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The Water Data Podcast
The Water Data Podcast is a talk show on the science, systems, and stories of water hosted by Veena Srinivasan. Every other Tuesday, sit down and listen to researchers, innovators, government officials and business leaders working on the forefront of water systems.
Veena Srinivasan is an award-winning socio-hydrologist as well as the founder and Executive Director of WELL Labs, a water systems research and innovation centre based in Bengaluru, India.
The Water Data Podcast features discussions on what data and research tell us about water systems, about how climate change is affecting them and how human use of water is transforming the stock and flow of water across diverse landscapes and aquifers. The show focuses on how we can collectively manage water systems better.
Subscribe to The Water Data Podcast on your favourite podcast app - and catch video episodes on the WELL Labs YouTube channel.
The Water Data Podcast
Why Safe Drinking Water Is More Than a Technology Problem with Isha Ray
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What does it actually take to provide safe and affordable drinking water for everyone? And if households must store, filter, boil or buy water before they can safely drink it, can we really say the water system is providing a service?
In this episode of The Water Data Podcast, host Veena Srinivasan speaks with Professor Isha Ray, formerly of the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, about drinking water access, affordability, inequality and the hidden labour involved in making water safe.
Drawing on research from India and California, Isha explains why drinking water deprivation is not simply a problem of poor countries. From nitrate-contaminated farmworker communities in California to intermittent urban water systems in India, the conversation shows how marginalisation, infrastructure and political power shape who receives safe water.
They explore the idea of “source-to-sip” water safety, why household filters can be technically effective yet fail in everyday life, and why asking women to continually store, treat and monitor their water creates an overlooked burden of time, money and anxiety.
The episode also examines India’s intermittent water systems and the Hubballi-Dharwad experiment with continuous 24/7 supply. Isha discusses what researchers learned about water quality, child health, household expenditure and the time people spend coping with unreliable supply.
Finally, Veena and Isha tackle one of the hardest questions in urban water management: how should water be priced? They discuss metering, cross-subsidies, lifeline water, affordability and why safe drinking water must ultimately be treated as a public service rather than simply a household responsibility.
The Water Data Podcast is a talk show on the science, systems, and stories of water, hosted by Veena Srinivasan.
For all references and further readings related to the episode, visit https://dev.welllabs.org/wdp-isha-ray/
Subscribe to The Water Data Podcast on your favourite podcast app—and catch video episodes on the WELL Labs YouTube channel @welllabs.
Subscription links: Youtube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, Castbox, and wherever you get your podcasts!
Recording by Nabina Chakraborty and Nanditha Gogate. Video editing by Srisabari Varaguna Pandian. Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar and Kanishka Goyal. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.
