Dr. RAVI MARIWALA, founder, promoter and CEO of Smaart Water addresses the GPODS fellows
Dr. Ravi Mariwala is is really passionate about water and he really enjoys the subject matter of this field of study because it provides him the challenges which he was always been seeking for and he is fond of data and solving problems and since water provides both fun challenges to him, he enjoys working on it immensely . The topic for his session’s lecture was “SUSTAINABLE WATER IN INDIA AND IN CHALLENGES ON THE GROUND”
He started the lecture by recalling his experiences, where he confessed that he is a firm believer and that what he learnt in the earlier part of his career in manufacturing, was taught to him by a Japanese gentleman named Masaki.
“Whenever you have a problem go to gemba and gemba is the place of work so whenever you have a problem with water go to the place of problem and figure out what is happening and he learned a lot about water by going out there not just the technology and the chemistry and the engineering part of it but also the part of the human behavior”. All this helped him to gain a full 360 degree shift in his thinking.
The second thing that he spoke about was assimilating a lot of data in this matter and how do we handle this kind of data and how do we kind of slice it, dice it, and make it palatable so that we can take some actions and make some differences and improvements.
The outline of the session was based on the observations and reality on ground that he gathered, about the visits and experiences through the various projects that he contacted in different states like Uttarakhand and UP, Bellary-Karnataka, Mumbai and its surroundings. He gave a comprehensive overview of water and sewage in India, a simple framework for understanding challenges and opportunities for sustainable water and sanitation especially from the point of view of creating some policy interventions and ground level interventions which can really change the way in which we look at water and make water accessible for all and that is the kind of mission he has embarked on, to make clean water accessible to all.
One remarkable quote that he quoted in the midst of the session was “The rivers of India are at a direct communication with the lower end of the gastrointestinal tract of those who live upstream with the upper end of those who live downstream” thus, directly implying to the consumption of sewage.
The session was very insightful and relevant data which supported his valuable points. There were a lot of interesting aspects that were discussed, one of which went about as to how the data relating to water is being collected, what kind of data we get and how the data is being used to examine the problems and find solutions. Some engaging questions ranged from how much of a role does the caste system play with respect to access to water? Or How much has law and policy impacted the work on ground negatively as well as positively? How much water is being used by the different sectors and the quality of water which people avail? How is the water being distributed/priced between the “Rich and the Poor”? How important is a good sewage system? How are the corporates contributing in solving the water issue? What are all the various policies that are in place and how effective they are? If there is any alternative to water, and what are the cost benefits to it? These questions only left us deeply impacted and has only made us wonder on the deeper concerns in respect to water.
About the GPODS fellowship:
The Global Policy, Diplomacy and Sustainability (GPODS) is a program for public policy practitioners, business professionals, energy and climate change experts, entrepreneurs, Academicians, scholars and strategic analysts to act as a Launchpad for their careers. Currently we have fellows from five different countries namely USA, France, UK, Israel, Italy and 40+ world leaders as mentors from 15 different countries.
About the speaker:
Dr. Ravi Mariwala the founder promoter and CEO of Smaart Water. A company that provides affordable integrated and holistic water solutions for industrial institutional residential commercial and community markets in rural and urban India. He has started the company with a vision of providing sustainable and abundant water to everybody. He has also developed more than 10 technologies 25 plus products and 5 service packages which are commercialized. For him sustainability and outdoors are a passion. He has worked on sustainable and integrated solutions for water he has set up more than 10 million litres per year rain harvesting systems and more than 300 installations in water sustainability space he extensively lectures about sustainable solutions for water. He holds a PHD in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware with 5 patents and 17 publications in international peer review journals. He has more than 25 years of experience in chemical and allied processes industrial processes in various capacities including projects funded by DuPont, Air products, Raman Haas and the US government through DDS research Colorado. He has presented his vision for water at Stanford University American chemical society annual meeting at Boston in 2015 and 13th national convention of the UNSDG Bangalore and at the University of Delaware his alma mater. He is also a promoter of Mariko, Kaya and a promoter and director of Eternis fine chemicals. He’s an adjunct faculty at the institution of chemical technology at Mumbai and lectures on technology on entrepreneurship at ICT.