S2 Ep3: Water you thinking ft. Abishek Narayan

In Conversation with Ashwin

On this episode, I have Abishek Narayan who is currently working as a researcher at Eawag, the Swiss Water Institute in Zurich. Abishek has PhD in Environmental Engineering from ETH Zurich and a Masters from Oxford in Water Science, Policy and Management. After checking privilege at the door and discussing his early upbringing in the modest city of Chennai, Abishek talks to us about his tryst with the Adyar river and the restoration efforts he was engaged in through the Clean Adyar Initiative and Resilient Cities project funded by the Rockerfeller Foundation. Taking his learnings from studying and working at Delft and Ethiopia, Abishek learnt that the solution to a social and political problem cannot be solved by engineering alone. He further learned water planning and the nuances surrounding it in policy and engineering at Oxford and ETH, Zurich. From the 20th minute, Abishek talks about what happens to the water when you flush it down your WC and how that water gets cleaned (or is supposed to) in treatment plants. He talks about how his team helped influence and incentivize a commercial microcosm of Bangalore to treat waste water and speaks about the fundamental problem when it comes to waste water management. He leaves us with some actionable advice to pay our dues when it comes to being responsible with water. And as is custom, we end with his favorite quote ("You can't do everything that the world needs but everything you can do, the world needs") and his favorite book (Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall ). In the first 10 mins of the episode, we also discuss the Indian education system and his introspective 5 day (first) bike trip along the Rhine river. I know Abhishek from my debating days in school cultural fests back in 2010 and we recently reconnected with he was visiting to attend and speak at the World Water Conference in Toronto earlier this year. We bonded over some vegan sliders after a walk and sit around Trinity Bellwoods park :) This episode is anything but dry ;)
Books mentioned - Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall