For one, check out WaterHealth International: http://www.waterhealth.com. They set up rural water purification centers using a special UV technology developed at Berkeley… the water is sold for about $0.01 per gallon.

By the way, I doubt the straw will work out well in India… on account of the “juta” concept, which is very much ingrained throughout much of the country.

I’m surprised no one’s mentioned chlorine disinfection. It’s not as good as boiling, but much faster and generally a bit cheaper (at least the resources distributed by PSI).

Also, the iconography of drinking would change. The rural poor would be depicted always drinking water through these straws, what would happen to cups? It’s small things like this that destroy well intended projects.

scott

the link I posted states that ~70% of Indian population in rural areas, and ~90% of Indian population in urban areas has access to protected water sources. Lot of difference between 75% and 30% no ?

We think water is sexy here at Sepia Mutiny. We’ve had several different posts on it, from different bloggers with very different perspectives. We’re all about the wet sari contests ample provision of clean water to the people.

So sexy, that we dont hesitate to provide our own blog as a reference for ‘maybe 30% Indians have access to safe drinking water’ when the first link thats spit at you if you google “India water supply” is ~

http://planningcommission.nic.in/reports/genrep/wtrsani.pdf

The overall problem, though, is one of the most discouraging fundamentals of world development. I work in international public health. Clean, ABUNDANT water is one of the most fundamental determinants of health. I was asked recently by someone why, despite vast sums (yes, we can argue this point, but still…) dumped into international development since World War II, despite amazing leaps and bounds in health science and engineering research, the great majority of the world still lacks perhaps the most fundamental pillar of health — an engineering problem solved ages ago, and a medical finding also known since the time of John Snow. These sorts of examples are cheering in a sort of Pollyanna way. But when you look at the real numbers of people who go without clean drinking water and an appreciation for the sort of scale in terms of infrastructure we are really talking about, the backbone can ONLY be initiated and most importantly, SUSTAINED by governments. Aided by the NGO and private sector, surely, but ultimately it’s on the governments’ hands.

What’s needed is actual political will to push that into actuality in most of these settings. Unfortunately, water and poop aren’t sexy issues – nobody’s buying RED iPods and the like to push this. But the ultimate onus is upon the world community to push host governments to make clean drinking water for all a reality.

p.s. will try to do a BoP post that deals with some of the issues in the Karnani paper soon. Have been meaning to ever since I read the debate over in Indian Economic Blog.