Sunita Nadamuni is the Chairperson of Arugyam, a Bangalore-based public charity foundation.
Arghyam supports sustainable, community-based water management solutions with the goal of providing water security for all. It partners with non-profits and governments to leverage technology in its mission. It employs a data-driven approach to transform India's water systems. Arghyam was founded through a private donation by Rohini Nilekani.
Arghyam's vision of providing safe and sustainable water for all is now being realized with digital tools for scale and impact. They aim to design new platforms and tools that work at scale, leveraging technology as a means to provide water security and track availability. Their solution is community-driven because they believe that communities should lead the decision-making process and that with the right kind of technology they can generate reliable data in real time.
Al-Ghyam has worked with the government as a technical partner on various water-related programs.
Sunita spoke to indianexpress.com about the opportunities and challenges presented by using digital tools to achieve water security for communities, and how working with governments and partners to adopt a technology lens to solve water security problems. Excerpts:
Venkatesh Kannaiah: Could you please give us an overview of the work undertaken by Arghyaam Foundation with a focus on technology-based interventions?
Sunita Nadamuni: Arugyam started in 2004-05 with a focus on domestic water security, i.e., providing water to households in a safe and sustainable manner, given that good quality piped water was a dream for Indian households then. But our focus was also on building capacity in communities, enabling them to own their assets and manage them for their own benefit. We have been working in this space for about 20 years and have worked on about 140 projects in 22 states.
Initially, we were a grant-making organization. Later, we took up specific program themes, provided funds, and worked with partners, focusing on participatory groundwater management (PGWM) and water quality. Most of our work was focused on building the capacity of frontline workers, bringing knowledge and expertise in hydrogeology, groundwater management, and water quality to a wider audience, and ensuring community participation and ownership in water management.
We were the first to launch the National Water Portal (www.indiawaterportal.org) as part of our collaboration with the National Knowledge Commission. The objective was to provide easy access and knowledge to various stakeholders on all things water related. Our role was also to understand and document the locally available knowledge on traditional water use and make knowledge gained from proven solutions across different regions available to all.
Arghyaam’s vision of providing safe and sustainable water to all is now being taken forward with digital tools to increase scale and impact. (Express Photo by Jitendra M) Venkatesh Kannaiah: Can you tell us about some of the innovations that have emerged from various programs?
Sunita Nadamuni: We have acted as technical partners for various government water-related programmes. In the Panchayati Raj department in Karnataka, we have worked with partners to improve rural water security by focusing on the quality of the MGNREGA scheme through scientific planning and community participation.
The intervention used a modeling tool called CLART (Composite Landscape Assessment and Restoration Tool), developed by our partner, the Foundation of Ecological Security. CLART enables technical staff to scientifically plan supply-side interventions for water conservation and natural resource management, working with communities. CLART also suggests a set of structures that are most suitable for a site based on the soil's recharge potential. The tool was used for planning in about 1,600 gram panchayats across eight districts in Karnataka and was found to be 2.5 times more effective in producing scientific, community-based plans.
We have also been working with our partner, Indian Foundation for Natural Resource Economic Management (INREM), to create awareness on water quality through online courses. These have increased the number of tests conducted in the field and also created awareness on water quality. The courses are now being adopted by the Union government's Jal Jeevan Mission. These courses are available in local languages. Online guided mentoring on water quality has been provided to various state government officials working on water-related issues and associated with their respective departments.
In Bihar, in collaboration with our partners Aga Khan Rural Support Programme India (AKRSPI) and Water for People, we have integrated three different digital tools in managing piped water schemes at the community or ward level. This is currently being tested in around 548 wards across three blocks in the state. The digital tools provide comprehensive insights into aspects like functioning of the scheme (consistency of water supply over a month and reasons for interruption), financial status (fee collection, expenditure), community engagement including tank cleaning activities, water quality data including test results using field test kits. This helps in tracking water supply, maintenance, operations and management. The technology tools have helped in community ownership and engagement at the ward level. We have found that 91 percent of piped water schemes are functional and getting water even after a long period of time, which is high given our experience in water related programmes.
Thus, technological innovation has played a key role in different stages and processes of the program, including scientific planning (CLART), building capacity and extending expertise to dispersed audiences through water quality courses, and building transparency and accountability.
Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell us about one or two initiatives that you are working on that you think are very long-term bets and will have a significant social impact if successful.
Sunita Nadamuni: We are currently the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and Artificial Intelligence partner for Jal Jeevan Mission, which delivers safe water to every household. One of the key points of Jal Jeevan Mission is that it talks about functional household tap connections. 'Functional' is the key here. Other government programmes may aim at asset creation but they don't know how it works on the ground. We are currently working on three axes – sustainability of water source, quality of water supplied and operation and maintenance of water supply schemes.
We believe that technology can play a major role in enabling sustainability of the infrastructure built under Jal Jeevan Mission. We are neither a technology or solution provider nor a technology implementer in this program. We want to integrate all the existing solutions, make them interoperable, and open up the system for innovation. This is important because technology solutions tend to be vertically focused and do not seamlessly communicate with each other. The resulting fragmentation makes it very difficult for end users who have to use multiple different apps to get their work done. DPI also enables innovation from the ecosystem by standardizing interfaces on common underlying building blocks, making it easier for entrepreneurs to build apps for specific use cases on top of the digital infrastructure.
Throughout our work, integrating technology has helped us address gaps in access to information, knowledge and expertise, and in the capabilities of frontline and other workers. A DPI mindset allows us to address the innovation gap. The next thing we are looking at is the role of AI. Conversational AI, especially in local languages, can go a long way in increasing literacy on water quality and sustainability for frontline workers and communities. We are also looking at how AI can help build insights from large amounts of data for policymaking and decision-making.
“So far, we have recognised water testing as a problem and helped develop low-cost water testing systems,” says Sunita Nadhamuni on Arghyam’s impact on India’s water innovation ecosystem. (Express photo by Jithendra M) Venkatesh Kannaiah: What do you see as your impact on the Indian water innovation ecosystem?
Sunita Nadamuni: Our work is specific to the water sector, and we are a hub for exchanging information and best practices, and bringing together different technical actors to explore new solutions. Our strong partner network and listening to the voices on the ground allow us to identify problems, contextualize existing solutions, and identify and support the application of solutions that have the potential to be applied at scale. Our impact is visible in the water security platform that we have developed, as well as online courses and tools on water management and distribution. But we do all this in collaboration with partner organizations, and we bring all the technical actors together through funding.
We provide funding and risk capital for a range of these technology interventions, and use our expertise in on-the-ground action research to inform and provide guidance for technology products in this sector.
In the past, we have focused on water quality testing and supported the development of low-cost water quality testing systems. We also supported the Water Challenge hosted by the Nudge Institute in 2023, where most of the finalists and winners were startups with solutions such as tracking water leaks and removing water pollutants. Again, our role was to explain the background and provide guidance to startups.
Venkatesh Kannaiah: What have you learnt from Arghyam and what's next for you in terms of technology interventions?
Sunita Nadamuni: We have developed ample expertise and understanding over time on how to design technology for government programs and design technology interventions in a constructive and creative way. We have worked on informing, building solutions to water-related problems, deploying many of these solutions on a pilot or practical scale, fine-tuning them based on feedback, and training field workers in using digital tools. This is the expertise we have been building for the last 18 years. In the first phase, we worked on democratizing knowledge and information with the India Water Portal. In the last phase, we worked on distributing expertise through capacity building. And in the current phase, we are working on creating DPI to increase technology-driven innovation in the water sector. My personal experience working with Dell in the social sector has also helped.
