Mala Subramaniam, CEO, Arghyam, A foundation focused on making Sustainable Water for all
- Mala is the CEO of Arghyam, a foundation focused on making sustainable water available to all.
- She has earlier worked with multinationals in India and overseas.
Podcast
Overview
You know that there is a scarcity of water, but do you know how to save water? What is Water Management? Why is it necessary to save water? Let’s find out more about Water Management with Mala Subramaniam, CEO, of Arghyam, A foundation focused on making Sustainable Water for all.
00:35- bout Mala Subramaniam
- Mala is the CEO of Arghyam, a foundation focused on making sustainable water available to all.
- She has earlier worked with multinationals in India and overseas.
- She’s also a strategy consultant and coach.
01:04- About Arghyam
- Arghyam is a public charitable foundation set up with an endowment from Rohini Nilekani. ‘Arghyam’ is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘Offering’.
- Our Vision is “Safe, sustainable water for all”. Our Mission is to strengthen the ability of the ecosystem to enable water security for 100 million people by 2023.
- We believe that India’s water quality and scarcity issues can be tackled using science and community participation. However, to be effective, this needs to be done at scale.
- We are working with partners, in the ForWater coalition to bring a digital approach to make visible, with trust –groundwater, people, and content in a way that allows us to strengthen community participation in water management, at scale.
- Arghyam means Offering.
02:03- Water issues being faced in India
- The only renewable source that we have for water is the rains.
- On average India gets most of its rain in 100 hours.
- We need to find ways to store it for the rest of the year.
- It falls in some places, but it’s required in all places.
- Matching the spatial and temporal demand and supply is a huge challenge.
- There are bacteriological issues, and chemical contamination issues of Arsenic, Fluoride, and increasingly Uranium.
05:21- What are the areas that you are focusing on?
- We as Arghyam decided to focus in rural on groundwater.
- India is a groundwater economy.
- We draw more groundwater than the USA and China combined.
- Our work has been in seeing if we make this invisible resource visible.
- Understand how much water is there and make that available for people to engage with.
09:09- Would you say the policy is an obstacle to better water management in India?
- Groundwater is loosely regulated, and we believe that this lack of regulation has created a crisis.
- It is unsustainable being over-extracted.
RESOURCES:
You can connect with Arghyam- LinkedIn
Profile
- Mala is the CEO of Arghyam, a foundation focused on making sustainable water available to all.
- She has earlier worked with multinationals in India and overseas.
- She’s also a strategy consultant and coach.
