OveeGore
Introduction
Background
India is home to 1.375 billion individuals, and rising. With the highest birth rate and greatest population to land density, and approximately one out of every six people on this planet inhabiting India, water management is a difficult task. On top of it all, India’s government is fragmented, with each state possessing unique characteristics, languages, and diversity, and the local, state, and national governments possessing entities of their own. These gaps in communication and collaboration are often filled with corruption, and personal agendas, with the absence of a sense of greater good for the country, and all of its people. India’s National Water Policy, is failing to deliver to its citizens what it promised, safe water, for everyone. The purpose of the current National Water policy is to address India’s water situation in depth, taking into account factors such as population growth, climate change, language barriers, and other demographics. With these issues, it is expected of this policy that solutions and guidelines are detailed and outlined, money is set aside for solutions, and lower governing bodies are given specific instructions. In the process of analyzing and reading this National Water Policy, as well as site-visiting the most polluted body of water in India, I concluded that the current situation was simply not sufficient, and there was a large disconnect in the current policy’s intended purpose, and its execution.
The idea
When the outline for this project was presented to me, the idea that was pitched was that the topic has to be something we are passionate about, and everyone was to have their own unique take. Some of my classmates were taking ideas and running with them, they immediately knew what they wanted their project to be, what inquiries they had regarding their subject, and what further research they wanted to uncover. My first thought was India. How do I combine my passion for my homeland, with my passion for healthcare, into one project ? I then thought about the issues India has, that lead to medical problems that it’s people face. I had always been interested in slums like Dharavi, ( the biggest slum in Asia, located in Mumbai ) and would spend hours researching how people lived there. In this research the most prevalent issue that surfaced was water pollution. India’s relationship with water fascinated and concerned me immediately. The basic idea was water borne diseases are in abundance, and clean, safe, drinking water is scarce. As I brainstormed, ideas such as building a portable water filtration device came to mind, so that everyone would have access to clean water! This idea slowly disintegrated as I began my research. I then began to annotate the National Water Policy of India from 2012, as a start, and found many things outlined in the policy that were clearly not being executed the way they were supposed to. I uncovered problems with India’s relationship with water that had nothing to do with lack of technology and everything to do with the government, the infrastructure, and social/cultural values. I decided that this project would conduct research to analyze the flaws of India’s National water policy along with its implementation, focusing on the characteristics of India as a country that contribute to this issue.