Page 31 - Demo Faces

what they may still use, because a public tap won’t help cut the drudgery of water collection if it’s further away.”
The government was keen to do something but was also wary of setting
a precedent by o ering too much: if
the households covered by this loan project got water piped into their house, everyone else would want it, too, and that would get very complicated and di cult to maintain. The story of water supply to rural areas is littered with the failures of wells and pipeline projects that oundered because they couldn’t be maintained. Best to keep it simple and basic for rural areas, they said.
“This is the bias that we have: development partners, governments, even the communities themselves
say it has to be simple and basic. Yet, when I visited these villages, I could
see everyone had a smartphone. Why couldn’t you just give them a customer interface where they could click a button to let you know if they’re not getting water? Why not add SIM-based sensors along these long, unmanned pipelines
to monitor water ow? Why not let the women in the villages manage the local supply?”
When Pokhrel proposed the last idea in a village meeting of 80-odd people, a senior government o cial next to her whispered: “You won’t nd any women accountants here.”
“Something came over me and I said: ‘How many of you are in a self-help group?’ Fifty hands shot up. ‘And how many of you are doing the group’s accounts?’ Thirty hands went up, mostly women.”
And so began a long journey—Pokhrel recalls going back to meet with the
government o cials and communities every month for a year—of showing
that ADB was genuinely keen to hear what people have to say. It was a process of shedding biases on both sides, deconstructing myths, bringing analysis and cost comparisons to show it doesn’t cost more and it’s more sustainable if you do it di erently.
“They were even more excited than me in the end because this would be the rst large-scale water project in India that was a 24-7, household-based, smart water project, run by women in their own communities,” says Pokhrel.
Two weeks ago, Pokhrel went back to the project site. The women were busy, as usual. But they took a break from their chores to pull out their phones and show her the water supply management mobile app. They’d also already started doing household surveys to create the asset registry and had identi ed who would be the plumbers, the cloud-based managers, and the accountants among them.
“My message to you is innovation doesn’t need to cost more,” says Pokhrel. “It’s a process of overcoming biases, taking time to bring your client onside to show them that they can do things di erently.”
Watch Neeta Pokhrel’s talk at the 2020 ADB Innovation Fair Trailer / Full talk
Find out more:
India: West Bengal Drinking Water Sector Improvement Project
Read Neeta’s blog post: For rural water systems, small and simple is a “pipe dream”
ADB Bringing Safe, Sustainable Drinking Water Service to 1.65 Million in India’s West Bengal State
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