Gateway of India

Today we took a day off from our work schedule to do some tourism of the business and commercial districts of the city. Erin Binder of the Acara challenge joined us today for her first day in India. After seeing the Gateway of India, we were met by U of MN Acara Challenge participant, and Mumbai resident Neel Kulkarni. Neel took us around the various sites of Mumbai from the beach where we sampled Indian cool treats to the sites of the terrorist attacks at the Taj and Oberoi Trident hotels. We also took in a national art gallery, visited the beautiful Victoria Terminal (VT) train station, and stopped for a photo opportunity outside the Bombay Municipal Cooperation Building. We finished up the day by doing some gift shopping at the Bombay Store, had a nice iced coffee drink at Coffee Day, and took a fascinating train ride home through the city.

Saturday in Mumbai

Today started with a change of scenery. We moved from the Rodas Hotel, where we stayed the first 3 nights, to the student housing at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. After settling in to our new rooms we met with Dr. Sethi from the Center for Environmental Science and Engineering and toured his labs. It was great to learn about some of the environmental research going on here from monitoring of air quality throughout India to experimenting with gasifiers to obtain energy from biomass.

After lunch in the mess hall at our hostel, we spent a few hours relaxing before taking off for our second slum visit. This time we visited a slum a bit farther from campus and were guided by two men who live in the community. Again we spoke with several community residents about their water situation. In this slum, water runs from 5:30-9:30pm every night and people pay for all the water coming into the slum. It consisted of permanent housing. People pay the equivalent of about $3 per month per family for water. The largest problems were that the pipes are old at 25 years and that often the pipes run through the sewer drains. We frequently saw pipes that were leaking water, which means that dirty water can also get into the water pipes. All the people we spoke with boil water only during monsoon (which starts in ~1 week) since many more of the pipes become submerged in contaminated sewage water. There are few sewage lines in these communities, instead just open sewer drains.

After returning from the slum visit, we returned to the hostel, played some ping pong, and headed out for a night in Mumbai. We took "autos," or auto rickshaws, to a nice restaurant not far from campus where we enjoyed ourselves for a few hours. Then it was back to the hostel for a restless night of sleep in our steamy dorms.

Slum Visit

Slum Visit

Today began with a morning meeting with our contact from the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, Mr. Anand Jugtap. He was very informative with insights into the Slum Sanitation Program and about the implementation of a water program in general. He is going to be setting up a tour of Slum Sanitation facilities on Monday, meetings with a slum water cooperative on Wednesday and a group meeting with the community based organizations on Friday. He will be helping us refine our ideas and move our program forward.

We also had our first tour of a slum community during the time period when water runs throughout the city of Mumbai, between 1-4pm. This is the only time period water runs through the municipal lines. It was very interesting to see firsthand some of the conditions that we had been reading about the past six months. Even within the same community, people obtain water in a variety of ways. Some people own municipal taps, which are usually located in the narrow walk ways/streets between homes. Some buy water from neighbors. Some take water from public taps and carry it longer distances to their homes. There were also a few wells, though they were not in use. In general, people do receive about 30-50L of water per capita per day. During our community visit, it was most useful to learn from the community members about their water use, treatment, and problems. We met with community members and were able to see the problems with the water distribution system and learn about how they currently obtain water. From the visit, we saw a lot and hope to use our observations and informal discussions to further our ideas.

Tomorrow we will be moving onto the IIT Bombay campus and making more visits to two other slum communities in Mumbai.

First day

Today completes are first full day in India. The morning started out by meeting a Mr. Gagan Goyle. He started his first business while in his third year of university at IIT Bombay. He now runs a successful startup business that works to educate students in real life science and engineering through providing curriculum and training and in the field of robotics. He gave us good insight into what it takes to start a successful business.

After the morning meeting and some time attempting to sort out phone service, we had the privilege of meeting our IIT Bombay counterparts for the first time. We gave the presentation for our water solution and received critical feedback from the students on our ideas. We also had the pleasure of meeting with the community representatives that had been assisting the IIT Bombay students with their ground research. After the critique session, we organized our first field trip into the slums.

Tomorrow we will be traveling into slums near IIT Bombay campus to perform our first round of field research. We hope to learn more about how our program can be adapted to a slum setting. We will be working with two students from IIT Bombay and the community representative. We will also be meeting with Mr Jugtap, our contact at the municipality of greater Mumbai.

Arrived in Mumbai!

In a little under a day of travel, the ReachOut team arrived safely in Mumbai. We caught some lovely views of the city as we flew in and saw some of the telltale Mumbai landmarks. After a slightly hair-raising taxicab journey through a vast array of auto-rickshaws, bikes, trucks and other taxi cabs all jockeying for a few inches of road available, we arrived in our hotel safe and sound. Tomorrow we will be getting acclimatized to the city and meeting our IIT Bombay counterparts in person for the first time.

4 Days Until the Trip

Welcome to the ReachOut Water Solutions Acara challenge Mumbai trip blog!

We hope to update this blog as regularly as possible while on our trip with pictures, progress, and thoughts about our time in Mumbai.