About this episode

The episode discusses India's water crisis through the insights of three experts addressing governance, technology, and community involvement.

What does it actually take to fix India's water crisis — not in theory, but on the ground? In this episode, we sit down with three people working at very different points of the same problem: Dr. Indumathi Nambi (IIT Madras), Mayank Kumar (PhD fellow, IIT Madras), and Nandakumar (International Center for Clean Water). Together, they unpack why water remains one of India's oldest and most stubborn challenges. The challenge arises not for lack of technology, but because of governance gaps, broken ownership structures, and systems that were never built to scale with India's sprawling cities. Mayank shares how growing up in Rajasthan, one of India's driest states, shaped his research into nutrient recovery from wastewater. Indumathi reflects on two decades of trying to close the gap between lab research and real-world policy. And NandaKumar makes the case for "people's water data", democratizing water measurement so communities own the problem, not just suffer from it. The conversation moves from decentralized sanitation systems to the economics of "free" water, from circular nutrient recovery to a shared vision of what India could look like in 2036 — a country…

People in this episode

Guests: Dr. Indumathi Nambi, Mayank Kumar, Nandakumar

Topics covered

• water crisis
• governance
• wastewater
• decentralized sanitation
• nutrient recovery
• community engagement
• future of water management

Keywords

• water crisis
• India
• wastewater
• nutrient recovery
• decentralized sanitation
• governance
• community data

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: IIT Madras, International Center for Clean Water

Places: India, Rajasthan

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