The Water Data Podcast

What if the water you drink every day looks perfectly safe but contains contaminants that could affect your health for years?

Millions of people in India depend on groundwater for drinking water. Yet contaminants such as fluoride, arsenic and nitrate can pose serious health risks that are often difficult to detect without testing.

In this episode of The Water Data Podcast, Dr Sunderrajan Krishnan, Executive Director of the INREM Foundation joins host Veena Srinivasan to talk about India's drinking-water quality crisis and what it will take to address it.

Dr Sunderrajan Krishnan is the Executive Director of INREM Foundation, an organisation working on water quality and public-health issues in India. His work connects groundwater science, community engagement and water governance.

In the conversation, they explore why groundwater contamination often goes unnoticed, how decades of water-treatment interventions have struggled with maintenance and adoption, and why community-led water testing can make a difference.

The conversation also examines how contaminated water, food and nutritional deficiencies can compound health risks among vulnerable communities. They discuss the role of reverse osmosis (RO) systems, the importance of safe local water sources and the challenges of making Jal Jeevan Mission deliver reliable, safe drinking water.

Finally, Sunder makes the case for lifeline water: a guaranteed minimum supply of high-quality water for everyone's essential drinking and cooking needs.

The Water Data Podcast is a talk show on the science, systems, and stories of water, hosted by Veena Srinivasan and produced by WELL Labs.

For all references and further readings related to the episode, visit https://welllabs.org/wdp-suderrajan-krishnan/

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 Team On productions. Video editing by Srisabari Varaguna Pandian. Graphics and artwork by Kanishka Goyal. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Vraj Acharya, Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.

How does water that looks perfectly clean contain dangerous levels of arsenic? Even after decades of research and treatment technologies, why does arsenic exposure remain a drinking-water problem?

In this episode of The Water Data Podcast, hydrogeologist Prof. Abhijit Mukherjee joins host Veena Srinivasanto trace the arsenic story across the Bengal and Ganga-Brahmaputra aquifer systems.

In the conversation, Veena and Abhijit explore how arsenic naturally occurs in sediments, why the geology and geochemistry of the Bengal Delta allow it to enter groundwater, and how microbial activity, iron minerals, and changing chemical conditions underground influence its mobilization.

The conversation also examines how large-scale pumping can change groundwater flow and potentially mix water between aquifer layers, making apparently simple rules about "safe" and "unsafe" groundwater much harder to apply.

Abhijit argues that arsenic treatment itself is not necessarily the biggest challenge. Filters need to be maintained, contaminated filter media must be safely disposed of, drinking-water sources must be monitored, and solutions have to work after researchers and engineers leave.

Veena and Abhijit also discuss arsenic in irrigated agriculture and the unequal vulnerability to exposure. This episode asks a larger question: when the science of a water problem is reasonably well understood, what prevents that knowledge from becoming safe water for everyone?

The Water Data Podcast is hosted by Veena Srinivasan and produced by WELL Labs.

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://welllabs.org/wdp-abhijit-mukherjee/

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. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.

Can we measure evapotranspiration from space? And when a satellite produces a map of crop water use, how certain are those numbers?

Dr. Gilles Boulet joins host Veena Srinivasanfor a deep dive into one of the most important and difficult-to-measure components of the hydrological cycle: evapotranspiration.

Evapotranspiration, or ET, combines evaporation from soil with transpiration through vegetation. In many semi-arid landscapes, it accounts for most of the water leaving the land surface. However, measuring ET across individual farms, irrigation commands, and entire watersheds is remarkably difficult.

In this episode, Gilles and Veena unpack what satellites actually observe, from vegetation and radar signals to land-surface temperature. They also discuss how scientists turn those observations into estimates of evapotranspiration.

They explore the role of flux towers and scintillometers, why satellite ET products contain uncertainty, and the differences between contextual and physics-based modeling approaches.

The conversation also looks ahead to TRISHNA, the Indo-French thermal-infrared satellite mission that aims to provide much more frequent land-surface-temperature observations at field-relevant spatial scales.

Additionally, the conversation answers questions regarding how better ET observations could help irrigation departments and groundwater agencies understand where water is actually being consumed, and whether we are close to producing reliable, near-daily maps of agricultural water use.

Dr. Gilles Boulet is a senior scientist at IRD and works with the Indo-French Cell for Water Science at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. His research focuses on land-surface processes, remote sensing, evapotranspiration, and field instrumentation.

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://welllabs.org/wdp-gilles-boulet/

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, Vraj Acharya 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.

What can 25 years of observing the same watershed teach us about groundwater? Can intensive pumping make groundwater deeper in valleys than on hills? Can decades of depletion be reversed by just a few exceptionally wet years? And how does fertilizer applied at the surface end up contaminating groundwater tens of metres below?

Professor Shekhar Muddu joins host Veena Srinivasan on the Water Data Podcast for a deep dive into the Kabini Critical Zone Observatory and what decades of field measurements have revealed about groundwater, agriculture, pollution and climate.

The conversation traces the evolution of the observatory from paired forested and agricultural catchments to a long-term interdisciplinary experiment studying groundwater levels, geochemistry, soil moisture, evapotranspiration and human water use.

Shekhar and Veena explore how intensive groundwater pumping altered natural groundwater gradients, how farmers responded to declining well yields, and how extreme rainfall events can produce large pulses of recharge. They also discuss research showing very high nitrate concentrations in parts of the aquifer, revealing how modern agricultural pollution can travel rapidly into deep groundwater through fractured hard-rock systems.

The episode also looks at the future of water observation in India, from satellite-based soil-moisture measurements to evapotranspiration monitoring, solar-induced fluorescence, carbon fluxes and the need for long-term environmental observatories.

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://welllabs.org/wdp-sekhar-muddu/

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, Vraj Acharya 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.

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.

How does saving water create a financial crisis for the utilities that supply it? And why do cities continue building water systems based on laws, infrastructure, and climate assumptions that are no longer relevant?

In this episode of The Water Data Podcast, Newsha Ajamijoins host Veena Srinivasan to unpack the hidden risks inside modern water systems- from outdated water rights and groundwater overuse to drought, demand management, decentralised reuse, and climate resilience.

Newsha Ajami is an Iranian-American hydrologist, civil engineer, and environmental policy expert. Her work spans sustainable urban water management, the water-energy-food nexus, data science for environmental governance, and climate resilience. She is the founding director of the Governance for Risk, Resilience, and Recovery (GR3) program at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. She has also worked with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and served on utility and regulatory boards in California.

In this conversation, Newsha and Veena discuss why water law often fails to align with water science, how California’s experience with the Colorado River and Central Valley groundwater holds lessons for India, and why bringing in more surface water does not automatically solve groundwater depletion.

Newsha explains why she prefers the term “demand management” over “conservation,” how outdoor water use and lawns shape urban water demand, and why utilities often face financial stress when conservation efforts succeed.

The episode then explores decentralised wastewater reuse, comparing San Francisco’s on-site reuse model with Bengaluru’s apartment-level sewage treatment systems, emphasising how growing cities can avoid copying outdated centralised models and instead build flexible, modular, and resilient water systems.

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://welllabs.org/wdp-newsha-ajami/

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 Vraj Acharya and Nabina Chakraborty. 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.

What does it mean to measure water for the entire planet? Who collects the data behind SDG 6? And how do numbers from hundreds of countries become a global picture of water security, sanitation, wastewater, ecosystems and governance?

In this episode of The Water Data Podcast, Dr Maggie Kossida, from the UN-Water Integrated Monitoring Initiative for SDG 6 joins host Veena Srinivasan.

Dr Kossida helps coordinate one of the world’s most ambitious water-data efforts: bringing together information from 190+ countries to understand how the world is progressing on Sustainable Development Goal 6- clean water and sanitation for all.

Maggie explains how SDG 6 expanded the global water agenda beyond drinking water and sanitation to include water quality, wastewater treatment, water use efficiency, water stress, integrated water resources management, freshwater ecosystems, financing and community participation.

She also explains how global monitoring actually works: countries collect and own their data, UN custodian agencies support validation and quality checks, and the Integrated Monitoring Initiative helps coordinate across agencies and indicators. The episode explores why some indicators are much harder to track than others, why national averages can hide local water crises, and how SDG 6 data is increasingly being used to shape standards, policies, investments and national targets.

Finally, Veena and Maggie discuss why missing the 2030 targets should not be seen simply as failure. Instead, monitoring has revealed the gaps, strengthened systems, and created a shared language for water action across the world.

For young researchers, students and water professionals, Maggie also shares how the SDG 6 Data Portal, citizen science and Earth observation can open up new ways to explore global water data.

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://welllabs.org/wdp-maggie-kossida/

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 Vraj Acharya and Nabina Chakraborty. 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.

What if technology was designed not to manage communities, but to strengthen their voice and agency?

In this episode of the Water Data Podcast, Professor Aaditeshwar Seth of IIT Delhi joins host Veena Srinivasan. Aaditeshwar is the co-founder of Gram Vaani and one of the key people behind CoreStack, a digital public infrastructure for commons, resilience, and equity.

In this episode, Aaditeshwar traces his journey from computer science and rural communication networks to building participatory tools for communities, civil society organisations, researchers, and governments. The conversation begins with his journey with Gram Vaani, a voice-based platform that enables rural communities to share local information, raise grievances, and strengthen public accountability.

From there, the episode moves into CoreStack, a shared technology and data ecosystem that brings together geospatial datasets, landscape indicators, planning tools, and community-facing applications. Aaditeshwar explains how tools like Know Your Landscape and Commons Connectcan help planners, local facilitators, and communities understand drought risk, groundwater stress, land use change, water bodies, and other landscape-level challenges.

At the heart of the episode is a larger question: who gains power when data and technology enter environmental decision-making? Veena and Aaditeshwar discuss why technology is not neutral, why data should support rather than replace community agency, and how digital tools can help people collectively govern shared resources such as water, forests, land, and biodiversity.

The conversation also explores micro-watersheds, landscape stewards, MGNREGA-linked planning, PRADAN’s work with Commons Connect and Yuktdhara, and the challenge of sustaining open digital public infrastructure over time.

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://welllabs.org/wdp-aaditeshwar-seth/

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 Vraj Acharya, Nanditha Gogate and Nabina Chakraborty. 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.

Where did the idea of “water security” come from? How did countries around the world come to agree on shared goals for drinking water, sanitation, river basin management and sustainable development? And why does water still lack the kind of global institutional architecture that exists for climate change and biodiversity?

In this episode, Dr Roberto Lenton, one of the world’s leading voices on water security and international development joins host Veena Srinivasan for a conversation on the evolution of global water policy over the last eight decades.

Roberto has spent more than six decades working across engineering, research, philanthropy, global institutions and water policy. His career has taken him from the Ford Foundation in India to the founding of the International Irrigation Management Institute, now the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), and to being an early proponent of the Global Water Partnership.

Drawing on his book, Confronting Water Insecurity: Global Institutions and the Transformation of Water Science, Policy and Practice, Roberto traces the history of global water cooperation from the creation of the United Nations after World War II to the Sustainable Development Goals and the water challenges ahead.

Veena and Roberto discuss why global water institutions emerged after 1945, how UNESCO came to host the International Hydrological Programme, and how the Harvard Water Programme helped shape early ideas around integrated planning and managing water for multiple purposes.

The conversation also explores the first UN Water Conference at Mar del Plata in 1977, the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade, the Dublin Principles, the Rio Earth Summit, the Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goal 6.

Roberto explains how the term “water security” became more than a question of water scarcity. It brought together drinking water, sanitation, irrigation, floods, droughts, pollution, ecosystems and resilience into one wider framework.

The episode also examines the more difficult side of global water governance: the accountability mechanisms that emerged around dams and development projects, the limits of privatisation-led reforms, and the reasons why global institutions have often struggled to translate new ideas into real improvements on the ground.

Finally, Veena and Roberto look ahead to the future of water governance in a changing world shaped by climate extremes, AI data centres, demographic shifts and growing scepticism about multilateral cooperation. They ask whether water needs a stronger global science-policy mechanism, perhaps something equivalent to the IPCC for climate change.

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://welllabs.org/wdp-robert-lenton/

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 Vraj Acharya and Nabina Chakraborty. Video editing by Srisabari Varaguna Pandian. Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar, Kanishka Goyal and Oishika Goswami. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.

How can satellites measure crop water use from space? Can they help farmers irrigate more precisely, improve yields, and make water distribution fairer across canal systems?

In this episode of the Water Data Podcast, Veena Srinivasan speaks with Professor Wim Bastiaanssen, a pioneer in satellite-based evapotranspiration mapping and the original developer of SEBAL — the Surface Energy Balance Algorithm.

Professor Bastiaanssen explains how satellite imagery can estimate actual evapotranspiration, soil moisture, crop water stress, and irrigation performance by combining land-surface temperature, vegetation data, and the surface energy balance. The conversation traces the journey from early field validation of SEBAL to its application across farms, irrigation systems, and river basins around the world.

Wim and Veena discuss how farmers can use simple satellite-based advisories to identify dry patches in their fields, prevent crop stress, and use water more productively. They also explore how the same data can help irrigation agencies understand whether canal water is reaching head-end and tail-end farmers equitably.

The episode further examines water accounting, data-model integration, the commercialisation of scientific tools, and the growth of platforms such as IrriWatch and HydroSat. It is a wide-ranging conversation on evapotranspiration, precision irrigation, water productivity, and how satellite data can support water security at scale.

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://welllabs.org/wim-bastiaanssen/

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 Anukriti Shaw, Nabina Chakraborty and Vraj Acharya and Video editing by Srisabari Varaguna Pandian. Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar, Kanishka Goyal and Oishika Goswami. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.

Why do canal irrigation systems repeatedly produce head-tail inequality? Why do some farmers receive reliable water while others are systematically deprived for decades?

In this episode, Veena Srinivasan speaks with Professor Peter Mollinga, a leading scholar of irrigation and water governance, about the politics of canal irrigation systems in India. Drawing from nearly 40 years of research on the Tungabhadra Left Bank Canal in Karnataka, the conversation explores the origins of “protective irrigation,” the spread of paddy cultivation, migration and agrarian change, groundwater salinity, farm ponds, irrigation reforms, and the political economy shaping canal systems across India.

The episode examines why irrigation systems are never purely technical systems, but social and political systems shaped by power, institutions, incentives, and historical choices.

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://welllabs.org/wdp-peter-mollinga/

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 Vraj Acharya, Anukriti Shaw and Nabina Chakraborty. Video editing by Srisabari Varaguna Pandian. Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar and Oishika Goswami. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.

California’s groundwater crisis did not emerge overnight. Decades of unrestricted pumping, falling groundwater levels, land subsidence, disappearing streamflows, and recurring droughts eventually pushed the state toward one of the world’s most ambitious groundwater governance reforms: the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).

In this episode of the Water Data Podcast, Dr. Maurice Hall, Senior Advisor for Climate Resilient Water Systems at theEnvironmental Defense Fund, joins host Veena Srinivasan to speak about California’s landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).

The conversation explores how California’s unique water rights system shaped groundwater use, why the 2012–2016 drought became a turning point, and how local Groundwater Sustainability Agencies are now attempting to balance pumping, recharge, ecosystems, and agricultural demand across the state.

Maurice explains the science behind land subsidence, disappearing streamflows, and groundwater depletion, while also unpacking how California invested heavily in groundwater monitoring, basin-scale models, satellite-based evapotranspiration tools like OpenET, and new approaches to managed aquifer recharge.

The episode also reflects on what India can learn from California’s experience. While the political and agricultural contexts are very different, the challenges of groundwater depletion, fragmented governance, and delayed action resonate strongly across both regions.

This episode offers a rare inside look into the science, politics, and institutional challenges of groundwater governance at scale.

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://welllabs.org/wdp-maurice-hall/

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 Vraj Acharya and Nabina Chakraborty. Editing by Srisabari Varaguna Pandian. Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar and Oishika Goswami. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.

Why is water never just a technical problem? Who gets water, who loses access, and who gets to decide?

In this episode of the Water Data Podcast, Professor Margreet Zwarteveen, an internationally recognised scholar of water governance, irrigation, gender, and the politics of natural resources, joins host Veena Srinivasan, Executive Director at WELL Labs.

Margreet Zwarteveen is Professor of Water Governance Education at IHE Delft and Professor of Governance and Inclusive Development at the University of Amsterdam. Trained first as an irrigation engineer and later as a social scientist, her work has shaped how we understand water as a deeply social and political resource.

In this conversation, Margreet explains why every water intervention – whether it is a dam, canal, borewell, drip irrigation system or water market , all make political choices. Technical designs decide who gets access to water, whose labour is recognised, whose land and water rights matter, and whose knowledge is ignored.

The episode explores irrigation resettlement schemes, farmer participation, water titling, gender in irrigation engineering, the risks of narrow efficiency metrics, and the hidden politics behind “wise” water use. Margreet also discusses why women’s water work is often invisible, how borewells and infrastructure reshape water access, and why water governance must learn from everyday practices on the ground.

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://welllabs.org/wdp-margreet-zwarteveen/

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 Nanditha Gogate and Nabina Chakraborty. Video editing by Vraj Acharya. 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.

How can a satellite measure water buried deep underground? What can space-based observations tell us about groundwater depletion across the world? And how is this data shaping the future of water policy and governance?

Professor Jay Famiglietti, a leading hydrologist and former NASA scientist, joins host Veena Srinivasan on this episode of the Water Data Podcast to discuss the revolutionary GRACE satellite mission.

Jay is a Global Futures Professor at Arizona State University and is widely known for developing methods to detect groundwater depletion from space. His work has reshaped how scientists and policymakers understand global water systems.

In this episode, Jay and Veena unpack how GRACE measures tiny changes in Earth’s gravity to detect gains and losses in water mass. They explore how this technology has revealed major groundwater depletion hotspots across the world, including India, California, the Middle East, and China.

The conversation also examines the complex relationship between climate change and human water use, and why these forces are deeply intertwined. Finally, they reflect on how satellite data is influencing policy from drought monitoring systems to groundwater governance and what the future holds for global hydrology.

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 here.

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 Vraj Acharya and Nabina Chakraborty. Video editing by Nabina Chakraborty. 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.

Listen to host Veena Srinivasan as she continues to talk to researchers, innovators, government officials and business leaders working on the forefront of water systems. The show features rich conversations on the science, systems, and stories that shape our water future.

Episodes drop every other Tuesday. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more updates.

Watch episodes from season two here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrHB5gd1QIB8Tc2zlGRrz5QCxxP70FNBh&si=oQ-hH87g7IB5MhCG

What does water have to do with power, caste, labor, and economic policy?

In this episode of the Water Data Podcast, Professor Trevor Birkenholtz (Penn State University) explains how political ecology helps us understand groundwater, irrigation, and large-scale water infrastructure in India.

Trevor Birkenholtz is a political ecologist and development geographer with regional interests in South Asia and the United States. His empirical interests are in water-supply development, water infrastructure, wetlands and the politics of environmental change.

This conversation explores how water systems are shaped not just by engineering, but by power, history, caste, labor, and policy decisions. How do subtle reservoir rule changes dispossess farmers? And why is urban “drinking water” often an industrial demand?

This episode is essential listening for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners working at the intersection of water, agriculture, and development.

For all references and further readings related to the episode, visit https://welllabs.org/wdp-trevor-birkenholtz/

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 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 Vraj Acharya and Nabina Chakraborty. Video editing by Vraj Acharya. 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.

In this episode of The Water Data Podcast, host Veena Srinivasan speaks with Dr. Himanshu Kulkarni, hydrogeologist and co-founder of ACWADAM, about groundwater science in India – from basalt aquifers and rural irrigation to springshed revival in the Himalayas and participatory groundwater management.

This episode was recorded in November 2025 on the sidelines of a two-day event celebrating the life and work of Dr. Himanshu Kulkarni, marking his recognition with the 2025 International Water Prize by the University of Oklahoma. Because the conversation was long and deeply insightful, we’re releasing it in two parts – this is Part 2.

In this episode, Dr. Kulkarni explains how participatory groundwater management (PGWM) evolved in India, and why aquifers must be treated as common pool resources. He shares field-based examples of PGWM “models” in practice — from borewell bans and drinking water protection zones to borehole pooling and crop planning. He also reflects on the biggest external forces shaping groundwater outcomes, especially energy policy and market incentives.

Through this conversation, he explains why urban groundwater remains “hidden”, and why cities must treat recharge as a public service, not just an individual mandate. Finally, he highlights the major unanswered questions in groundwater today — contamination and depletion — and why groundwater science will always remain a field science.

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://welllabs.org/wdp-himanshu-kulkarni-pt2/

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 Vedant Ambrule and Tippana Chaitanya. Video editing by Nabina Chakraborty. 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.

In this episode of The Water Data Podcast, host Veena Srinivasan speaks with Dr. Himanshu Kulkarni, hydrogeologist and co-founder of ACWADAM, about groundwater science in India – from basalt aquifers and rural irrigation to springshed revival in the Himalayas and participatory groundwater management.

This episode was recorded in November 2025 on the sidelines of a two-day event celebrating the life and work of Dr. Himanshu Kulkarni, marking his recognition with the 2025 International Water Prize by the University of Oklahoma. Because the conversation was long and deeply insightful, we’re releasing it in two parts – this is Part 1.

In this episode, Dr. Kulkarni traces the origins of his groundwater journey – from early memories of the first wells and springs he encountered, to studying geology and being mentored by an exceptional hydrogeology teacher Vilasrao Salunkhe. He then takes us into his landmark field research in Pabal in rural Maharashtra, where detailed well surveys and long-term measurements revealed how basalt aquifers behave, why groundwater availability varies sharply across the same landscape, and how farming decisions around wells, pumps, and crops change when water availability and markets shift together. Along the way, the conversation unpacks key hydrogeology ideas in accessible ways, including layered basalt aquifers, heterogeneity, anisotropy, transmissivity, storage, and why some wells are productive only seasonally while others sustain longer.

They also discuss groundwater decline, cropping pattern changes, watershed development, spring revival programmes, community water governance, urban groundwater challenges, and why trust and local knowledge cannot be scaled like physical infrastructure. The episode reflects on groundwater as a shared commons and introduces the broader arc of Dr. Kulkarni’s work – from the watershed movement and the emerging groundwater crisis to the practice-driven approach that later shaped ACWADAM’s capacity building efforts and participatory groundwater management in India.

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://welllabs.org/wdp-himanshu-kulkarni-pt1/

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 Vedant Ambrule and Tippana Chaitanya. Video editing by Nabina Chakraborty. 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.

How can simple models explain the complexity of rivers, landscapes and water systems? Why does hydrology sometimes struggle to connect theory and reality?

In this episode of the Water Data Podcast, Veena Srinivasan speaks with Prof. Hubert Savenije, Emeritus Professor of Hydrology at TU Delft and one of the most influential thinkers in modern hydrological science.

They discuss Hubert’s early journey in hydrology and how intuition shaped his scientific thinking, the importance of embracing uncertainty in water science, and why catchments behave like complex adaptive systems. They explore emergent hydrological behaviour, the limits of top-down and bottom-up modelling approaches, the role of vegetation and root systems in storing water and shaping landscape memory, and the difference between evaporation and transpiration in driving water loss.

The discussion also covers large-scale water balance patterns such as Budyko curves, the challenges of modelling hydrology under climate change, the risks of over-parameterisation and data-heavy modelling approaches, and practical advice for young researchers on building intuition, spending time in the field, and connecting theory with real-world observation.

This episode offers a rare philosophical and practical perspective on hydrology- bridging theory, observation, and imagination.

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://welllabs.org/wdp-hubert-savenije/

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 Vraj Acharya, Nabina Chakraborty. Video editing by Vraj Acharya. Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.

When a lake turns green with algae, or nitrate shows up in drinking water, the most obvious question would be: Why can’t we fix this quickly?

In this episode of the Water Data Podcast, Veena Srinivasan speaks with Professor Nandita Basu from the University of Waterloo about nitrogen and phosphorus legacies – the hidden nutrient stores in soils, groundwater, and sediments that keep polluting waterways for decades.

They unpack how the Haber-Bosch process transformed agriculture, why nitrogen use efficiency stays low, and how drained agricultural landscapes can rapidly transport nitrates from fields to major river systems and even the Gulf of Mexico. They also explore why phosphorus behaves differently - sticking to soils and sediments, fuelling algal blooms, and creating stubborn feedback loops when lakes turn low-oxygen.

Finally, they discuss what can still be done: turning the ‘easy knobs’ like phosphate in detergents, targeting livestock manure hotspots, using small ponds and wetlands as high-impact interventions, and why India urgently needs far more empirical measurement to diagnose problems and track solutions.

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 ________

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 Vraj Acharya, Nabina Chakraborty. Video editing by Vraj Acharya. Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.