“Without stakeholder engagement we cannot realise our ambition to create new waste water treatment options that work for India”

PAVITRA GANGA aims to create policy and social support for the tested innovative technologies and concepts through a co-creation process in which stakeholders are engaged. This process is at the centre of the work package ‘water governance’. Work package leaders Anshuman and Tineke Hooijmans explain us the approach and the necessity of this stakeholder engagement.

Why is stakeholder engagement important for the project and how do you think the Pavitra Ganga project is being received by the stakeholders?  In what way is the project relevant to them?

Anshuman: “In most of our projects we see that scientific investigation and research can only have a real impact if the research and project work is engaging the right stakeholders. Regular stakeholder engagement gives us input and feedback on our activities and makes our work more effective. It also gives the project partners a clear idea of the acceptability of the project’s suggestions in real life. It makes it also easier to prioritize the possible interventions. The stakeholders have been quite supportive of the project and we believe the technological innovations and policy inputs from the project shall be quite useful to them.”

What were your experiences with the first Pavitra Ganga stakeholder workshops in Delhi and Kanpur?

Anshuman: “Our stakeholders’ workshops were very well received and the stakeholders showed not only their interest but also real engagement and commitment. For this project the input of stakeholders is extremely important since our work on water governance is crucial to develop new solutions and innovative technologies on wastewater treatment and resource recovery. The options for policy reform and decision support tools we will provide them, can be helpful to them, provided that we can consult with them during the entire course of the project.”

Tineke Hooijmans: “We were very happy with the experiences and the network that TERI has already built up  with their previous activities, especially in New Delhi. This allowed us to have an easy and effective start of the water governance work for Pavitra Ganga.”

What are the advantages of this project being an EU-India collaboration project?

Tineke Hooijmans: “This kind of collaboration between organisations from the two continents is very interesting and relevant. It makes us conscious of the differences between both sides, and it helps the European partners to better understand the local needs and challenges.

One of the most prominent objectives of Pavitra Ganga is that European knowledge is transferred to India and that these solutions are also adapted to the local circumstances and needs. To have all these prominent Indian institutes and partners in our project consortium will facilitate this adaptation process.

There is also an interest in this collaboration for water policy developments in Europe. The challenges that India faces in the coming years are quite similar to those in Europe: both continents have to deal with climate change, more frequent extreme water events and droughts.

Water re-use is also one of the important themes of Pavitra Ganga and gaining new insights and developing new solutions is as relevant to Europe as to India.”

Anshuman: “The biggest benefit of this kind of collaborations is the chance of mutual learning. Learnings on a wide range of innovative technologies, but also learnings from a series of regulatory changes and policy reforms in Europe, like for example the experiences of developing and implementing of the EU Water Framework Directive. The learnings save countries from re-inventing the wheel.

Our project is actually organized to share the best practices from both sides. We have mapped out some of the successful approaches and also efforts that did not work in Europe and India, to define the way forward.”  

Can the European approaches on water governance reforms actually be transferred to India? There are big differences between both continents…

Anshuman: “That is true. Of course one cannot copy and implement European approaches or regulatory reforms and tools. But what is important in this are the learnings and not the differences between Europe and India.  It is crucial to determine the critical factors for success or failure in the regulations. What we have learned up to now is that Europe decided to move away from just a policy for waste water treatment and evolved to a much wider approach that also incorporates a policy approach for water re-use. India has already been looking towards bringing in advanced approach on wastewater treatment and also on water reuse, but a wide-scale implementation of a regulation that incorporates both of these in practice is needed for our country. We are looking to add value to the existing policies and regulations in this regard.”

Tineke Hooijmans: “Pavitra Ganga is certainly not trying to impose something or to transfer a water governance approach. This project is about collaboration and learning from each other and the ambition is to create new options that work for India and that can on the other hand also be valuable for Europe.”

What kind of stakeholders are really important for the project work?

Tineke Hooijmans: “It depends on the work package. For Water Governance the governmental stakeholders are very important and we work with all authorities, both local and national and also with the representatives of the National Mission for Clean Ganga. And when we look at the technology development, we also expect a lot from water board members and also from the stakeholders who work on the technology in India.”

Anshuman: “In India water governance is a multi-institutional setup. Water is a state subject and there are many ministries directly or indirectly involved in water governance. As far as the project is concerned, we are engaging with several key stakeholders at different levels i.e. central, state and local level. At Central level for example we are engaging with the Ministry of Jal Shakti (Department of Water Resources), Central Pollution Control Board, National Mission for Clean Ganga, National Water Mission, NGOs etc. At the State/Local level we are engaging with the agencies such as Delhi Jal Board, DPCC at Delhi; and U.P. Jal Nigam & U.P. State Pollution Control Board at Kanpur, as well as other NGOs, etc.

At the same time we do not forget the dialogue with the local communities near our demo sites. They also play a very important role.  For example in Kanpur we are establishing a good dialogue with the tanneries and leather manufacturers and with the local farmers.

What are the expectations of the local stakeholders with respect to Pavitra Ganga?

Anshuman: “It is important for us in the project to bring in the perspectives of the local stakeholders. They already have had other experiences with projects and governmental efforts to improve the wastewater system. We try to bring in learnings from their past experiences in terms of what has worked and what hasn’t, the bottlenecks to be addressed, their priorities etc. With respect to wastewater reuse it is the local stakeholders who are best placed to tell us what the bottlenecks are and what kind of policy & infrastructural instruments must be in place to make it work. Their knowledge is key to make innovative ideas and technology implementable in real life conditions for end users.”

Tineke Hooijmans: “It was great to see the commitment and motivation of the local stakeholders during our stakeholders’ meetings. They are really interested and like to be involved in our project work. We also created a WhatsApp group to interact with them. They also taught  us the main challenges to achieve a good wastewater reuse.

We also noticed some confusion among them on terminology and on understanding different policies and water governance structures. It was therefore important that we gave some presentations and clarified these items. We were not able to present them the different technologies we want to test at our demo sites yet. So far, we only had one workshop which was not enough to share this information. But we plan to do this at the next workshop.”

What will be on the program of the coming stakeholder workshops?

Tineke Hooijmans:“The next step in the process are actually co-creation workshops  where TU Delft will organize a more in depth dialogue to identify the main issues for waste water treatment and water reuse.”

Anshuman: “A planning for regular meetings with all stakeholders has already been established. These regular meetings in the form of interviews, co-creation workshops etc., will help us to establish a real dialogue on the challenges and barriers for our demo sites. We will involve them in all stages of our project and this for all relevant work packages. We want more then just sharing with them a package of the potential innovative technologies for the wastewater treatment, reuse and resource recovery. We also want to hear from them what the associated challenges, bottlenecks and priorities are to evolve to suitable economical and policy related solutions.

How similar or different are the water governance systems in both demo sites? What common drivers and barriers did you identify?

Anshuman: “Water governance system is at both demonstration sites the Central and State level as mentioned earlier. While several Central Agencies formulate policies at central level, State agencies are mainly the executive bodies. New Delhi has a lot of Central & State Agencies and the engagement of the authorities is probably bigger. There is also a bigger pressure to improve the challenges with respect to the pollution of the rivers and the need for effective solutions. The latter is also there in Kanpur, but the pace is different.

In the policy brief on water governance systems (deliverable 2.1) , there are both Indian and European case studies for waste water treatment and resource recovery presented. How did you select these case studies and what are the most important lessons learnt?

Tineke Hooijmans: “The selection of the European case studies is based on experiences and contacts we have, but also on literature studies. We focused on areas with a high level of water stress like Belgium. At the same time, we focused on water reuse and on resource recovery with case studies from Switzerland and Belgium for the use of biogas and phosphorus recovery.”

Anshuman: “For the Indian cases the approach was more or less similar. Both successful and not so successful cases are in the policy brief, we mainly looked at the key factors for policy, technological and financial aspects. The Indian cases focus on wastewater reuse in agriculture and treated domestic wastewater reuse in the industry.

For our Kanpur demo site, the Jajmau STP,  it is clear that there were treatment capacity gaps. The pollution was not effectively removed and there are technological anomalies, and also there is an increase of waste water discharge, no solutions for the discharge of chromium by the tanneries... The result was that the wastewater treatment in the region is not effective and needs to be re-thought and re-built. The capacity must be also increased, all pollutions need to be taken on. The government has been initiating various projects on these and we look forward to understand learning or barriers that could be used to design the way forward. 

But there are also successful case studies in the policy brief like for example that of Nagpur where treated domestic wastewater is successfully reused by the local industry: the MAHAGENCO power generation company. There exists a clear contractual and monitoring arrangement between the local municipal body, Nagpur Municipal Corporation and MAHAGENCO, as well as a clear policy from the Government of Maharashtra for facilitating wastewater reuse under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). 

So the larger objective is to bring in the cross learnings from the case studies and experiences from both the countries for more sustainable solutions for wider uptake in India.

How important do you view water governance to be for the development of wastewater treatment and resource recovery in India?

Anshuman: “It is crucial. Water governance work is at the heart of an integrated approach. It is crucial to have an updated and conducive policy approach with an effective implementation and enforcement framework. The idea is to have an inclusive water governance approach with a clear identification of the roles and responsibilities per actor. Apart from that we need to have a sustainable financing mechanism along with involvement of stakeholders, their awareness and capacity building, and use of effective and affordable technologies.”

Tineke Hooijmans: “The technologies we are testing with Pavitra Ganga are proven, but that doesn’t mean they will work in India. Because of different technological parameters but also because of different eco and governance systems. That is why water governance is key and crucial for all of our activities.

By the way: that is also the case in the European Union. Without guidelines and coordination at a higher level and of course enforcement of water quality regulations an effective approach is unthinkable.”

Anshuman: “That is why we aim to deliver policy inputs that can actually facilitate effective implementation.

Tineke Hooijmans: “The lessons learnt with respect to water governance will not only be published in reports, but shall also find their way to a series of courses and workshops for stakeholders on topics like wastewater safety planning, specific technologies, monitoring and evaluations…etc. We will have a lot of interactions during these courses and that shall also help us in understanding how to train and inform these stakeholder groups.”

Last question: if you were asked to draw up a new water governance system for India. How would that look? What interventions would benefit the current governance systems to further develop the waste water treatment and resource recovery at our demo sites/in India?

Anshuman: “The development of the water governance systems are already the fruit of thoughts, studies and consultations from the past years. As a project we focus on giving the tools and strategies to really implement new approaches and to make actual progress in wastewater treatment and resource recovery.

Therefore it is also crucial to know the actual situation on the ground and propose to all stakeholder acceptable options to improve. Also it is necessary to clearly determine the roles & responsibilities of the involved stakeholders and actors, because an effective implementation depends on it.

And then, there are of course the financial mechanisms. Who will fund the investments and what are the local market mechanisms and the integration of incentives to make the system sustainable in the long term? The Indian energy sector can be used as a source of inspiration.

What we also are missing are clear definitions. What does water reuse actually mean, we need to refine the water reuse standards so that we can actually provide the re-users with water that meets their quality requirements.

And then we also come to one of the most important aspects of a water governance for India: water pricing. All efforts we mentioned so far can only work in the long run if we have a rational water pricing system. The price should reflect the actual value of the resource and that is very important. For the wastewater treatment sector this pricing policy is crucial to make the wastewater reuse attractive.

One more thing is the idea of the development of a decentralized approach whenever necessary. As a project we are currently working in urban areas. But India is of course a mix of urban and rural settings and in some areas a centralized approach is not a good idea. There an effective decentralized wastewater treatment system is needed and this possibility should be integrated in the current water governance system.”