.

Sadly, the villages in the district have been facing acute water scarcity for a while now. The only notable exception is the Vadner Bhairav village.

Almost 80 per cent of its residents are engaged in agricultural activities, and the village is famous for its juicy and sweet grapes. The farmers there have remained largely unaffected and faced minimal loses⁠—all thanks to Bapu Bhausaheb Salunke, a grape farmer.

It has been close to 15 years since the 37-year-old first implemented water conservation methods in his 22-acre land and on an average, he saves up to two crore litres of rainwater every year. Besides mitigating water scarcity problems, it has enhanced the farm output, decreased plant damage and increased the vigneron’s annual income.

Preventing rainwater water runoff, recharging groundwater and filling watershed pond is the three-step protocol that ensures availability of water in abundance in Salunkhe’s farm.

Seeing Salunkhe’s success, his fellow villagers were inspired to follow suit, and the results are there for everyone to see.

Making Farming A Learning Process

When Salunke was forced to drop out of higher secondary school, he did not mind. For the young boy, this was an opportunity to follow his passion, farming.

“Farming is our family occupation, and I have grown up amidst crops, seeds and soil. My father was unable to handle the farm on his own, so I joined him in 2004 to help him out. For the first time, I directly understood the problems of a farmer in a drought-affected region,” Salunkhe tells The Better India.

Back then, Salunkhe’s family grew several pulses and vegetables, and grapes were only a small part of the production.

Hailstones, which are very common in the village, would often destroy the crops leaving very little food to sell in the market. Scanty rainfalls would further worsen the situation.

“We did not know about land development and watershed development. We didn’t even know which seeds would suit the soil,” shares Salukhe.

Upon the recommendation of a relative, he underwent a 5-day training programme at Maharashtra’s Water and Land Management Institute in Aurangabad in 2004.

‘Under land and water management, we were taught concepts like rainwater harvesting, micro-irrigation, identifying high-yield seeds and so on,” he says. Salunkhe was so impressed, he that went for similar training programmes in the institute, to improve his learning.

Salunkhe credits his success and knowledge to professor BM Shete, who has trained one lakh farmers in the last 35 years.

“There are lakhs of farmers who have abundant land, and yet they face troubles in producing enough food. Here at the institute, we train them to optimise the available resources. Salunkhe’s farm makes a good example. With micro-irrigation he has managed to grow grapes without losing its nutrient value,” says Prof Shete, who retired a month ago, to TBI.

Farming More With Less Water

Post-training, he was now more confident and informed. He took the big risk of investing around 6 lakh to set up a watershed pond on one acre of land in 2007. He also dug a well inside the farm for the same purpose

“The depth of the pond is 275×155 feet, and it can store up to two crore litres of water. Two months of regular rains almost filled both the pond and well, and this time I was able to irrigate majority part of the farm with the rainwater,” says Salunkhe.

The following year, he set up another watershed pond with a capacity of 50 lakh litres, on half an acre of land. He also created elevated bunds (embankments) in his field to prevent water runoff post irrigation, check soil erosion, recharge groundwater and capture rainwater.

“The bunds are beneficial for other farmers as it recharges groundwater in surrounding areas as well,” he says.

He also adopted a micro-irrigation or low-volume irrigation system to water the farm. “Water is applied drop by drop very close to the root zone area of the plant. This minimises evaporation and retains the nutrients in grapes.

Seeing the benefits, Salunkhe gradually stopped cultivating vegetables, and today his entire farm has turned into a vineyard.

“I have also adopted several organic methods to grow grapes. For instance, instead of using polythene sheets for mulching, I cover the surface of the soil with leftover sugarcane stick leaves which retain moisture and also improve soil quality, besides being a sustainable option for manure,” he states.

He also tries to minimise the use of chemicals by using cow dung.

Before incorporating the water-saving techniques, the water would be sufficient to only cover 3-5 acres of land, and now there is enough water to cover 22 acres.

Salunkhe’s farm boasts of 22,000 grape trees with eight different varieties of grapes. As for the output, Salunkhe’s farm gives up to 200 tonnes of grapes annually that he exports domestically and to European countries, Russia, China, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

“Even now, getting a fair price for grapes is challenging due to the presence of middlemen. So, I try to send most of the produce outside India,” says Salunkhe.

Salunkhe’s financial status has also improved as profits are double than investment costs. He earns Rs 4 lakh per acre of land!

“When I started farming, I had a cycle for commuting purposes, and today I have two cars and seven motorcycles. I never imagined saving water would change my life. It truly is a precious resource,” he signs off.

All images have been sourced from Bapu Salunkhe.

You can reach Bapu Salunkhe at: +91 99707 20031

Also Read: 25 Kg Cauliflowers, 3-Ft Brinjals & Padma Shri: This 72-YO Farmer is Truly Amazing

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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India has only about 4 per cent of the world’s renewable water resources but is home to nearly 18 per cent of the world’s population. And as the country continues to urbanise, its water bodies are getting toxic. Around 70 per cent of surface water in India is unfit for consumption, and almost 40 million litres of wastewater enters rivers and other water bodies daily.

The cost of environmental degradation in India is estimated to be Rs 3.75 trillion a year, and the health costs are alone approximately Rs 470-610 billion.

Keeping in mind these facts, conscious citizens across India are making attempts at the local and national level to prevent water pollution, revive the polluted water bodies and thereby eradicate water-related diseases.

Here’s a look at five of them:

1) Turning Sewage Water Into Drinkable Water

This organic water filter developed by Anto P Biju and Thomas Cyriac, is the size of an index finger, costs just Rs 10, and can convert up to 30 litres of impure water into freshwater within a few hours using activated carbon.

On putting the purifier in any water container, pores from contaminated water that act as micro-reservoirs are fixed over a disc inside the cartridge. It eliminates foul smell, harmful metals and colours from the water. Moreover, the technology adds minerals that improve the immune system. The best part? The cartridge in the purifier that costs around Rs 60 has to be replaced every five years, which means there is no maintenance or recurring cost.

A from Palai town, who developed the device, had used 200 such purifiers during the 2018 Kerala floods in the relief camps that provided safe drinking water to thousands of displaced victims.

Read more about the device here. 

2) Using Floating Wetlands to Make Water Bodies Pollutant-Free 

Tarun Sebastian Nanda, an ecological engineer, is using a natural way to clean water bodies in Delhi through his ‘Adopt an Island’ initiative.

He is constructing floating wetlands by using aquatic plants. These plants are placed on buoyant mats made from drainage pipes and discarded soda bottles.

When the island is placed on the surface water, they absorb manganese, iron, aluminium and other contaminants through their roots and foliage, thus purifying the polluted water. These wetlands also discourage the growth of algae and help improve the overall ecosystem.

Read more about Tarun’s initiatives here. 

3) Purification of Groundwater Within 30 Minutes 

Most farmers are heavily dependent on groundwater to fulfil their water needs to grow food. However, using polluted groundwater can lead to water-borne diseases.

To address this issue, Anjan Mukherjee, a former marine chief engineer, has developed the Taraltec Disinfection Reactor.

It is a device that can be installed inside a hand pump or motorised borewell, and it will purify the contaminated water in 30 minutes by killing 99% of the microbes present in it.

The device does not require electricity or fuel to function and hence, there are no maintenance costs.

“The device converts the kinetic energy of the fluid into millions of targeted microbubbles each acting as localised reactors. This generates extreme heat, pressure and turbulence that releases intense energy packets during the collapse of bubbles. The resultant shockwave, marked by a bang sound, lacerates and kills the microbes. The water, which is 99% safer than it was earlier, then emerges from the borewell or pump into the hands of those drawing it,” explains Mukherjee.

Read more about the invention here. 

4) Treating Water With Human Hair

At just 13, Nikhilesh Das from Assam came up with an indigenous way to use human hair to clean oil spills in water.  He mixed motor oil and lubricant with water in a beaker. As the oil formed a layer on top, he deposited human hair and saw how it absorbed 90 per cent of the oil from water within 30 seconds.

His innovation even won an award from former President, Pratibha Patil, in 2009.

Read more here. 

5) Using AI and Robotics to Solve Water Woes 

Using artificial intelligence and robotics, Asim Bhalerao and Nidhi Jain have been instrumental in diverting 600 MLD (Million Liters a Day) of raw sewage from entering water bodies and prevented over 5,600 hours of manual scavenging.

The couple has developed a robot that can map and inspect underground pipelines. The collected data identifies structural defects, operations and maintenance failure modes that makes it easier for the authorities to fix them.

“Solutions are expected to be cost effective, relevant , while being highly scalable and intrinsically safe to operate, in extremely hazardous conditions. Robotics and AI based solutions, that are developed with a deep understanding of problems on the ground, will be key in improving water treatment and water reuse,” explains Asim.

They have also come up with a drone that identifies similar problems in buildings, slums, pipelines, roads and villages.

“We use AI and robotics to automate pipeline mapping and health assessment. We also use drones and AI for crop pattern analysis, identifying different crops and water sources for effective farm management,” shares Nidhi.

Read more here.

Featured Image Source: Flickr

Also Read: Making Every Drop Count: 7 Simple Ways You Can Save Water at Home

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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So here’s a fun fact about your favourite pair of blue jeans. It took about 7,600 litres of water to produce it. Not really a fun fact, actually, especially when you take into account that it takes 22,500 litres of water, on average, to produce 1 kg of jeans according to a research by the Water Footprint Network. This number is even higher in India due to the inefficient use of water and its contamination with pesticides.

Want to conserve the amount of water you use? Check out these water-saving products from Karnival that’ll help you do so!

“Industries must track their water consumption and also take corrective actions to conserve water. This was the idea behind starting FluxGen; to plug such holes. Moreover, we use artificial intelligence to track leaks in the systems,” says Ganesh Shankar, the 36-year-old founder of FluxGen Technologies.

The Bengaluru-based startup uses IoT to provide water monitoring solutions to different industries. Founded in 2011, FluxGen came up with AquaGen —a water management system in 2016.

Industries across the globe drain the world’s water reserves. The World Water Development Report 2019, says that by 2050, the demand for this stuff of life is going to exceed 30 per cent of the current supply.

Currently, 20+ industrial units like food processing plants, manufacturing plants and even industrial towns are using AquaGen to monitor and analyse their water consumption, leakage and excessive usage. Since 2016, the startup has conserved around one billion litres of water!

How the Technology Works

“In the dairy industry, Cleaning-In-Place (CIP) is an integral process which requires a lot of water, and we repeat this procedure every 3 to 4 hours,” says C Ayyanar, the Maintenance Incharge at Winner Diary in Pondicherry.

CIP removes the built-up butterfat or protein from the machines and sanitises them.

On average, the Dairy utilised almost 90,000 litres of water daily day for CIP! The management decided to install FluxGen’s AquaGen over eight months ago to reduce the facility’s water consumption.

“After installing AquaGen, we have cut down our consumption by 30,000 litres in a day. We’ve also been able to reduce our electricity costs by 15 per cent. This has been possible as we can monitor our consumption patterns daily,” says C Ayyanar.

The idea for AquaGen

A Titan Jewelery Division (Tanishq) project led to the birth of AquaGen in 2016. “Tanishq asked us to develop a solution where they could monitor their water consumption patterns every five mins. It took us about six months to develop the solution after which we were able to provide solutions,” says Ganesh.

In addition to the other features of the technology, AquaGen eliminates the need to monitor water meter readings manually.

FluxGen’s device helps in monitoring real-time flow, level, pressure and energy that the water pump and the recycling equipment consumes. With AI and Internet of Things Technology (IIoT) at the core of AquaGen, you can monitor its functions via the machine and the mobile application.

“We have developed the tech stack by ourselves, which includes the IoT modules, cloud software, web application, mobile application, machine learning algorithms. We procure the water flow meter, water level sensors and other sensors from a third party,” explains Ganesh.

The cost of the solution depends on the customer requirements such as the water pipe diameter, tank size, number of consumption points and storage points, etc.

The founder and his story

Since Ganesh came from a family of teachers, he aspired to become one himself. “I had absolutely no business background. My father, uncles and most of my relatives are teachers,” he shares.

In 2003, while pursuing a degree in Telecommunication Engineering from RV College of Engineering, Bengaluru, Ganesh started a small coaching centre where he taught Electronic circuits to about 100 students. Post-college, he wanted to gain experience of working at a startup and thus, joined NextFirst Engineering Technologies where he learnt how to build devices and systems.

In the year 2006, he got into IISc for research in the ion-trap mass spectrometer. In 2008, he went on to work with General Electric Company (GE), a well known American multinational conglomerate.

“After working there for two years again, I felt like I wasn’t fully making use of my education. When I wrote my resignation letter, I even mentioned that I wanted to make eco-friendly solutions for the common man,” he smiles.

But, at the time, he didn’t have any experience in sustainable energy. So, he decided to join SELCO India, a solar energy company. During the six months he worked there, Ganesh travelled to places like Ujire in Dakshina Kannada district in Karnataka.

“This experience really gave me a glimpse of on-ground problems which I was not fully aware of,” he says.

Currently, in addition to heading the startup, Ganesh is a part of the visiting faculty at Centre for Continuing Education at IISc. It has been slightly over three years since he started teaching here.  He area of expertise is data science in the field of clean tech and agri tech.

Challenges and Impact

Suresh Venkatachalam works as a Project Manager at a textile company—Jay Jay Mills India Pvt. Ltd based in Perundurai in Tamil Nadu. This textile company has about 2,400 employees who live within the factory complex in three hostels.

“We wanted the monitoring system for domestic purposes to monitor our water use. Before, our staff manually noted down the readings and calculated them. But now, with the mobile application, we get quick information and can regulate the water. We also have comparison data which helps us look at our consumption patterns,” says Suresh.

Though the results of AquaGen are showing positive trends in water conservation and responsible water management, the startup’s journey so far has been riddled with several challenges. Ganesh informs that people look at the solution more as a means to reduce their expenditure on water and not something that can help in water conservation.

“It was a challenge to convince the customers to buy our solution to manage their water costs. Though water is the lifeline of our existence, it is not valued enough by many – it is also because the end-user does not directly bear the actual cost of water,” he explains.

However, after the challenges, came the recognition. IESA declared FluxGen as ‘The Most Promising Startup of the year 2019’ at the Vision Summit. It also received the Smart City Award for Social Impact at Smart City Expo, Jaipur India 2018.

The startup has been supported by NASSCOM: Centre of Excellence – Data Science & Artificial Intelligence, Cisco Launchpad, Quantela-Berkeley Innovation group, EO- Cares and AxelerateNOW.

FluxGen currently operates in all South Indian states and want to expand to Gujarat, Rajasthan, MP and UP by next year.

“My aspiration is to make industries water positive which primarily means reducing and recycling the water they use (zero liquid discharge) and harvest rainwater. People must understand that the water they are using in abundance is at the cost of someone who is struggling to get access to it,” he says signing off.

Also Read: This Architect’s Low-Cost Algae Wall Filters Polluted Waters With No Chemicals!

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

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Armed with axes, a few men in Veloor Panchayat in Thrissur district, Kerala marched toward ‘Ayurjack Farm’—a flourishing rubber plantation along with earth excavators in the wee hours of the morning.

The chopping began. The destruction of healthy trees was inevitable.

Alarmed villagers and farmers gathered around the gory scene. Some concerned villagers ran to Varghese Tharakan, the owner of the Farm, to notify him only to realise that the owner himself led the execution.

Questions like, ‘Have you gone insane?’ ‘Are you sure you know what are you doing?’ ‘Do not destroy your life’ fell on deaf ears, as Tharakan continued the felling.

Have you ever wanted to grow your own food and vegetables on your rooftop? Try hydroponics! This mini hydroponic growing system helps you grow your own vegetables wherever you like. 

Agitated, some villagers even offered to help him financially assuming he was cutting the trees for money. Concerns soon turned to mockery and insults when Tharakan revealed the real reason behind the ‘insane stunt’.

People refused to take him seriously when Tharakan told everyone about his unique water conservation method that would prevent floods and solve water problems in the region.

Eight years later, the same people, who once hurled taunts at him, now visit Ayurjack Farm to replicate his farming model to grow jackfruit. Several experts and farmers from different parts of the country and the world visit the farm round the year for research purposes.

“It did not feel right that my five-acre farm would absorb all the groundwater and also the rainwater as rubber plantations consume a lot of water. The land is highly fertile and so I decided to utilise it more judiciously. Jackfruit, being the traditional fruit in my region, was my obvious choice,” Tharakan tells The Better India.

The uneven climatic conditions in the region was another motivation for the Kerala farmer to implement a water-saving method.

Tharakan’s model has eliminated not only his water problems but also of the neighbouring farms. Close to 35 wells, that were once dried up, are now full of water. He saves approximately six crore litres of rainwater every year that is enough to water 1,000 odd jackfruit trees in his farm round the year.

What’s more?

The panchayat dodged the destructive Kerala floods in 2018 by capturing each drop of rainwater into trenches dug in the fields of Tharakan and the other local farmers.

Tharakan’s plantation, which has 32 varieties of jackfruits, has been included on the preliminary list for WAFA (Water, Air, Food Awards), which recognises and promotes sustainable solutions that ensure safe drinking water, clean air and food for all.

His model has received the Shony Mitra award by the state for soil and water conservation and was even presented at the London School of Economics.

It was not an easy decision to let go of 12-year-old rubber plantations that yielded high profits and start planting jackfruits from scratch when he was in his 30s.

“With all the wells dried up, the farmers would either be left without sufficient water in case of a scanty rainfall or the farms would be destroyed due to torrential rains. We needed a strategy to take advantage of heavy rains and solve water problems,” says the 45-year-old.

How A Simple Water-Saving Method Solve Environmental Problems

After multiple trials to conserve rainwater and advice from the village elders, Tharakan finally came up with a rainwater harvesting model called ‘Underground Water Balancing System’ in 2013.

“The method is not rocket science,” says Tharakan, “All I did was dig shallow trenches in my farm by excavating the soil across the hill slope to let every drop of water percolate underground. I divided my farmland into elevated layers to ensure even distribution of rainwater. Excess water from walking paths is transported to the trenches every time it rains heavily.”

Trenches break the sloppy ground and therefore reduce the velocity of water runoff. As the speed of runoff is decreased, infiltration in the ground increases, thus preventing soil erosion. The result was apparent 2-3 monsoons later with recharged groundwater tables and filled to the brim wells.

Tharakan also reformed his farming technique by going organic, “The whole purpose of working for the environment would be defeated if I used chemicals and pesticides to grow jackfruits. So, I started preparing natural fertilisers.”

He dug pits in his farm and filled them with cow and goat dung, neem and cocopeat to make compost, “For every tree, I use around 3-4 kilos of dried compost as a natural fertiliser. It keeps the nutrient levels of plants intact.”

By switching to organic methods, the farm’s output became high.

Every year, Tharakan gets 100 kilos worth of jackfruit from each tree. To sum it up, Tharakan sells one lakh kilos of jackfruits annually.

To help others switch to organic farming, Tharakan sells eight varieties of saplings to people and farmers. At present, there are one lakh saplings thriving in his luscious farm.

“We do not export or sell saplings in the market or online. We only provide saplings to those who visit our farm,” he informs.

The best part about his varieties is the height of the trees which is anything between 7-8 feet where an average jackfruit tree is around 70 to 80 feet, “Due to the small height, my varieties can be grown in plots as small as 2 cents and also in houses.”

Tharakan now plans to collaborate with the state government’s agriculture and education department to spread awareness about his eco-friendly model and solve the water crisis. He also hopes to introduce his farming techniques in school textbooks.

If you wish to purchase saplings or jackfruits, click here to contact Varghese Tharakan.

Also Read: Here’s How This Kerala Woman Used the Magic Of Rubber To Uplift Meghalaya’s Garos

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

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In October this year, 2-year-old Sujith Wilson lost his life after accidentally falling into an abandoned borewell in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruchirappalli district. The rescue operation ran for nearly 82 hours, yet no one could save the little boy whose only fault was going out to play in his family’s farm.

This incident is, unfortunately, not isolated. 

Over 40 children have met grisly deaths after falling into abandoned borewells in India since 2009, according to the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF).

As a measure to prevent such incidents, the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board (TWAD) passed an order in the same month instructing officials to convert dry wells and borewells into rainwater harvesting structures. 

Use water anywhere with this zero-electricity hard water softener

Interestingly, Kadaimadai Area Integrated Farmer’s Association (KAIFA) had already embarked on the mission before the orders were even passed. KAIFA, founded by Naveen Anandan, essentially works on bringing sustainable measures to solve water scarcity problems of local farmers. 

The association initiated the Borewell Restoration Project to prevent accidents and recharge groundwater in districts of Thanjavur and Pudukottai four months ago. And the calls from concerned citizen keeping pouring in.

Nimal Raghavan, Vice President of KAIFA tells The Better India, “After Wilson’s incident, we were flooded with calls. A wave of fear had spread across the state and suddenly people were afraid for the well-being of their family and animals. In the last two months, we received close to 370 calls from housewives to farmers. The restoration process has dual benefits; it prevent accidents and solve problems of groundwater depletion and water scarcity.”

Low-Cost & Easy Restoration Process

Nimal is a software developer who quit his job in Dubai last year and moved back to his village, Nadiyam, located in the Cauvery Delta Region, to help the victims of the devastating Gaja cyclone. He led a citizen initiative and revived a 564-acre lake. Read more about it here. 

When Nimal asked the villagers to report about their nearest unused Borwell and get it repaired for free, he was disappointed at the few calls he got.

However, soon, KAIFA got its first restoration project for a community-owned borewell near the Municipal Office of Thennankudi village in Thanjavur district. Here, the KAIFA team connected two pipes to the borewell, one from the roof of the Municipal Office building and another from surplus water tank. 

Taking inputs from villagers and the internet, KIAFA conducted several experiments to finalise a method that is simple and cost-effective. 

Here are the four steps by KAIFA for borewell conversion: 

1. Dig a 3×3 pit around the borewell.
2. Drill 60 small holes on a PVC pipe and insert it in the borewell. This allows easy passage of water from the pit to the borewell. 
3. Place two cement rings in the pit. 
4. Fill the pit with gravel for filtration. 
5. Cover the pit with a cement lid.

The rainwater gets accumulated in the pit and then gradually percolates into the borewell through the holes in the pipe. 

For the first few borewells, KAIFA hired plumbers and workers to understand the process completely, “Once we understood it, we took over the process to save labour cost,” says Nimal. 

“The reason why KAIFA farmer-volunteers are able to balance their farming activities and these RWH services is only because the process is not time-consuming. Each construction takes up to 5-6 hours,” shares Nimal. 

Community Participation

An emerging trend that KAIFA has recently noticed is the involvement of non-KAIFA members. Like, Sivadhanush, who reached out to KAIFA after identifying 30 broken, unused and abandoned borewells in his village, Thennangudi. 

“I visited home in October during my college vacations from Chennai when I learnt about the KAIFA initiative. Two days after I gave a list of dried borewells, we began the work. I realised the strength of community efforts during the Gaja cyclone. Since then I have tried to participate in activities that are directed towards people’s upliftment,” Sivadhanush (20) tells TBI. 

Hariharan, an engineering student, mobilised his friends and encouraged them to join KAIFA’s movement. All in their early 20s, the group of friends helped in digging pits, drilling holes and saw the process to its completion. 

“In times of crisis, people always step up, even before they receive any help from the government. Our cooperative feels encouraged every time a villager lends a helping hand,” adds Nimal. 

The average cost of each project Rs 6,000, however, it also depends on the size of the borewell. To meet the expenses, KAIFA runs a crowdfunding programme. 

KAIFA’s model of converting dried or broken borewells into rainwater harvesting structures is a feasible solution that can solve two problems in one go – a lesson many districts across the country should learn.  

If you wish to help KAIFA, you may make your donations to the following bank account: 

Bank Name: Central Bank of India

Beneficiary name: KAIFA Kadaimadai Area Integrated Farmers Association

A/C no: 3764185399

IFSC code: CBIN0284211

Branch name: Peravurani Branch

Also Read: How to Build a Hydroponic Unit for Your Balcony With Just Bottles & Boxes?

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

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Used a public toilet recently? What was the experience like? One of the biggest issues that one faces while using public facilities is that more often than not, they are extremely dirty.

But what if there exist toilets that get cleaned automatically? Garv toilets do exactly that!

Powered by IOT and artificial intelligence, these toilets have been manufactured by Garv Toilets—a social enterprise started by Mayank Midha and Megha Midha in mid 2014.

With the introduction and implementation of the Swachh Bharat Mission, Mayank Midha saw an opportunity of working in the sanitation sector.
He explains that his enterprise came into existence due to the growing issues related to public toilet maintenance in the country.

“We observed that public toilets made from brick and mortar with ceramic sanitary fittings faced constant problems of high operational expenditure, lack of water, electricity, and ventilation inside the toilets in addition to maintenance issues,” says Mayank.

Garv has tried to fill these gaps in the sanitation sector through their intelligent toilets. Today, Garv has installed about 798 toilets across the country which are being used at least 1.4 lakh times a day!

Impact

Garv has been able to install their toilets in schools, rural areas and in cities through their NGO partners. Through their vast network and association with NGO’s, CSR projects and foundations, about 18,000 children use Garv toilets everyday.

A case in point is the middle school in Ranipur in Patna’s Phulbari Sarif area. The middle school has 374 students between the ages of six to 14. About three years ago, the school only had one toilet that was in a usable condition.

“Because of this, a lot of the boys would venture out in the open. However, the girls would have to go all the way back home when we wanted to use the loo,” says 14-year-old Anchal Kumari.

Additionally, the toilet did not have proper water supply because of which one would have to carry water in mugs, says 50-year-old Nagendra Kumar, who is a teacher at the school.

However, things have changed now. The Aga Khan Foundation roped in Garv and got at least six of their toilets installed in the school’s premises. Nagendra Kumar informs that not only are the toilets separate for girls and boys, there is regular water supply with a proper basin in place for handwashing.

“With a clean toilet, there has also been an increase in the awareness levels of the children in terms of hygiene. We have introduced a system where every child and teacher adds soaps to a ‘soap bank’ instead of distributing sweets on their birthdays,” he says.

“Now, instead of going home just to use the toilets, we utilise our time in productive activities that is helping us. We have even founded a girl’s club called the, ‘Meena Manch’, where they talk about different subjects like menstrual health and hygiene. We also have a proper system for disposal of our sanitary napkins,” she explains.

How Garv’s toilets work

Garv’s toilets have been manufactured in such a way that the capital expenditure in constructing and maintaining them over the years is minimal. These toilets are essentially indestructible as they are made from metal enclosures and have been integrated with Radio Frequency Identification System (RFID) and IoT technology.

They are self sustainable in terms of energy consumption and waste disposal. All the toilet units are solar powered which ensures that there is electricity at all times to keep the light and the automatic features in the toilet running.

These intelligent toilets can self flush in case someone hasn’t done that after using the toilet. The same is in the case of dirty floors where the sensors can detect how many people have used the toilets and trigger jets that automatically clean the floors.

Each of these toilets also has LED lights, an exhaust fan for ventilation, and sanitary pad vending machines. These toilets can also be customised for the differently-abled to include ramps and handrails.

“These prefabricated toilets give real-time updates on the use of toilets, hygiene behaviour of the users and have low-operating costs because intervention from maintenance team is minimal,” says Mayank.

Another interesting aspect about Garv toilets is the way waste is managed. Each of these toilets comes with a bio-digester unit. This unit treats sludge and sewage, where once all the pathogens are killed, the waste can be effectively used as organic fertilisers by farmers. “Currently, we are not selling the fertiliser as it is mass produced. We are giving it for free to farmers,” says Mayank.

The toilets are priced between Rs. 2.5 to 4.2 lakh depending on the features that are included in the toilet units as per the user’s requirements.

Meet the founders

Mayank and Megha graduated from M.S Dayanand University in Rohtak. While Mayank pursued a degree in Electronics Engineering, Megha studied Computer Science Engineering.

“I started working closely with Garv once they started in late 2014 after they began incorporating IoT in the toilet systems. I was also very eager to contribute to the cause,” says Megha.

Mayank went on to work with a multinational company for two years after graduating. Then he pursued an MBA degree in Rural Management after which he worked on several social welfare projects.

He later joined the family business—a manufacturing company selling metal enclosures used to store telecom electronic equipment. “This is when I realised that these enclosures would be perfect as toilet units as they would be sturdy and resistant to any kind of vandalism,” says Mayank.

It was from this idea that Garv was founded and over the course of a few months, they integrated artificial intelligence and IoT.

Challenges and future plans

Garv’s contribution in the sphere of sanitation has been recognised by several platforms. Last year, Garv received the Young Entrepreneurs Award in London. This year, they won the Global Maker Challenge and won 100,000 USD.

Despite this, there were a few challenges that the duo faced. “I think the biggest challenge for us was overcoming the stigma of working in the sanitation space. Then, there were other challenges where we had to convince people regarding the viability of our toilet systems,” says Mayank.

Slowly and steadily, the duo dealt with these challenges and delivered their promise of efficient and highly functional intelligent toilets. Today, Garv has signed an agreement with the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation where they are planning to set up smart sanitation centres in the metro stations starting January 2020. They are also collaborating with the government of Turkey where they would be installing these sanitation units in refugee camps.

They are also currently working towards developing a grey-water treatment plant where the water from wash basins can be used for cleaning floors and in the flush tanks.

You May Also Read: Free Toilets & Drinking Water: This Trio’s Innovation Has Impacted 5000+ Lives

“The ultimate goal for us is basically to reach out to under-served communities and make hygienic sanitation units accessible to them. We want users to understand the importance of sanitation and thereby bring about a change in their sanitation habits,” says Mayank signing off.

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

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The mighty Lakhandei river descends from the mountains of Sarlahi in Nepal, winds its way for 50 km before it enters India through Sitamarhi district in Bihar. The river waters the entire region of Sitamarhi, traversing a serpentine path of nearly 18 km before meeting the Bagmati river at Katra. The total length of Lakhandei river happens to be 170 km. Synonymous with ‘Jal-Jeevan’ and ‘Hariyali’, Lakhandei or the Laxman Ganga has been infusing life into the rugged terrains of Sitamarhi, nourishing the human settlements along its banks.

However, in the last decade, encroachment and unplanned waste disposal led the thriving river to silt up completely. There was water stagnation and pollution at several points along its course, while at others, the river had dried up beyond identification, leaving behind shallow trenches. The locals reeled under falling underground water levels; and the farms dried up along with their faith in their ‘Hariyali’ river.

But only up until IAS Abhilasha Kumari Sharma, the District Magistrate, took reigns of Sitamarhi. Her tireless efforts have restored the Lakhandei back to its glory, brimming with clean water. Thanks to her dedication and zeal, the revival of the Lakhandei has been successful in just a period of two months. The project is currently at its final stage.

Resolving an 82-year-old Problem to Revive a Dying River

Ram Sharan Agrawal, a retired businessman and a social activist from Sitamarhi, shares how the problem of Lakhandei is an ongoing struggle of 82 years. Nepal’s cooperation was needed to maintain the proper water flow in Lakhandei from its source. But, despite government interventions, the two nations failed to arrive at any permanent solution.

It was around 7-8 years ago when the inhabitants of Sitamarhi, led by Agrawal himself, decided to solve the crisis on their own. “Former DM Rajeev Roshan supported us and elevated the issue at the commissioner level meeting, after which the Bihar government took cognisance of the situation. The groundwork started in full swing after Madam (Sharma) took charge,” he shares.

DM Abhilasha Kumari Sharma—A Ray of Hope for Sitamarhi

Agriculture suffers in absence of proper irrigation. And the same held true for Sitamarhi.

The groundwater level in the district plummeted rapidly and at one point, there was no water up to a depth of 225 ft. Potable water was unavailable for drinking, parching an entire district during the scorching summers. On the other hand, the villages of Pipra Kalyan, Khap Khoraha and Bharsand witnessed extreme floods during monsoon.

Efforts had been taken at individual and official levels to restore Lakhandei to her former glory. But, nothing worked out for one reason or the other.

Until Sharma was appointed as the District Magistrate of Sitamarhi in August 2019.

The feisty IAS officer from 2014 batch headed straight away to the village homes, spreading the word about river revival among the villages.

Under her supervision, the engineers of the Water Resources Department formulated an elaborate blueprint to restore the Old Lakhandei river – an arduous task which they executed with perfect precision in the least possible time.

In total, 23 acres of land was needed for restoring the river, most of which were farmlands owned by small-scale farmers. Sharma ensured to secure the farmers’ consent before initiating the groundwork.

“With her down-to-earth demeanour and strong-willed personality, she earned the villager’s respect in no time. The farmers, who were skeptical about losing their lands in the project, now graciously consented, after she assured them of adequate compensation,” says Agrawal, who played a crucial role in the project.

Winning the Trust of the Locals

Getting consent from the farmers to use their lands for the project was another hurdle, which Sharma overcame with her positive assurance and friendly demeanour. 23 Acres were acquired with wholehearted permission of the ryots (farmers). Soon, work started to link the Lakhandei river from Dularpur Ghat to Bharsand, and ultimately with the Nepal segment of the river.

“(When I arrived at Sitamarhi), I found that the villages were deprived of irrigation. The groundwater table was depleting day by day, endangering the potable water as well as agricultural yield,” recounts Sharma.

“The people dwelling along the river were suffering from accumulation of polluted water from the drain, as the flow of the river stopped after monsoon and stagnation happened. Religious festivals like the Chath Puja or social gatherings on the river bank added on to the pollution.”

The degradation of the very river which once happened to be the lifeline of the region affected the socio-cultural fabric of the land as well. It was at such a juncture that Sharma stepped into the scene with full fervour.

Mobilising the Community through Awareness

To encourage large scale community participation, several social organisations were welcomed on board to motivate the people to start the revival work. With help from the local community groups and influential individuals, Sharma educated the people about the importance and benefits of the project.

With her positive attitude, all the government officials were also motivated to overcome all the bottlenecks promptly. Seeing her enthusiasm, the Water Resources Department released the funds in no time.

“The revival of Lakhandei is now in shape and will finally culminate by the end of March 2020. It was accomplished through our vigorous approach in just two months,” reveals Sharma.

“The Villagers are Our Real Heroes”

Currently, the river has been restored from Pitambarpur to Dularpur Ghat. Only the Link Channel excavation work remains, spanning barely 3 km. Sharma hopes that Sitamarhi will soon bask in her former green glory once the work is completed.

“To honour the incredible efforts of the villagers, we often say – ‘Woh Humaare Nayak Hai, Hum Unke Sahayak Hai’ (The villagers are our real heroes, we are simply enablers). This is perhaps the first time in this century that a river has been revived in the entire Bihar-Uttar Pradesh region. The entire work was done through the hard work of the villagers and government officials, especially Madam (Sharma),” says Ram Sharan Agrawal.

Sharma’s hard work has already earned her huge admiration and respect in Sitamarhi. The people of the district are hopeful of her gracious help in all future projects. She has truly set an exemplary benchmark for her counterparts in other districts to follow.

Also Read: MP IAS Initiates Volunteering-Based Teaching to Uplift Schools, 300+ Volunteer!

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

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No fencing, tall weeds, huge mounds of garbage, people defecating in the open and sewage flowing in from surrounding areas. This was the state of the 100 acre-Rachenahalli Lake that can be found right behind the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Rural Energy & Development (MGIRED) in Bengaluru.

Now, five years later, the lake is fenced, marked by clean walking paths, benches, gazebos, a multi-purpose yoga platform, flourishing flora and fauna, and sees more than 800 people take long walks on a weekday. During weekends, this number crosses 1,000.

The transformation was made possible by the concerted efforts of Dr Shobha Ananda Reddy and Jalmitra Trust that she founded with six others.

And her journey began on 18 September 2014, i.e. the World Bamboo Day.

A Bamboo Challenge that led to a Lake Revival

In 2014, while she was working at MGIRED, Dr Shobha was looking for space to plant bamboo saplings as part of the the institute’s drive to popularise bamboo.

She had started the ‘Bamboo Challenge’ along the lines of the ‘Ice-Bucket Challenge’ and it involved planting a sapling and challenging your friends on social media to follow suit. Students and faculty had planted 80 saplings on campus, but others on the outside wanted to get in on the challenge.

“Looking for space, I walked into this lake behind the institute. It was in a terrible state,” says Dr Shobha, speaking to The Better India (TBI).

Rachenahalli lake is a part of the area covering 110 villages recently included in the city’s municipal limits. But these villages didn’t have a proper underground network for sewage diversion. Making matters worse, the sewage being generated due to the construction of urban layouts in the vicinity began entering the lake as well. Meanwhile, the lake’s outlet had been blocked off by a building company. After a bout of heavy rainfall, water would swell in the storm water drain, which was then cut off from the larger network.

Embarking on the Lake Revival Journey

An environmental scientist by training, Dr Shobha taught and coordinated research at Mount Carmel College in Bengaluru for 12 years (2002-2014) before health complications forced her to find work closer to home at MGIRED, where she worked until late 2016. She currently works as a consultant with the Indian Institute for Human Settlements

But it was working under senior Indian Forest Service officer Punati Sridhar, who was then the Executive Director at the MGIRED, that inspired her to dive head first into the Rachenahalli Lake revival initiative.

Upon learning about the lake’s pathetic condition, Sridhar was keen on doing something to revive it.

After seven-eight months of inactivity, he appointed Dr Shobha to oversee the revival initiative. She began by involving nearby schools and colleges to conduct awareness campaigns among local residents. By this time, the successful Jakkur and Puttenahalli lake revival models backed by active citizen groups were already present.

She also wanted to promote a similar model.

“In the early days, people weren’t interested. I literally had to spend some of my weekends trying to remove the weeds, clear the parthenium and pick up the trash all by myself. Gradually people saw that I was there regularly and those passing by began joining me. I was lucky to have people like retired Major General Haridas Gopalan, Nupur Tandon, Venkatesh, Sudheendra, Sham Bhat Kolari, Abhijit Roy, Sanjeev, Anbrasan, Bindu Anil who live near the lake and birdwatcher Srinath Bidare, helping me regularly alongside fellow residents,” she recalls.

Meanwhile, at the MGIRED, they tried to organise a day event inviting all the major state-level stakeholders like the BBMP, BDA and BWSSB on the first of August 2015, but saw a poor turnout. Nonetheless, those who had begun working regularly with Dr Shobha initially formed a small group with others who had done some work reviving the lake four-five years prior.

“There were initially eight of us in the group within a month of that day. We were spending every weekend at the lake, trying to clean up whatever garbage and brainstorming real ideas of what can be done to revive the lake. This went on for four-five months until we realised that whatever clean-up we did it elicited no serious response from the authorities and people would still dump garbage at the lake. We had to engage in course correction,” she says.

Dr Shobha finally got in touch with authorities at the BBMP thanks to her position at the MGIRED, a State government backed institution. However, following the meeting, she was told that the lake fell under the BDA’s jurisdiction. Back in 2008-09, the BDA had taken the lake for redevelopment and spent Rs 16 crore reviving it by 2010.

The lake was then supposed to be handed over to the BBMP for oversight, but this transfer of guardianship got lost in a bureaucratic maze and no one supervised its maintenance for over three years.

The lake naturally fell into disrepair.

Bringing their Efforts under a Formal Citizen Group

“The BBMP advised us that if we were to be taken seriously we would have to register ourselves as a formal citizen group. Meanwhile, we passed along petitions with one garnering over 5,000 signatures from locals, submitted them to BDA and BWSSB and other agencies to close the entry of sewage into the lake. Our activism helped and compelled the agencies concerned to partially direct the sewage away from the lake,” says Dr Shobha.

Finally, the members decided to become an apolitical trust only interested in reviving the lake. By early 2016, the eight members came together to form the Jalmitra Trust.

“That year we entered into an MoU with BBMP, and subsequently with non-profit United Way Bengaluru (UWBe), which helped raise CSR funds. In the first year, they raised Rs 10 lakh, and primarily gave us labour for the maintenance of the bund area. Meanwhile, the MGIRED had adopted a 100 metre stretch of the lake. Alongside staff and students, we maintained this stretch. For another 100 metre stretch, we had invited nearby schools and colleges to maintain it. Working with us, the students of Legacy School, Benagluru, adopted this 100 metre stretch. We maintained these stretches, cleaned and beautified it,” she informs.

However, in the midst of all this work, she quit her job at the MGIRED to dedicate herself full time to the revival initiative.

Meanwhile, Jalmitra also reached out to the then local MLA Krishna Byregowda, who helped them push the BDA and BBMP to initiate some simple yet critical works like fencing the lake and complete unfinished work. He helped in getting the lake transferred from BDA to BBMP.

“His influence brought the BBMP to work towards reviving the entire lake. They did the bund area properly, started fencing it up (which is nearly done) and addressed encroachments into the lake resulting in a re-survey of the lake, which is now complete. To address open defecation, we approached the local Joint Commissioner and the state pollution control board. Jalmitra got them to issue notices to builders to provide proper sanitation facilities to their workers. Without these facilities, these workers were coming to the lake and defecating. Working with the local BBMP office and State pollution control board, we managed to positively address other illegalities in the lake area as well. This was the effort,” she says.

Jalmitra: Going from Eight to 200 Members

Jalmitra also conducted a series of lake awareness initiatives in local neighbourhoods, educating people why they need to preserve the lake for groundwater recharge and urban flood management, besides running a lot of planting and cleaning drives in and around the lake. It began with just 8, but today Jalmitra has more than 200 members.

From the citizen engagement point of view, this was a real success. In the middle of 2018, Dr Shobha withdrew from her role at the Trust because of other professional commitments and health concerns. Fortunately, there are other volunteers taking the initiative forward. Today, Jalmitra is managed by a local resident, Naveen and Anbarasan, a Microsoft employee.

Their current efforts include getting the area completely fenced off which is almost done. On the water quality side, the lake receives sewage from the Amruthahalli lake when it overflows. They are trying to fix this bit. The Trust has taken care of the sewage in-flow problem on the northern side of the lake, and now the focus is on the southern side.

Having said that, Dr Shobha continues to guide the volunteers overseeing the Trust’s work in maintenance of the lake. Since the time she stepped back, her work revolves mentoring other people leading different citizen groups that are seeking to revive lakes in the city.

Mentoring Other Citizen Groups

“One of my friends, a faculty member with Christ College, wanted to engage in some clean up work in Arekere Lake at Bannerghatta Road. We did a two-week clean up drive there last year with her students involving the local corporator, and our job was to motivate people living in the vicinity to get involved. We were partially successful,” recalls Dr Shobha.

But it’s her work with dedicated citizens groups that may prove more influential. One such citizens group is called the RR Nagar iCare, which is looking to rejuvenate both the Mylassandra lakes in the area. Speaking to The Better India, Niveditha Sunkad, Managing Trustee of RR Nagar iCare talked about what their work and how Dr Shobha has assisted.

“We are working locally in RR Nagar dealing with the custodians of the lake (BBMP), bringing in CSR funds and trying to rejuvenate the Mylasandra Lakes. We have everything ready, but just waiting for the BBMP Chief Engineer to sign off on our proposal,” she says.

“But before we could approach the BBMP, we needed help documenting facts on the ground and bringing all the lake rejuvenation essentials together. We had worked with them on a couple of lakes before, bringing in CSR funds and getting things like fencing done. But the work was primarily done by the BBMP. We haven’t worked on rejuvenation ourselves so far. That’s where Dr Shobha stepped in because she had already worked on the Rachenahalli Lake. She came up with a clear plan, helped us draft a proposal, got consultants onboard, taught us how to estimate a project for revival and things like that,” adds Niveditha.

Are Citizen Groups Effective?

It’s difficult for citizen pressure groups to get authorities to work. For Dr Shobha, working for a government organisation like MGIRED was an advantage before starting her lake revival initiative because not only did she have direct access to other government agencies, but also learnt how they worked, which is something not many citizens are aware of.

“Within the BBMP, for example, many will not know which division to approach for lake management. They don’t know that lakes come under its Lake Department, or stormwater drains come under the SWD Department. Many also don’t know a lot of the technicalities related to lake revival. If we educate our citizens well and help them understand why preserving these lakes are important, they become empowered. My biggest focus has been to empower citizens with the requisite knowledge of science, technology and governance,” she says.

Citizen groups can’t really force governments to spend or allot money for an initiative of their choice. Local elected representatives have to step in and help. For the Rachenahalli initiative, the bund was done first, which presented some physical progress to the initiative.

“This convinced locals living nearby that we were not all about talk, but getting things done as well. More people started pouring in. Wherever a proper survey was done, we did the fencing. The lake receives stormwater from Jakkur Lake, which is mixed with sewage water. The constructed wetland at the mouth of the Rachenahalli Lake filters the wastewater to some extent. The lake’s health has been good for the most part. We also work very closely with the fishermen at the lake, who act as the first line of defence,” she says.

To a great extent, people can only get involved in some degree of physical work in any initiative, and every citizen group needs an interface with government authorities. Dr Shobha was that person in the Rachenahalli Lake revival initiative, now being taken up by Naveen.

Engagement with government authorities is often a long drawn process that requires not just patience, but persistence and an understanding of how these bureaucratic systems work.

Through her work, she has shown a keen understanding of how these systems work and at the same time maintained a constant level of engagement.

For concerned citizens who want to get involved in reviving a lake in Bengaluru, Dr Shobha’s mentorship can help them navigate some of the major pitfalls that come with this exercise. In other words, her mentorship could go a long way in saving the city.

Also Read: One Man’s Efforts Ensured That This TN Village Doesn’t Rely on Borewells Anymore!

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

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Digging through the ‘suranga’ cave wells, one of the oldest water harvesting systems found in the regions of north Kerala and Karnataka, 67-year old Kunjambu has singlehandedly provided water to the villagers of Kundamjuzhy, a village in Kerala’s Kasargod district for more than 50 years.

Kunjambu, who started digging at the age of 14 is now one of the very few suranga diggers left in the country and claims that thus far, he has dug out over 1000 of these cave-like wells.

What are Surangas?

‘Suranga’ in Kannada or ‘Thurangam’ in Malayalam is a narrow cave-like structure dug into the lateral sides of hills.

These unique cave wells are almost 2.5 feet wide can be dug up to 300 meters until a water spring is found, and are considered to be one of the most sustainable water harvesting systems in these regions.

The water that flows into the tunnel is channeled into a reservoir that is built near the tunnel. Once the water starts freely flowing from the springs, there is a steady supply of freshwater for years, without the use of motors or even pumps.

Said to have originated in Iran, this sustainable water harvesting system is now sadly being overpowered by the borewell culture, and many of the existing surges have become futile.

Kunjambu’s Journey

“This job requires a lot of strength and determination. I always set out with a pickaxe and a candle with a hope to complete digging these caves in one go,” begins Kunjambu.

“When you’re digging a cave that’s almost 300 meters deep, the oxygen levels tend to drop. To ensure that I don’t end up suffocating in these caves, I carry a matchbox and a candle with me. So if I’m not able to light the match, it means the oxygen levels are deficient, and I have to exit immediately,” he adds.

From finding the right place to start digging, to ensuring that the caves don’t collapse, Kunjambu says that all the steps to the suranga system require the digger to be aligned with nature.

“For instance, if i want to find the right place to start digging, I look at the plants nearby. If these plants are flourishing and the soil has a certain amount of wetness, then it means we’re found the spot. This knowledge can only be obtained through years of experience and along with that you get also develop a certain amount of faith in nature,” he explains.

Rise of the Borewells

“When I initially started, surangas were an essential part of our culture, especially because of the need for water for agricultural purposes. But soon, borewells began popping up and became the alternative. Slowly, we started losing our jobs, “ he explains.

As surangas require manual labour in comparison to the digging of borewells, the rates are much higher. Kunjambu explains that this may be one of the reasons for the sudden switch to borewells.

Consequently, many diggers, including Kunjambu, who do not support borewell culture, had to take up the job became it the only means of livelihood available.

“Borewell culture is very harmful to our nature, unlike surangas. When digging for borewells, you strike right at the heart of the earth, leading to the draining out of the groundwater. It can also make the nearby areas prone to earthquakes because it disrupts the natural way of things,” explains Kunjambu.

Benefits of Surangas

“Surangas have been an ideal resource for farmers for a long period of time. They are a perennial source of water, and borewells can never become a replacement to this system, especially in regions like Kasargod where the tendency for a collapse is much higher,” explains Shree Padre, a renowned writer from Kasargod.

Today there are more than 5,000 surangas in the Kasargod district, but most have become ineffective because of its decrease in popularity. However, people like Kunjambu are not ready to give up, yet.

“Although the suranga system is slowly dying,  I want to continue my journey in the depths of the earth as long as I can, in hope that this system can be revived again,” Kunjambu concludes.

Also Read: Idukki’s ‘Fruit King’: Architect Turns 10 Acres Into 100-Variety Fruit Wonderland

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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Centuries ago, when the city of Bengaluru was founded by Kempegowda, it was a crown jewel of the state of Karnataka, endowed with beautiful lakes and gardens. But, the present reality cannot be farther from the past.

After years of urbanization, poor water management, pollution and an accelerated population, Bengaluru has become a city of traffic and concrete, languishing in falling groundwater levels, toxic frothing lakes and dry taps.

This image of slow-poisoning of his beloved city and home pushed a Bangalorean, Uma Maheshwara to take a positive step towards a solution—rainwater harvesting.

A plumbing contractor working with the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB), Uma has spent the last 13 years installing over a thousand Rainwater Harvesting (RWH) systems across the city, in an effort to save its future.

“I was born and brought up in Bengaluru and have seen the city change and transform with time. But infrastructural development has come with its own share of disadvantages and sacrifices, some of which are graver than the advantages. One such sacrifice has been that of the city’s natural resources, especially water. With each year the condition is only depleting and owing to this trend many studies have also compared our city’s future to be similar to that of Cape Town, in South Africa. And, with my expertise in this area, I couldn’t have stood back and let the impending crisis unfold, not when I could be part of the solution,” says the 54-year-old.

From a Plumbing Contractor to an RWH expert in Bengaluru

Uma started his rainwater harvesting journey in 2007, by enrolling in an upskilling certificate course on RWH at Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology (KSCST), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. He realised in a city with a burgeoning population and depleting sources of water, most people had to rely on buying water tankers to meet their daily needs–a practice that was both uneconomical and harmful.

“A tanker of 5,000 litres usually costs Rs 500 to Rs 800, depending on the season and area. And usually for an average person demand for water is 150-200 litres per capita per day, while an average supply is around 100-125 litres. But, on top of that the water in tankers is heavy with chemicals such as chlorine and abound with impurities that are extremely harmful. However, owing to the crunch, people still go for tankers despite the huge expense. And, RWH which is a sustainable source of pure water, is the best solution for this problem,” he explains.

Hence, aiming to solve this one building at a time, Uma, shortly after receiving his certificate began work in installation of RWH systems in various commercial and residential buildings, including his own house, in addition to providing free consultancy services for RWH.

“When you want to spread a good message to the masses, it’s important that you walk the talk. So setting up my own rooftop RWH system was important to set a positive example. So in my house in Banaswadi, I built my own RWH system in 2007, with a one-time investment of Rs 10,000,” says the Bengaluru resident.

Saving the Environment and Money

Following the set up, that summer, Uma did not need to purchase even a single tanker to meet the water supply deficit. Instead, he had enough to not just fulfil their daily needs but also recharge the groundwater, thus setting a great precedent for a forked positive impact both personally and environmentally.

“Since then I have not only been saving lakhs of money, but also have saved 20 tankers worth water every single year. That roughly amounts to almost 1 lakh litres of water every year,” says Uma while adding that he earned back his initial investment of Rs 10,000 for installment, with the savings of the next 2 years.

“Usually it costs Rs 15,000 for install an RWH inclusive of labour (depending on the size), which was not needed in my case. But I earned it all back in 2 years. Technically, by 2009, the installation was all free and I had already saved over 3 lakh litres of water!”

Having worked with several housing societies and commercial buildings in Bengaluru, Uma feels that there is still a lot to be done for people to realise the need for RWH and that this the future that we all need to embrace as soon as we can.

Senthil Kumar, a resident of Golden Louts, a gated society in Varthur is one of the many people who approached Uma to install an RWH system in the society. “We have 108 flats in our society and would require to order at least 70 tankers every month. But, after the installation last year, it has considerably come down to 30-50 tankers a month depending on the rainfall. We have also saved Rs 1.3 lakh in a year and hope to recover back the entire investment cost of Rs 2.8 lakh by the end of this year.”

“In my experience, there is still a lot of hesitation floating around especially among owners of independent houses. Gated societies and housing complexes on the other hand have been more receptive to this idea. If you are short-sighted and not see the long-term benefits of RWH, you will end up in the middle of a water crisis. With my work and free consultation, I am doing everything in my power to help people avert that situation as smoothly as possible,” concludes Uma.

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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Indukanth Ragade stops me mid-sentence when I ask about greywater treatment for garden plants. “There is no such concept,” he asserts, “The greywater from your household need not be treated for watering your garden plants.”

The 82-year-old urban environmentalist from Chennai proceeds to provide a precise calculation to debunk the most common myth about greywater – that the chemicals present in it can harm plants if applied directly.

For the uninitiated, greywater refers to the relatively cleaner wastewater generated from bathrooms, washing machines and kitchen appliances. It is also referred to as sullage.

For your garden watered with greywater, Ragade advises growing any type of indigenous garden plants, especially the water-loving species like Canna indica, Ginger Lily, Heliconium, Cyperus, colocasia or banana. 

In fact, the moderate amounts of phosphates present in detergent serve as a growth-enhancing fertiliser for the plants, which helps them develop thick foliage and blooms. These plants also help in naturally purifying the water to a great extent.

He cautions urban gardeners about ornamental and exotic plants with specific requirements of water, soil, and other resources that might not thrive well with greywater. 

“Greywater Helps Plants Thrive”

“You make the calculation. In one month, an individual will use, let’s say, a 100 gm toilet soap bar. Each day, if the person uses around 15 litres of water for bathing, the total water usage for the month will come to 450 litres for bathing. Considering this amount in grams, there will be far less than one gram of soap present in each litre of greywater from the washroom,” Ragade breaks it down step by step.

“Since soap, detergents or other toiletries mostly contain organic components, especially if one is opting for sustainable toiletries, the greywater from the washroom of a domestic household can even be purer than rainwater,” says Ragade.

“Most of the chemicals added in toilet soap are organic compounds, like fatty acids, glycerol etc., which are technically composed of Carbon, hydrogen and oxygen – the basic elements in organic chemistry,” he adds.

If anything, these organic extracts will only help the plants thrive, especially in areas with scarcity of water, where watering garden plants can often feel like a liability. 

Your Garden can be a Natural Water Treatment Plant

In a conversation with The Better India, the former organic chemist explains how urban dwellers can easily reuse the greywater drained from their washrooms and kitchens to grow a beautiful garden patch in every home. 

“In earlier days, the water used in the kitchens of traditional homes was redirected to a patch of banana plants – which is often dubbed as a ‘semi-aquatic’ plant – for its affinity for water and its high-retention capacity. The water from bathing and washing of clothes generally irrigated the garden plants,” says Ragade. 

However, due to space constraints in modern cities, a similar methodology cannot be adopted. The kitchen runoff, for instance, contains more organics than the bathroom greywater and cannot be entirely redirected into a small garden patch. 

“Instead, I recommend watering the garden plants only with the bathroom and washing machine outflow, while repurposing the organically enriched kitchen greywater for flushing the toilet.”

Alternately, the kitchen greywater can be allowed to percolate in the soil directly, wherein the soil layers will automatically clean it before it percolates further and gets accumulated as clean groundwater, which can be extracted again. “Basically, your garden can be a natural water treatment plant. Greywater seeps into the soil, gets filtered by the soil layers and turns into fresh groundwater. In traditional houses, this purpose was served by a garden dug well,” Ragade reminds.

Incidentally, a dug well enables the accumulation and collection of fresh groundwater from filtered greywater.

Only 2.5 sq. ft Garden Space Needed Per Individual

“To completely reuse the domestic greywater in gardening, only 2.5 sq. ft. of gardening soil is required per individual. So, if there are four members in a family, they can channel their greywater towards a garden space of 10 sq. ft,” he advocates. In fact, a 2.5 sq.ft. garden space can absorb up to 50-60 litres of greywater, he adds.

Similar practices can be adopted in urban apartments as well, where the water can be redirected to potted plants worth a similar garden space.

Greywater Gardening Can Save Water in the Long Run

The expert ecologist explains that there are generally three outlets of water in a standard home – the kitchen, bathroom, and the sewage. “The kitchen and bathroom water need not be treated before being reused for gardening or other purposes,” says Ragade. 

On the other hand, the sewage water contains disease-causing organisms which should be treated in a sewage treatment plant (STP) before being reused for any purpose. 

“A major mistake committed by apartment complexes during the STP treatment is mixing around 30 per cent toxic sewage water with 70 per cent of the sterile greywater – thereby contaminating the entire amount of water. When this blend of water is treated, the treated water can only be used for one purpose – flushing the toilet,” explains Ragade.

He hopes that urban communities choose to treat only their sewage in the STPs while channelising the domestic greywater towards gardening.  This way, even the power consumption of the STPs will be lowered, giving the residents a respite in the electricity bills.

Ragade advocates greywater gardening as an effective measure to reduce the pressure on sewage treatment plants and also save a lot of water in turn. He recommends everyone to adopt this concept in their homes for better and optimum utilisation of resources. 

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan) 

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It is inconceivable to imagine the blue planet without blue. Earth without water is earth with no life. Thus, it is ironic that the ones who need it are the ones who are polluting it to the extent that it spells doom for the entire planet.

Niti Aayog published the Composite Water Management Index in August last year which revealed some astonishing figures.

The majority of rural land under cultivation for two major food crops — wheat and rice — faces substantial water scarcity which poses a threat to food security. Moreover, about five out of the 20 largest and water-stressed cities in the world are from India.

In such a scenario, it is heartening to come across individuals and companies working to provide solutions to our water woes.

Just like Blue Elixir, a Ranchi-based startup which addresses water-shortage problems by providing water management and conservation solutions for the past five years. The startup installs rainwater harvesting systems, wastewater treatment systems along with providing their consultancy services on various projects on water conservation solutions.

Started by Utkarsh Upadhyaya and his college friend Nishant Kumar, the company has worked on 110 projects in states like Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Delhi and Odisha.

On one hand, they have helped conserve close to 90 million litres of water through their rainwater harvesting systems. On the other hand, through their wastewater treatment systems, they have treated over 1.5 billion litres of water!

Gaining Technical Expertise

“Coming from a water-stressed state like Rajasthan, I knew how grave the problem of water scarcity is,” says Utkarsh co-founder of Blue Elixir.

It was during college that the two friends got the opportunity to work on the ground in Jharkhand and analyse the groundwater situation closely. “We learnt that not only is the groundwater table depleting, the water quality was also not good. Learning this helped us make up our mind on providing solutions to these problems,” informs Utkarsh.

It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the founders were very certain that the water management sector is where they wanted to build a career. Both Utkarsh and Nishant enrolled themselves in a five year integrated M(Tech) programme from the Central University in Jharkhand with their specialisation being Water Engineering and Management.

The programme was basically a Civil Engineering course with a focus on subjects like water management, urban hydrology, river engineering, irrigation, dams, hydropower generation among others.

As a part of their dissertation, they started working with the Groundwater Directorate under the Government of Jharkhand.

“During this time, we met our mentor, SLS Jageshwar, a pioneer in the sphere of rainwater harvesting in the state. He showed us the real problems on the ground and made us realise the importance of coming up with solutions,” recalls 27-year-old Utkarsh.

The on-ground work inspired them so much that Utkarsh and Nishant eventually ended up founding their own venture, Blue Elixir, in October 2015.

For their research, they looked at the different kinds of rainwater harvesting systems available in India. They also consulted with many experts from premier institutions like the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to understand what kind of structures would work best for Jharkhand since that is where they were planning on starting.

The duo hosted awareness programmes in collaboration with Ranchi’s rotary club to make people understand the importance of the services they were providing.

“We first began visiting educational institutions and started speaking about rainwater harvesting and how that is a resource-saving solution,” informs Utkarsh.

Finally, in January 2016, they bagged their first rainwater harvesting project and the duo hasn’t looked back ever since.

Setting up Water Management Systems

Every time the duo gets a project in hand, Utkarsh and Nishant first carry out the feasibility survey where they look at the size of the rooftop and potential recharge zones in case of rainwater harvesting systems. Similarly, in the case of wastewater treatment systems, they take samples of the water or effluents to understand what type of solution would be appropriate to meet the client’s needs.

Each project takes anywhere from 10 days to four months to complete depending on the scale and the kind of project they carry out. Utkarsh breaks down the four services they essentially provide.

* Rainwater Harvesting Systems

These systems basically comprise three things: Collection of rainwater, filtration and recharge of groundwater or use of the water by the client as per their preference.

* Wastewater Management Systems

Each system differs based on the kind of effluents and the quantity that needs to be treated. Blue Elixir offers a normal filtration system using sand and their secondary treatment includes aeration to clean water, biological treatments, nanofiltration processes etc. They also employ the ‘Phytoremediation’ technique where living plants are used to remove hazardous contaminants from the effluents.

* Mine Water Management

The company also makes solutions available to the mining industry which has a lot of sites in Jharkhand.

Once the mines are dug deeper, they hit the underground water table. To ensure this water is not wasted, they treat it and use it for dust suppression in mining sites. This water is also treated using sand filters and activated charcoal to remove impurities and is used for domestic purposes in the mining sites.

* Consultation Services
Blue Elixir also carries out hydrogeological investigations and prepares investigation reports for industries. This is done so that the industries can meet the groundwater compliances and stick to the guidelines as prescribed by the Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA)

The team of four, including two other engineers, has helped several industries conserve and consciously use water thus ensuring that the resource is not further depleted.

Ravish Kumar, head of environment management cell at Triveni Earth Movers Pvt. Limited, a mining company, talks about how they have been able to effectively manage water on their mining site in Hazaribagh district.

“As per government body guidelines, if we extract a certain quantity of water, we ought to recharge 10 times more. Therefore, we needed a groundwater recharge system and upon further research online, we discovered that Blue Elixir was providing these services,” says the 30-year-old.

Blue Elixir set up a rainwater harvesting system for them with a collection tank of 20,000 litres of water which is stored in the monsoon period from June to September.

“We use this water in the bathrooms, for floor cleaning, vehicle washing etc. Once the tank is full, the extra water goes for recharging the groundwater table. Through their system, you can say we conserve at least 5 lakh litres of water in a year,” he informs

Overcoming Hurdles and Providing Solutions

Although Blue Elixir has been able to make a considerable impact through its water management and conservation systems, there are quite a few challenges that they have had to deal with.

“There is a lack of understanding of the importance of water conservation which stops people from embracing the solutions. This stops people from wanting to invest in services and projects that benefit the environment,” he explains.

He also adds that for them, carrying out the installation of their systems is difficult during the monsoon season.

Regardless, Utkarsh is hopeful for the future of the company and is working on introducing new solutions. He informs that now they want to venture into stormwater management that will prevent cities from getting flooded (due to clogging of drains) during the monsoons.

He is also pursuing a PhD on this subject from Central University which is helping him navigate this new vertical. Utkarsh says that they are working on a proposal that they want to present to the Municipal Corporation of Ranchi by next year.

As a bootstrapped startup, they are also in talks with investors to scale their operations. While Utkarsh wants to shift back to Rajasthan to focus on projects in the state along with managing Delhi and Madhya Pradesh, Nishant would stay back in Jharkhand and manage operations in the state along with those in Odisha and West Bengal.

“Environmental degradation and climate change is having a visible detrimental impact on ecology. It is time for different stakeholders to work together so that we can effectively manage our resources. I hope that we do not pick up a newspaper one day and read that we have run out of water. Conservation is the need of the hour,” he concludes.

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

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“We have not purchased a single drop of drinking water in the last 27 years. Our 15 pits of roadside and individual rainwater harvesting cater to the water needs of 1,500 residents of Jagannadharaju Nagar (JRN) Colony,” says K S R Murthy from Visakhapatnam, proudly.

A scientist, Murthy is the President of Jagannadharaju Nagar Residents Welfare Association (RWA), that was formed in 1993 to ease civic issues of the residents.

Murthy was well aware of the water issues in the city due to scanty rainfall and depleting groundwater reserves. Along with other members of the RWA, he foresaw how the water crisis was only going to worsen in the future.

“While we would have very little water in the summers, the monsoon meant water stagnation or flooding. This gave rise to water-borne diseases and unhygienic conditions in the colony,” informs Murthy.

Around this time, the Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation was urging all apartment buildings to construct water harvesting pits.

Taking that as motivation, the RWA members initiated rainwater harvesting, a project that went on to win Rs 1 lakh in cash prize from the Union Ministry of Water Resources in 2019.

The RWA members sensitised the colony dwellers about the need to conserve water. Many abandoned wells and sumps were converted into water harvesting pits by the apartment buildings. “We have connected the terrace directly to these pits via pipes so that monsoon water is collected properly.”

The RWA also came up with a long-term solution to water scarcity in the form of roadside water harvesting.

“The motive was to replenish the groundwater tables so that the city does not run out of water, as we have seen in the cases of Chennai and Delhi. Through this, we wanted to promote the concepts of arresting rainwater and avoiding water stagnation,” adds Murthy.

Murthy backs his theory with the fact that water in JRN colony is available at 50 feet in contrast to other places in the city at 200 feet.

How Roadside Rainwater Harvesting Works

Before purchasing materials or hiring masons, one should study the topography of the colony, says Murthy.

Then, identify the water accumulation points (they will mostly be the low-lying areas) and start digging pits.

The JRN RWA went with the dimension of 4x4x5 feet (5 feet deep) and constructed circular pits at the cost of Rs 7,000 each on either side of the road.

They added gravel, stones, and sand in the pits that purify the wastewater, and covered the pits with rectangular borders. The pipes under the borders allow rainwater to enter the pits.

While this rainwater harvesting technique has proven to be beneficial, Murthy cautions about manholes in the area. “During heavy rains, the manholes overflow, enter the pit, and dirty the groundwater. So, be alert and ensure your local municipality clears the manholes on time.”

The 15 pits constructed since 2010 have exponentially recharged the groundwater levels of JRN colony as well as the neighbouring ones, conserving millions of litres of rainwater. Moreover, the harvesting pits save 7.45 lakh litres of water every year.

Not stopping at that, Murthy recently came up with a short booklet on how individuals and apartments can learn from traditional water-saving techniques and follow simple measures to bring about a change.

“From installing a low-cost nozzle on taps, replacing showers with buckets, reusing greywater, checking leaks in pipes, to closing the faucet while brushing, many simple methods can be adopted. Needs are rising, and the resources are diminishing. It is here that every citizen should act and make efforts to conserve and manage resources. We need to fully understand the impending water doom and act on it now,” he concludes.

(Edited by Shruti Singhal)

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Five billion people could be facing water shortage by 2050, warns a recent UN report of increased demand. We do not have to wrack our brains too much to come up with the reasons — pollution, climate change and increasing demands.

And a group of five students from the Shiv Nadar School in Gurugram take such reports very seriously.

In 2019, the students decided to take up ‘water conservation’ as part of their class X project. Aditya Tanwar, Arjun Singh Bedi, Jeiya Khurana, Mohammad Umar, and Piya Sharma, who like to call themselves — Fluid Force — came up with a simple device which can save over 1000 litres of water rejected by RO systems in a day.

The device is like a tap which can be fixed to our washbasins, uses the RO wastewater, recycles it, and pumps it back into the regular tap, which can then be used for multiple purposes.

The Better India (TBI) caught up with Arjun and Jeiya to know more about their project.

Taking Inspiration from Water Woes

The students, now in class 10, wanted to solve a clear problem — devise a way to effectively curb water wastage from RO systems. After talking to their mentors and researching online, the enterprising team came up with a Do-It-Yourself mechanical setup, which can be fixed easily on regular plumbing systems at home.

“One of our prime concerns was the rapid depletion of groundwater. While it all started as a school project, we soon realised that we can come up with something that could make a huge impact on water conservation,” Arjun tells TBI.

“It is common knowledge that the ROs we use at home lead to a lot of water waste. Most households use this water to mop floors, water plants, and clean bathrooms. However, the high concentration of Total Dissolved Salts (TDS) in the water could lead to an accumulation of salt on the floor and might even affect plants in the long term,” adds Jeiya.

The found out through their research that a standalone RO wastes 3 litres of water for every 1 litre that it purifies. “We knew we needed to tackle this issue urgently,” shares Arjun.

How does their innovation work?

The team places a large bin/bucket to collect the RO wastewater. This water is pumped back to the washbasin via a pipe which has the team’s device attached to it. “In effect, your regular kitchen basin tap is replaced with the one that we have designed,” explains Arjun. With this alteration, when you switch on the tap, the RO wastewater gets mixed with regular water and flows out.

“To design the prototype we knocked on every possible door. From teachers to plumbers to engineers. Secondly, the school and personal contributions funded the project. The final device is a result of many trials and errors,” informs Arjun.

They installed their device within the school premises first. The success of this installation led to install their device in a few houses in their neighbourhoods and their relatives to check its effectiveness.

Next came public places and the students visited commercial hubs where their device now saves about 600 litres/day. Likewise, they implemented the project in other places including Tamil Nadu Dosa Corner (900 litres/day), and Commissioner’s Office (300 litres/day) among others.

The project, launched in 2019-2020, has saved around 1,815 litres/day water.

“We have been lucky that we have been getting good reviews. We had the chance to meet the Deputy Commissioner of Gurugram, Amit Khatri, who was not just enthusiastic about our idea but also went ahead and allowed us to fit the tap in his office and monitor the wastewater that we save.”

“Moreover, we have already created a sample model of an advanced, automatic version of the prototype which uses solenoid valves, which help in mixing the RO wastewater with the regular water, to direct the flow of water. This had been done to make it more user friendly,” says Jeiya.

Both Arjun and Jeiya attribute a lot of the success that the team has been able to achieve to the unflinching support by their IT project head, Mark Nelson.

What were the challenges?

“Believe it or not, the issue we faced was not in developing the product, but in ensuring that it is aesthetically done. No one would want to have to look at something that sticks out like a sore thumb every day,” laughs Arjun.

The first few prototypes were all big and with time they managed to bring in a lot of finesse to their final product. “Even now I would say it is work in progress and we are still finding ways to make it more visually appealing,” says Jeiya.

The total cost for this setup, as of now, is Rs 1000 and Jeiya is hopeful that once the COVID-19 situation clears up, they will be able to procure more orders thus reducing the price too.

“While we continue to make the products ourselves as of now, we are looking at tying up with manufacturers who might be in a better position to mass-produce this,” explains Jeiya.

Monica Sagar, Principal Shiv Nadar School, Gurugram, says, “Sustainable existence is at the heart of the lessons learnt from COVID-19. This group of students made water conservation their sole objective as they researched and developed this the whole of last year.”

The team is also looking to apply for a patent and will soon have their products up for sale on various e-commerce platforms.

Jyotika Bedi, Arjun’s mother says, “We believe that the best gift we can give our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to try, fall, fail, make mistakes and experience life. It is important for us to give them the freedom to believe in themselves.”

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

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Only a year ago, images of snow-white toxic foam floating over the Yamuna river in Delhi had shocked the world, waking it up to the reality of the water population in the country’s capital. According to the Delhi Jal Board (DJB), one of the main reasons behind this situation was untreated sewage, something that the city’s lakes and rivers have been struggling to tackle for years.

However, in the last few years, The Delhi government has been able to follow a steady path of improvement through various lake rejuvenation efforts spearheaded by the DJB, Irrigation and Flood Control Department (IFCD) and several citizen groups. And one the pioneering projects that set the ball of positive transformation rolling was the Rajokri Lake project.

The Model Project

Around 30 km away from the city, near the Delhi-Gurugram border, Rajokri, till 2017, was home to a dying waterbody that had suffered years of toxic abuse. Clogged drains led up to the turbid pond struggling under a filthy blanket of plastic waste and rotting sewage.

However, under all the filth was a reservoir of potential, something that a team including DJB’s technical advisor Ankit Srivastava and architect Mriganka Saxena envisioned. Under their guidance, the DJB along with IFCD started the transformation of the Rajokri pond into Delhi’s first-ever decentralized sewage system.

“Delhi has approximately 600 water bodies and the eventual goal is to revive all of them. However, there was no model of holistic revival that we could follow. So, instead, we created an in-house team to work on making our own model best suited for the city’s condition, and that’s how the Rajokri project was started as a pilot in 2017,” says Ankit, who is a graduate of IIT Bombay, in environmental science and engineering.

Read More: Woman Scientist Revives 100-Acre Bengaluru Lake, Now Teaches Others How to Do It

He adds that owing to the limited annual rainfall received by the city, one could not have depended on conventional methods of water-body rejuvenation, which often involves cleaning the affected areas and letting it get recharged with rainwater. The multifold goal was to create a lake that could efficiently treat all the sewage water flowing in, while also containing clean water throughout the year. It was also supposed to serve as an inclusive community centre and a natural ecosystem.

And so the revitalisation project was divided into two major components– the construction of a purification system and landscaping of the surrounding areas to not only enhance aesthetic value but also make long-term management of the lake more sustainable.

Explaining this, Mriganka who was handling the latter segment with a focus on the project’s long-term sustainability says, “This project had to both enhance the landscape of the area but also benefit the people on a long-term basis. Hence the design was strategized in a manner that the structure could easily be maintained by the surrounding communities. Additionally, there were a number of environmentally responsible and sustainable guidelines that we were following under the guidance of National Green Tribunal (NGT). From doing the green landscaping with native plant species to creating percolation pores for groundwater recharge, a number of elements were added to enhance the value of the project.”

Innovation in & Around The Lake

Historically, Rajokri was a mining area surrounded by hills. So during the monsoon season, rainwater would flow through the slopes into this waterbody. Meanwhile, over a period of years as more settlements began to come up around the area, the sewage would also flow into the same water, leaving it dirty and contaminated.

Talking about their design strategy based on this reality, Ankit says, “Delhi receives rainfall for less than a month, so it is important to focus our efforts on treating the wastewater, instead of solely relying on rainwater. So the first part of the plan was to clean the water coming from the sewage at the STP through a unique SWAB (scientific wetland system with active bio-digester) technology. During monsoons, the water recharging the lake is anyway 15-20 times more, and our rainwater harvesting system installed on-site ensures removal of stilt and enhances percolation. Other times of the year, the system of STP allows it to maintain a stagnant level by containing the purified sewage water.”

A scientific wetland system with active bio-digester, this technology is a natural alternative of sewage purification to the conventional chemical treatment previously used by DJB. This involves feeding sewage into an underground sedimentation tank equipped with a bio-digester to break down and decompose solid waste components in the water. This is then complemented with the use of wetlands and mechanised aeration systems to naturally clean the water.

In Rajokri lake’s case, the wetland ecosystem was created with plants like spider lily and typha latifolia, a layer of gravel-lining zigzag to filter the water and a biofilm to process all pollutants. Once the water is pushed from the sedimentation tank into the wetland using solar pumps, the gravel layer works to isolate and immobilize heavy metals and other organic material in the water to an acceptable level.

“The zig-zag design through three terrace garden-like steps ensures that water gets to spend maximum time in the wetland. At its outlet, the water is almost clear with a BOD (biochemical oxygen demand) of 20ppm,” says Ankit in this report.

According to a 1996 book called the Treatment Wetlands by Robert H. Kadlec, Scott Wallace and Robert L. Knight, such wetlands are very effective in removing inorganic nutrients, heavy metals, particulate organic matter, suspended solids, dissolved organic carbon, etc. These wetlands have submerged aquatic macrophytes (aquatic photosynthetic organisms) with tiny cuticles that capture metals from the water surface and are also hardy enough to survive harsh conditions of pollution.

Additionally, in order to contain the algal bloom and remove trace pollutants and phosphates from detergents that go into the raw sewage, the DJB team introduced unique purification islands in the water body. These islands are basically rafts made out of a 2X2-meter PVC pipe framework with geo-netting that supports knots of hormone-treated plants like canna and cyperus. These plants not only increase nutrient uptake and accelerate the growth of other beneficial aquatic plants but also absorb pollutants and create a balance by preventing eutrophication (excessive enrichment of waterbody with minerals and nutrients that allows excessive growth of algae and results in oxygen depletion). According to Ankit, the objective is to make the water clean and suitable enough to introduce fishes into it and enhance its natural ecosystem.

Owing to all these innovative measures, the Rajokri sewage treatment plant now facilitates purification of 600 kilolitres (6 lakh litres) of raw sewage daily feeding the waterbody.

Community Involvement & Impact of the Lake

Spread across 9,446 square meters of redeveloped public space, including 2,000 square meters of the water body, the Rajokri lake is now a stellar example of innovation meeting grassroots level social development.

From an amphitheatre, an open gym, green play area and a bioswale rain garden, to changing rooms and inclusive spaces near the Chhath ghat, the Rajokri lake in its entirety is made keeping in mind the needs of the community living nearby.

For instance, Mriganka adds how based on one of the feedback received from the community, her team worked to separate the treated water body from an embankment assigned for the commonly practised Chhath festival rituals. The sandstone embankment tactfully creates the divide and water from the main lake is then pumped into the embankment situated at the bottom of the amphitheatre-cum-Chhath ghat.

While their efforts have yielded the expected results, Ankit adds that he was pleasantly surprised to see an environmental and sociological impact after the completion of the project in 2018.

“After the waterbody completely transformed, we were surprised to notice that 10 to 15 different species of birds had begun to migrate here. The wetlands were installed to encourage this and attract more species of birds and insects that would enhance the biodiversity of the area,” says Ankit.

He adds that prior to the project the area was primarily a dumping ground and hub for antisocial elements and that its transformation completely put an end to it. “One of the major challenges while working on this project was to tackle heavy encroachment. Plus it had become a hub for drunkards and several anti-social elements making it quite unsafe. Once, all of that was taken care of we began to realize its sociological impact on the community as well. One of the best feedbacks received was how the women in the area began to feel more safe crossing the location after sundown.” he adds.

According to DJB officials, a conventional project of this scale would have cost at least Rs 4 Crore, while the total expenditure of the Rajokri lake stands at Rs 1.6 crore, making it a cost-effective and innovative model for others to replicate. Owing to this, Rajokri lake recently received the excellence award from the Jal Shakti Ministry. With this success in place, Ankit and his team are now planning to complete 50 more water bodies in the next 5 months and also create 6 lakes across the city, by the end of the year.

(Edited by Vinayak Hegde)

In November 2009, Onkar Gauridhar, then 28 years old, went to pay his monthly water bill, issued by the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) in Pune, Maharashtra. To clear an amount of just Rs 160, Onkar had to wait in a queue with about 60 others for two and a half hours before he could reach the counter.

“I had never stepped in the office before, and assumed there was some technical glitch resulting in the long queue,” he says.

However, when he reached the kiosk, the official showed him a receipt of Rs 12,000. “I was shocked and showed him the 6×3 cm receipt displaying Rs 160 that I had. The official simply told me there was no point arguing, as the updated figures showed Rs 12,000 as dues. I ran from pillar to post to find justification for the exorbitant amount the entire day, but failed to get an answer. It was an upsetting experience, and never left my mind,” he adds.

Onkar, a resident of Chinchwad area in the city, had recently quit his job as a data analyst with an investment company, in search of better prospects. But this incident, he says, persuaded him to work alongside the PCMC to help save ten million litres of water annually.

However, there was a catch. He had chosen to take a six-month gap, before switching jobs to try something new in the field of analytics. “I saved about Rs 12 lakh to sustain myself during unemployment. However, my mother suffered heart ailments, and underwent surgeries which cost me Rs 7 lakh,” Onkar says.

A friend in need

Onkar confided in his college friend, Amit Deshmukh, about his situation. “I told him I have a client willing to invest, but no money to set up the business. Amit offered a lending land, and mortgaged his property to loan Onkar Rs 22 lakh,” he says.

Meanwhile, Onkar also roped in his ex-colleague, Shishir Thakur, to join the business. Shishir had also had a business deal which never materialised.
Around the same time, local body elections were underway, and Onkar took the opportunity to manage portfolios for the corporators. “I earned Rs 40 lakh by managing ten candidates, and repaid my debt in 11 months. Frequent visits to the municipal corporation during work helped me channelise some ideas,” he says.

During the next month, the trio visited the office to observe the various issues citizens were raising regarding their water bills. “We overheard and observed everything, and made notes of it. We proposed the idea of streamlining the water billing management system to the officials, but it was all in vain,” he tells The Better India.

“As an IT professional, I had made such systems for governments in Australia, the US, France, and other countries. I thought about why our governments did not have robust IT systems in place for smooth functioning. Many professionals from my field work in multinational companies and complain about poor government infrastructure, but conveniently go back to their respective offices to develop world-class softwares for other countries,” he says. This ignited the idea of their start-up, Cranberry Analytics.

The idea was presented to the officials, but they declined the offer. “They said they could not trust a third party with confidential data. It took five days of convincing the mayor, following which they gave us a small zone to try out a pilot project,” Onkar says,

10 million litres of water saved

Shishir, the co-founder of the start-up, says that once work began, the team realised that out of 1.3 lakh water metre connections, 22,000 were functional, and only 5,000 consumers were billed.

“The PCMC was earning Rs 8 crore and losing the majority of revenue to malpractices, unauthorised connections, and inaccuracies in the system. We worked upon two pilot projects before earning the tender in 2012,” Shishir recalls.

He adds that they spent four years to get all 1.3 lakh consumers in the government database, and identified faulty metres and billable consumers through technological interventions. “We introduced a barcode system to read metres, send information to servers, identify consumption patterns, bring transparency and seal leakages,” he says.

By 2016, the PCMC’s revenue had jumped to Rs 45 crore annually, which came through 1.55 lakh consumers, resulting in a recovery of about 80% of consumer dues.

Shishir says it was difficult to deal with the technical aspects, as well as to change consumer perception that they have to pay for using the water. Making them understand how water use is mapped and how they should use it judiciously demands efforts and requires relationships to be forged with the consumers. “With the introduction of this mobile app, the consumer can now monitor their usage every day, and understand if there are any fluctuations from normal in usage patterns,” the 34-year-old says.

The start-up dove deep into analysing and streamlining operations and management of the water distribution. “We learned that the system was losing 45% water. For example, if 100 MLD (millions of litres per day) of water was released, only 55% would reach consumers. Water released from the Elevated Storage Reservoir (ESR) lost its way to leakages, unauthorised connections, and other network issues. There was no surveillance, and we intervened and reduced artificial intelligence and technology to cut this lost by 35%,” Shishir says, adding that from 2017 onwards, a total of 10 million litres of water has been saved from this loss every year.

A changing landscape

Shishir says that in 2020, Cranberry Analytics created a war room at the PCMC office and that 29 reports are generated every day on a real-time basis. The system maps the water leakages, consumer patterns, recoveries, water usage fluctuations, and unauthorised water sourcing, in addition to raising an alert for faulty metres at micro-levels.

Amit says the company is working to predict water usage in the city in the coming months. “The city is expanding, and water use will change. The budget allocation, understanding new water lines, and approving connections could be predicted at least a couple of years before, through analytics. We will also enter the sector where groundwater extraction done by people can be metered, and the usage can be billed,” he says.

Amit adds that water is a crucial asset and that monitoring its usage through technology is one of the best ways to conserve and encourage the habit of judicious usage.