Challenge
Reinventing how we think about our dwindling water supply
Water shortages could hold back growth and development, provoking growing inequalities and tensions. Attempts to overcome those shortages using the traditional infrastructures of bigger dams or even diverting the course of rivers threatens only greater environmental damage. Pumping water from aquifers deep underground will be hugely costly because of the energy required. One of the biggest innovation challenges of the century to come will be the reinvention of our relationship with our most basic, life-enhancing resource: water.
Launched in 2008 by the visionary Piramal Foundation, Sarvajal has built on the lessons of an earlier entrant into the market, Naandi, to develop a market-based model for supplying drinking water to communities in India, often remote, rural villages which are not on the mains water system. All the equipment is managed and monitored via a cloud-based system, a bit like ATMs but for water AWMs.