Living with Dirty Water -- Arsenic Pollution in India and Grassroots Cooperation of Miyazaki University (February 2009)

Living with Dirty Water -- Arsenic Pollution in India and Grassroots Cooperation of Miyazaki University (February 2009)

In the latter half of the 2000s, the world was experiencing the emergence of what has been dubbed the "century of water. Particularly in the Asian region, the safety of drinking water became a serious social issue, and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and other development assistance organizations turned their attention from water infrastructure to "water quality itself.

The symbolic stage for this shift was South Asia and India. In particular, arsenic in groundwater, especially in the Bengal region, was causing frequent poisonings and chronic health problems - skin diseases, cancer, immune disorders, and so on. On the surface, the farming villages are rich in groundwater, but it is the poison that is eating away at their lives. The University of Miyazaki and the Asian Arsenic Network (Miyazaki City, Japan), a non-profit organization, took a grassroots stand against this invisible disaster that had befallen the poor and ignorant.

In June 2008, they received a grant of about 50 million yen from JICA as part of its "Grassroots Technical Cooperation Project" and entered the region. The survey was conducted over a two-year period (2008-2010). The first task was to determine the distribution of contaminated wells and the quality of the water in detail. Even in areas where the government did not have a clear understanding of the situation, we conducted surveys one by one, building trust with local residents, and identified wells with arsenic concentrations far exceeding international standards.

Many local residents had wells as their only source of water, and it took time for them to accept the fact that the water they had used for many years was "poison. The research team held a number of information meetings and educational activities to convey the message that "clear water is not always safe. The result of this dialogue was a cooperative effort by the residents to propose a potential site for a new well.

Their support was not limited to mere material provision, but also included an independent maintenance and management system. The selection of candidate sites for drilling alternative wells was solely the residents' initiative, and as technical support, experts from the University of Miyazaki would evaluate the geology and water quality. Even after the new wells were installed, local leaders were trained to take charge of water quality checks and maintenance.

This kind of support is connected to the memories of the "four major pollution diseases" and Minamata disease experienced during Japan's period of rapid economic growth. Japan was once also a country that created countless health hazards due to overuse of underground resources and lagging environmental administration. This is why Japanese universities and citizens' groups are rooted in a spirit of solidarity and support for those who are suffering from the same "suffering as we did in the past," rather than simply "technology transfer from the top" from developed countries.

In 2009, such "face-to-face assistance" and "technical cooperation with local residents" were becoming a new trend in global development assistance. Every word exchanged around the wells in the land of India was building trust among citizens beyond national borders.

--This record is the story of a quiet and deep dialogue behind the technical assistance that is rarely shown to the public.