Partnership background

The University of Iowa (UI), located in an agricultural state in the American Midwest, has a longstanding connection with Sehgal Foundation, headquartered in Iowa’s state capitol, Des Moines, and with S M Sehgal Foundation in India. Executive Vice President, Sehgal Foundation, Rajat Jay Sehgal, is a UI graduate. He was recently recognized with the university’s
International Impact Award International Impact Award.

The UI India Winterim is an award-winning study-abroad program with courses held in locations throughout India for three-weeks each winter break. Students learn from organizations engaged in transformative activities in India. S M Sehgal Foundation has hosted students and faculty from the UI India Winterim course for many years. The unique project-based course is offered through the UI College of Engineering to create a better understanding of the effects of water management practices that include check dams in the Aravalli Hills and rainwater harvesting in government schools in Nuh District of Haryana. Student samples of water levels and salinity have shown that check dams enhance the amount of freshwater in the area, and a set of monitoring wells was created to measure the size and shape of the freshwater pocket in a rainwater harvesting well in village Karhera in Nuh. Seventy-five students and five faculty members have participated in six offerings to date.

Expanding the partnership

Sehgal Foundation and UI received a grant recently from the US India Education Foundation to expand its activities and engage with engineering educators at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, the premiere university in water resources and civil engineering in India. With this funding, professors and students will travel to meet together and with foundation staff to discuss evidence-based engineering training that emphasizes place-based learning for sustainable water development in resource-constrained communities. The place-based focus will engage with many communities served by Sehgal Foundation in new collaborations on topics such as flood mitigation and management, fluoride removal from groundwater sources, and evaluating the effectiveness of drinking water filters on viruses.

Following a successful visit from Dr. Kansal of IIT Roorkee to UI in May of 2019, Professor Allen Bradley and graduate student Libby Casavant arrived at Sehgal Foundation in Gurugram in late July. The office was familiar to Bradley who, in addition to chairing the UI Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department and conducting research at IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering, has also been an instructor for the UI India Winterim course on four trips. Casavant is a CEE graduate student who has spent the past six years working as a water resources engineer in the US and in Liberia. Her research interests include flood mitigation and management in underserved areas.

Visit to Nuh District in Haryana

Bradley and Casavant started out their trip by meeting with Sehgal Foundation staff and visiting several villages in Nuh. During these visits, they had the opportunity to collect data from observation wells and samples from borehole wells and check dam reservoirs. Previous UI visits all occurred during the winter, so this monsoon-season trip was a unique opportunity to observe annual fluctuations in freshwater and water quality in Nuh.

Sehgal Foundation staff, Harmanjeet Singh and Aparajeeta Vaibhav, introduced the visitors to several villages in Nuh that are attempting to cope with high fluoride levels in their groundwater wells. High fluoride is pervasive in some areas, appearing in both shallow and deep borehole samples. Residents report health issues related to the high fluoride such as skin and tooth discoloration and aching muscles. UI researchers hope to assist Sehgal Foundation’s efforts to produce a filter or treatment system that will reduce these levels that are notoriously challenging elements to remove from water.

Flood mitigation and management is another area UI hopes to collaborate with Sehgal Foundation and IIT Roorkee. The internationally recognized IIHR is home to the Iowa Flood Center, and UI investigators hope to use their expertise to increase resilience among flood-prone areas in India. In order to learn more about this topic, Bradley and Casavant met with researchers at IIT Roorkee and the National Institute of Hydrology (NIH) in Roorkee.

Visit to Samastipur and Darbhanga districts in Bihar

Gushing from the steep slopes of the Himalayas, monsoon runoff slows down and spreads out when it reaches Bihar’s flat agricultural lands. This drastic change in topography often leads to widespread flooding. Bradley and Casavant learned more about the factors exacerbating the flooding situation and current attempts to predict, manage, and curtail it during meetings with faculty at the National Institute of Technology, Patna, Bihar, during their second week in India. The primary flood control measures currently in use are earthen embankments, which can protect some areas from flooding, but also have a track record of failing or overtopping, causing catastrophe and loss of life.

A visit with foundation team members to flooded areas of the Samastipur and Darbhanga districts of Bihar further illustrated the realities of chronic flooding, as Bradley and Casavant were able to meet and talk to those displaced by the 2019 floods. As often as every other year, people who live and farm in low-lying areas are forced to evacuate by foot or by boat. Older family members and children stay in ad-hoc tents and shelters along embankments and roads, sometimes for months at a time, until waters recede and the threat of flash flooding is reduced. This tenuous situation is not ideal for health or safety, and the loss of crops and animals leads to severe economic hardship during flood years. UI hopes to work with Sehgal Foundation and IIT Roorkee to help flood-affected persons by analyzing and modeling the flood-prone land and embankment systems. By doing so, it may be possible to target specific areas for flood mitigation and improve warning systems and disaster relief.

University of Iowa would like to thank all of the staff at Sehgal Foundation for their help and their very gracious hospitality!

University of Iowa’s 2018 India Winterim class at Karhera Government School

Sampling water levels in a check dam pond near Ghaghas

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In this seminar, prominent scientists, environmental economists and business leaders from India and Japan will discuss salient issues on sustainability and development. (click here for more information.)

If you are interested in sustainable development, environmental economics, Business ethics in India and Japan, and CSR, please join us! For the schedule of the program and speakers, please click here.

Please rsvp to (rsvp@smsfoundation.org) or call 8527.803.059

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We all know that the world is demanding hard evidence to show that development programs work. Across the globe, many initiatives have taken place to have development agencies properly measure their impact, or lack thereof, through counterfactuals. Even the celebrity development guru Jeffrey Sachs, the father of the Millennium Village Project, could not escape from the scrutiny by the “randomistas.”

Every year at IRRAD, we run many programs in marginalized communities in Haryana. Those programs range from medium- and small- scale infrastructure programs like constructions of check dams and toilets, to human development programs like capacity building training for individuals and public officials. We know those programs work because we see fresh water in the once dried-up wells and observe that toilets are properly utilized; we hear that the once tardy fair price shop owner now opens his shop on time with its shelves replenished.

Simply displaying those good things seems no longer an effective way of communicating in the increasingly competitive international development community. We feel that we need to show that we assess the impact of our programs in a scientifically sound manner, if not through randomisation. Yes, we do that by establishing treatment and control villages and collecting data in a double amount for comparison for most of our projects. It takes time; the processes are laborious; and after all, the results could be statistically insignificant. We sweat on small things.

Last week, I attended a conference on NGOs and naturally, the panellists representing their organizations talked about their impacts. Many of the impacts were outputs like the number of schools and hospitals built; several NGOs showed outcomes like improved school attendance and the number of patients rehabilitated. No one used the words treatment or control. After all, the panellists were using differing standards to show their impacts and the juxtapositions of these incomparable numbers were already confusing enough. Some speakers were marvellously articulate but many others were indistinguishable.

After all, the story of impact that remained in my mind was a simple story of an NGO making differences on individuals’ lives. At academic conferences the jargons of “randomistas” may entertain economists but at a conference like this, participated by development practitioners and social worker aspirants hungry for the evidence that talks to their heart, a simple powerful story of impact on one individual’s life seemed equally scientific.

For discussions on the applications of rigorous impact evaluations to aid programs, please see:

“RANDOMIZED TRIALS COULD HELP SHOW WHETHER AID WORKS” ECONOMIST 3 DEC 2011. (Click here)

“FIESTA DE LOS RANDOMISTAS” ECONOMIST 21 APR 2011. (Click here)

GARBITT, ANNE. “A NEW ROAD TO MEASURING DEVELOPMENT OR ANOTHER DEAD END?” SOCIETY FOR PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH IN ASIA (PRIA). GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP. VOLUME 1, ISSUE 4 (OCT-DEC.2011).

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Grassroots innovations are solutions for the problems of the common people, created by the common people. These innovations typically evolve outside formal R&D conduits and they are often inexpensive and easier to maintain. Some of them look like jugaad—quick, alternative fixes; others, with a flavour of sophistication, appear ready to scale. They generate curiosity and imagination: What are they? How useful are they? What is their potential in solving the problems of the millions?

In search of answers, I discovered that some grassroots innovations had been identified by a group of people called shodh yatris (research travellers) organized by the Society for Research and Initiative for Sustainable Technologies and Innovations (SRISTI), an Ahmadabad-based NGO promoting grassroots innovations. Twice a year, these yatris (travellers) visit remote villages in India and scout for grassroots innovators. The yatris help innovators disseminate ideas and refine innovations. The shodh yatra (research travel) also allows urbanites to walk with the hard-core yatris for a week or two. It sounded like a good occasion to understand the lives of the people in remote villages. Plus, India’s thought leader, Anil Gupta, at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmadabad would be part of the travel. I enthusiastically decided to participate in the 30th shodh yatra.

From January 12through 17, 2013, sixty yatris visited a dozen villages in Churachandpur District in Manipur. Under the lush greenery and a clear sky, the yatris cheerfully exchanged ideas with kuki people, an ethnic group predominant in the District, through knowledge-sharing sessions, despite the tense atmosphere amidst tribal conflicts. We interacted with self-claimed local innovators, children full of ideas, and villagers who silently supported our walk. Freezing nights in open huts and aching muscles notwithstanding, the sheer hospitality of the villagers humbled me.

One important feature of grassroots innovation is its ability to mobilize the ingenuity of common people. It harnesses a new way of doing things so that society can move from being resource-scarce to resource-abundant (This is known as a reverse innovation). During the yatra we met with a boy carrying two buckets of water hanging from a bamboo pole. Two wheels attached to the pole made his water-carrying work easier (See the sixth picture under ‘Observations on Water Management Method’ displayed below). We saw several others carrying this bamboo pole, which indicated that this idea had been spreading in the villages. The bamboo poles brought to mind water drum rollers, another type of water carrier, promoted by development practitioners (This roller is a barrel-shaped water container that rolls on the ground; people roll it with an attached handle). Perhaps this roller, too, may have been a fine example of bottom-up, reverse innovation.

Another feature of grassroots innovation is its ability to promote equity in the society through knowledge sharing. One of the yatris, an entrepreneur from Haryana who once pulled a rickshaw, demonstrated to Kuki subsistent farmers how his multi-purpose food-processing machine would work (see the first picture under ‘Knowledge Exchange Sessions’). The shared knowledge and passion leveled the playing field for the observing villagers, prompting them to talk about their ideas. After conducting countless knowledge-sharing sessions, the yatris have testified that everyone’s idea counts.

My participation in the yatra made me curious about grassroots innovations in the hundreds of villages where Sehgal Foundation works. Surely these villagers have original ways of doing things worth sharing with other villagers and with the world. If so, does it make sense to create more opportunities through which villagers across India can collectively examine their innovations and share ideas with their peers? (National Innovation Foundation, SRISTI and several other organizations have been creating such knowledge-exchange platforms at the grassroots level.) After all, societies that promote free exchanges of ideas are more likely to generate better solutions than those that do not.

Observations on Water Management Methods

I later found the same dispenser for sale in a shop in Imphal, the capital of Manipur. This shop was selling various goods transported from Moreh, an India-Myanmar boarder town. The label in the back of the dispenser was marked as made in China. (Below) Water bottle made of gourd. Local people used to carry potable water with this bottle.

Observations on Non-Farm Livelihoods

I could not see many options for livelihood in the villages. In a house in one village, I met with a woman weaving a shawl. (Local women wear it as a skirt.)

I asked her if I could buy one. She said that she did not have one for sale.

More Observations

Female literacy rate in the Churachandpur District (78.9% above age seven, according to the Distict Level Household Survey 3 conducted in 2007-08) is above that of national average (65.46 %, Census 2011). (Below) Prof. Anil and two yatris play with a village child in a buggy car made of wood.

I found many sign boards of government programs throughout the yatra. A signboard signifying the completion of work under the Integrated Watershed Management Program. The same under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGS)

Knowledge Exchange Sessions

Grassroots innovator Dharamveer Kamboj, from Yamunanagar District, Haryana explains his multipurpose food-processing machine to the villagers. (Below) Villagers carefully listen to the translator.

A villager shows the yatris medicinal plants (Below). Throughout the yatra, I did not encounter a single pharmacy. The local people take medicinal plants, rather than allopathic medicines. A young male, who returned to his native village after his father’s death, told me that better access to hospitals is the first priority in his village.

A village chief shows the yatris a bottle half full of bamboo extracts used as manure.

Prof. Anil asks if it is possible to take it to his university for lab testing. He notes that people in Nagaland use bamboo extracts for a similar purpose.

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