Reparative Water Governance with Neha Mungekar

Hari:
Hi, everybody, and welcome to another Solvesustain podcast. Today, we have our guest, Neha Mungekar. She is a sustainability researcher who is based in the Netherlands, whose work centers on urban water governance, just transitions, and participatory approaches in Global South contexts. She currently works as a researcher at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education. Neha’s journey spans architecture, urban design, and water management. She worked at the World Resources Institute, India on spatial planning and participatory governance across Indian cities She moved to the Netherlands for a Masters in Water Management and Governance at IHE Delft Her PhD work at the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions or DRIFT developed a reparative transformative framework for urban water governance in India Neha’s work critically challenges Western-centric transition theories and emphasizes post-colonial resource-constrained context.

Okay, Neha, great to have you on the podcast. It’s really a privilege to have you and to talk about your work. To start with, can you just elaborate a bit on your work journey and your interests and your current interests? What is it that compels you in the field of sustainability in terms of problems and solution approaches? And why and how are the problems which you are working on important towards the goal of achieving sustainability?

Neha:
Firstly, Hari, thank you for having me at your podcast and I really support and appreciate the efforts you are taking to get all these thinkers and a lot of their discussions on a cool platform like yours. So going back to your question on what is my personal motivation that compels me to journey is, it’s just my entire journey from architecture to urban planning and what I have been doing so far. So I started in this, in my professional journey as a green architect, as a sustainability architect. And from there, I went immediately for urban design, where I would work on spatial designs. And then earlier, I thought what we design on the paper would exactly how it happens on the ground. However, during my experience at WRI, I used to work as an engagement officer.

My role would be to get people on the same table and try to make that design happen. And slowly I realized that it’s not about the design, but it’s all about how do people perceive that design? What is the kind of sense of co-ownership? What are the real problems on ground? And this is where I started to realize that who am I? Who am I to decide what should it be on the ground itself? Shouldn’t it be people? And that’s when my entire agency to engage changed.

Neha:
I became less of a solution provider and more of an enabler. And that also is something that motivated me to pursue a second master’s in water governance in IHC, where I wanted to study behavioral sciences, cognitive sciences, how people make decisions. Because sometimes what we think is rational, it’s very subjective. And this is why I feel a lot of these designs are being imposed upon. And if someone is suggesting something from their experience, from their lived experience, we consider it very trivial. And that’s where a kind of dissonance lies. And that is what made me realize, hey, I don’t want to work like that anymore. And because finally, when we talk about sustainability, the bigger question is sustainability for whom?

Neha:
Many times the green sustainability idea that we have the idealistic version of the future is actually unsustainable if you see from justice lens to give you an example you might work on making world green or having a lot of photovoltaic sales but if you see the discourses from the youth they would say but hey but that’s also generating waste, have you thought of that so it’s quite complicated that way and these are the questions that always kept me curious. It inspired me to work more and challenge my own perceptions and the base foundations of my discussion. So this is something that kept me motivated. And from that, from working on water governance, I started researching on transformative water governance. So generally, we think of change as the same thing as implementation. Again, to give you an example, if we are working towards ensuring better health, and then we say, hey, but to ensure better health, let’s have great gym or great workout facilities in a city so people are healthier. That’s your question. So then you will work on better policies for health. Maybe you work on schools having more health facilities, and that’s how you’re working towards health yeah but then what happens is the idea of health what is actually healthy is already decided and we have not challenged that so in transformation we are also thinking of but what exactly is healthy do are we promoting a wrong version of healthy so these are the root cause question and that is exactly what transformation taught me that sometimes what we are working towards the future, the idea of future was perceived quite in an ancient, in a very rhetorical way. And then we are pushing actually something that is not working. So isn’t it right to also challenge and think about the root values by which we think about the future? Because the idea of future is also changing because the problems are changing. And with this, we have to move hand in glove. So this is what made me, you know, stay in this field, think of the new questions and also challenge myself. So yeah, that’s why I’m here.

Hari:
Amazing. So just to pull the key points, I think curious and challenge were keywords for me. And what I’m understanding is that you started off from, you know, being a quote unquote, green architect. And then you found that the notions of design, which you were dealing with, actually left a lot of questions in your mind, especially regarding co-ownership. And you felt that the vision itself needs to be contested and that led you to the idea of a transformative approach, right?

Neha:
That’s right.

Hari:
It led you to do a lot of work in the Netherlands. How does it relate to the Dutch tradition of transition management? Can you explain to us what transition management is and your experience with transition management? And in your opinion, how does it work or not work? Or how should transition management itself be transformed for the Global South context and for India, for example, where we come from?

Neha:
So first, to give you a basic definition example, and then I will build for that.

Neha:
So when I started my PhD at DRIFT, so DRIFT is Dutch Research Institute for Transitions, and it’s led by Jan Rotmans and right now Derk Loorbach, who are stalwarts in their field in transition management. So basically, transition change management looks at, it’s basically a governance framework, which was developed here to guide long-term sustainability transitions in complex systems. So to break down first why it emerged in first place. So the kind of problems, if we look at which problems are we working towards. Earlier, the problems were based on only one sector or they were also very linear. So if, for example, there is less electricity, then find more ways of making electricity and supply. There was less water than fine water and supply. So there was a very linear approach to how the problems have been framed and therefore the solutions. Nowadays, the problems are convoluted, they are overlapped, they are interviewed, it’s becoming more and more complex.

Neha:
And for that kind of, so to give you an example, so water governance issues is not just a cement and pipes for problem. It’s a governance challenge. It’s a behavioral challenge. It’s a financial problem. It’s a geographical jurisdiction, political issue. So when you have to tackle such an issue, how can you approach with only one set of discipline? You need to think of various disciplines also to answer. So if you’re looking at a body issue, so if I say my issue is right now a headache, and one aspirin is not going to resolve, you also need to understand what is causing the headache. Is it because of television? Is it because of something in the brain? Or is it a symptom? Or is it really a root problem? something else. So, this interviewing, how do you approach a complexity, it was one of the ways is transition management. So, the governance framework helps to identify

Neha:
And navigate the complexity, it works with kind of actors that can come together, frame the problem, and create processes to enable that change. And the processes are not just like only a direct process, but also nudge, tinker, the kind of system, enabling conditions to make that problem, to address that problem on the go. So there are different ways of how you approach the problem. And that’s what transition management more or less enables. So that was the main idea. And what I liked about this is because then you start understanding and unpacking the problem in so many different ways.

Neha:
It’s not just richer, it is also then, for me, a very correct way because you realize the problem owner and whom it affects are two different people sometimes, two different groups sometimes, and you start acknowledging them.

Neha:
And that is where I feel, then you start realizing the stakeholders with whom you are engaging are only someone who actually have no stake in the problem and they think themselves as a designer. That’s fine. You could have an idea, you could know how to resolve the problem. However, you have not experienced the problem to understand the gravity. Sometimes we prioritize certain aspects of a problem based on what we have studied. But then the grounded realities are different, for which we need to also go back to the people themselves. So these are the different aspects that made me understand transition management and how and where it is contextualized. And work towards change because it always comes back to the root problems of who has conceptualized that as a problem. It is problem as per whom. And then how do we approach it? Whose goal are we working towards? And then how do we put down those goals and what are the aspirations and how do we resolve it? So these were certain questions that made me more aspiring towards this problem. I mean, I loved how I was approaching towards the sustainability issues. And nowadays, in my last five years of work at DRIFT for transition management, it was also interviewed with justice questions because that’s the kind of perspective I bring in.

Neha:
So for, interestingly, again, when I was at DRIFT, I was working on Indian transition management approaches. And I realized that all this is right. It sounds correct. However, in places like India, in other post-colonial contexts, transition management and also transformation can be very expensive. It is also very not feasible. It can actually invite a host of other problems. So, for example, many people say in Netherlands are turning vegan for environmental reasons. That’s very true and it’s correct. I completely endorse it.

Neha:
However, it has also been this idea of becoming vegetarian for climate works great. But then when it’s transported to India, superficially, it also promotes casteism. It also promotes certain unhealthy habits such as eating a certain kind of a product which is not even grown in India. I mean, you can also become vegetarian by eating something which is nearby. Or sometimes eating a country chicken is more greener than eating a broccoli, which has a bigger carbon footprint. So there are a lot of these intermingled sociopolitical issues at hand. So simply saying blanket, let’s be vegan for the world, it’s actually not helping. And what about the casteism? What about, yeah, so those were certain issues that would actually strain the social fabric if you just implement transition management as is. Change is expensive. When you have to change something, you have to break. And then talking about unlearning, talking about new systems comes with a cost. So how do you work on innovations and new ideas without thinking of how feasible it is When you think of change, people lose jobs And secondly, when you talk about change, the first thing you have to say is why you want to change That means you also have to acknowledge the issues in the system

Neha:
Talking about issues in the system in an insecure political climate such as India can cost you job and sometimes also your life. So are we even a safe space to begin talking about change in first place? That’s a very important question to ask. And that’s why many of us always work on bettering or improving the system because it doesn’t start from a critical question itself. This is the reason why, for me, working on more contextualized ideas of transition works better and especially centering around justice. Because without justice, then transition actually becomes a weapon and it creates more losers than winners. So I do support transition and transformation in the way we approach urban development. However, if it’s not intersected with justice principles, yeah, it may go in a wrong way.

Hari:
So there’s a lot of complexity in your answers. So you’re saying that, first of all, that when we think about sustainability problems, if we get beyond the superficial level, then we see that the root causes are very interlinked with different factors. And therefore when we study these problems with a mind to some kind of systems change we have to adopt a very interdisciplinary and universal kind of mindset where we might be applying concepts and principles from psychology or science technology but also justice you’re especially right so one thing which i was just wondering about is how does one.

Hari:
Let’s say get educated in this it sounds that, you probably had to take a lot of different courses and study and or was it that you spent time with people who are experts in these fields and you learned their lenses and more than just your studying you are an expert in transition management and you can see using these different lenses but for the people who are embedded in the context right the so-called stakeholders who may or may not be the ones with the real stake as you’re saying how is it that we bring this understanding to them when they may be seeing things from a very biased cognitive perspective right like in terms of their cognitive biases how does one actually develop this perception of the world and is it easy or is it accessible to everybody or does everybody need to go to the Netherlands and study there before before doing it how do we make this more widely accessible this way of looking at the world.

Neha:
This is a good question, and I’m not sure if I can answer it very well, but I’ll try to answer. Maybe I will just reduce the scope of it in my work. How does my work reach India better or something like that? So one thing is, I’m not coming as a Dutch expert to India. I’m someone who is actually taking the Indian understanding of change to the world. So in my PhD, I actually challenged the Dutch ideas of transition management. And I came up with a framework on repair that works on improvisation, regard, frugal ways of thinking of change, which is something timely, working with proximity,

Neha:
Knowledge which is in proximity, resources which are with a stone’s throw away. So how do you work with something which is feasible, urgent, and it’s also contextually relevant? And this is a kind of change processes which is also now applicable to Global North because there are problems everywhere and then it becomes more realistic. So that is something I work on and also in my work, I centered my idea of change to restorative justice. So if we do not address historical harms, then we will not move towards the kind of just future that we aspire to. So if we do not acknowledge the kind of people who are always marginalized,

Neha:
In urban development processes or who have never been asked, who have never been included in decision-making processes. And if we continue to ignore that, then we are reinventing the same injustice wheel. And that is the kind of framing that the repair framework is trying to change.

Neha:
So, for example, if I was working in Bhopal for my PhD, and in Bhopal, we always think of only Bhopal gas tragedy, which happened on 3rd December 1984. However, we do not know that for 20 years before that, there has been a water tragedy, where the persistent organic pollutants, the sludge was actually trickling down in its groundwater. And that is affecting a lot of people who are drinking that from the aquifer. So this problem has not been acknowledged enough, because if you acknowledge then you have to resolve and that incurs a lot of charges and lots of accountability as well.

Neha:
So what happens is when I was working in getting which kind of people together I also got people who are working to address this problem. So these people are not water experts. These people are victims. When you get victims on the same table as decision makers they talk in different languages. One is talking in pain, one is talking with an egoistic solution centric mindset so how do you get this how do you get them all together is something I work on and that is very stressful and it is also very sensitive as well now coming back to your topic how do we get this so again I did not go as a dance scholar I actually went as an Indian scholar who came to Netherlands to get the right tools a credibility and authority to work in my own context to take myself seriously. So, I actually faced challenge to be accepted in India, being a social scientist. So this is where I feel a lot of people ask me, but hey, you haven’t built anything. But in my job, I actually mended relationships. I got people on board. So why isn’t my job even considered that relevant? And that is where I feel projects that support this kind of work helps me get that reach. So for me, in my work, lot of funders who are open to also innovate the kind of change that helps.

Neha:
So for example, a lot of funding, a lot of projects in India, their goals are set up between 5 to 15 years. So then they are very short term. Second, it’s a visible, tangible solution. Sometimes the goals are not connected towards relationships, towards aspirational changes. If those goals are more wider, more, yeah, if they are more broader, then you can actually think of different ways of engagement. So many times I also, I’ve been invited to work with different agencies or and however, they do not know scope may end like, because if they are working on a project, whose goal is to, say, provide this much of water to this many people, then they are like, where should we fit in? And of course, I have a very relevant role and important responsibility in making things work, changing perspective of how they approach water issues in first place. But then these are not the solutions you get in 10 years. This is a deep level value change that I bring. And then that is not being scoped out in current projects and goals. And the bigger ask is also from the people. If people are saying, hey, but then you’ve been working for 10 years, what changes have we done? One of the most motivating examples for me is in the land of Guj in Gujarat where a lot of organizations post-earthquake, once their relief work was over,

Neha:
The organizations came together and they are working on long-term changes. They work on empowering and educating people to understand the salinity issues in water.

Neha:
And over years, they have worked on groundwater recharge. Now, groundwater recharge is one of the slowest processes in nature. You are reversing something that has happened. And it takes a huge amount of time to dilute the salinity to make water portable enough. Now, this is the end product of this. Maybe sometimes you won’t even see that in your own generation. Maybe your children will be able to drink that water. But it requires efforts and engagement from today And those people are doing it And after 10-15 years, the water is in some places potable Some places you can use it for gardening But the main thing is the salinity has decreased to a very significant level Even the children speak in that language And this is a long-term process So when you have a faith in the long-term process When you are not greedy enough to have results tomorrow The fast and quick results Things can happen.

Neha:
And similarly, things can happen to the urban planning processes as well. So the idea is to how do you design your goals? Of course, you need some in-between intermediate goals. We do work with low-hanging fruits as well so that your belief in the system is still intact. So, of course, we can work towards it. But we also need to work towards a long-term goal which is intangible, which is relationships. Look at ourselves what are we working towards we are working towards a better life and better life is not just very tangible you need to feel good about yourself right every time you wake up the same way in the city the people should feel safer the same safety is something very inherent you feel safe so for that it is not just about making lights and great roads it’s also about feeling a sense of belonging and this kind of feelings do not happen by a project which is spanning five years and you make beautiful streets. It’s also how people feel at home by talking to their neighbors. And these relationships mending is is something I work on. And I hope to find more projects that gives me space to talk about my work, to engage in this kind of efforts and also get people who are already working on these kind of efforts because I also need to be in a thriving system, in a network of people who also support each other and we build a kind of a relationship network of just well-intentioned people who are working for a just future.

Hari:
This is very rich and I think what I’m hearing is that you didn’t go to the Netherlands and come back as a Dutch scholar you went there for legitimation in some sense and you’ve come back and you find that you still need legitimation for the kind of approach which you’re carrying and this need for legitimation I believe is also there in the transition management right because the transition arenas need to be legitimated in some sense by political authority, so on and so forth, if I’m not mistaken. And you find in your work in India, the status at which we are at, in terms of understanding systems change, you find yourself dealing with short-termism and let’s say output orientation in projects. And you feel that an actual systems change approach needs a much deeper, longer perspective. And you hope to find more projects which support this perspective on your part. And you feel that True Repair, which the reparative framework which you’ve created for governance, for example, and which you’re deploying in these projects, needs an acknowledgement of the intangibles, not just the outputs, right? Not how many water faucets we changed or something like that, but also the intangible social capital, the human values. What you’re looking for is a way to legitimate an approach which goes much deeper than superficial, right? Is this one way of understanding it?

Neha:
Yeah, I think that perspective is also many times considered as an afterthought. And that is where it’s not prioritized enough. And also, yeah, so that is something I feel if you do not value these kind of attributes as primary, then your efforts are going to be tertiary and secondary. And therefore, the solutions never work.

Hari:
So you had mentioned previously that you were driven by the desire to challenge even the outcomes which we are aiming for, right? Because those also need to be contested because we may skillfully execute on a vision which itself is flawed, right? Because of some perceptions or the lack of justice and inclusion of the designers of this so-called sustainable future, so on and so forth. And this desire to challenge what we are aiming for, you feel that we have to start valuing this intangible. So, do you have any sort of practical step to do this? For example, I feel that everybody in the world values their health or should value their health. And so, everybody already values something which is not a tangible output per se, right? Do you feel that, you know, there is an approach by which we can value the health of systems and people in a similar way, like bring it into the discussion, maybe unobtrusively through facilitation? What would your approach be if people don’t accept it at its face value that, okay, we need to factor in all these intangible factors when it comes to designing the outcomes we are aiming for?

Neha:
So for me, the answer lies in how we approach itself. So instead of approaching in a solution-based approach, I support a process-based approach because I am not the one who wants to create a solution for someone else alone. I want to create a space that gets relevant people, that helps social learning, people understand from each other, also get experts on board, understand their perspectives, they know science better, and then how do we co-create the solutions? The idea is, there is an expiry date, there is a relevance to the solution that has been created. So, these people also need to come back and then rethink of the solution.

Neha:
Does that work at that time? Can they come back to a space and challenge the same solution, which they thought about 10 years back? Because we need processes to sustain them. The solution needs to adapt as the time moves ahead. Tomorrow, when their own children will start saying, hey, but this solution doesn’t work anymore, how do we challenge it? Do we have the legal room to change and adapt the product? It’s what is required. Because tomorrow, if we just say, hey, this is the idea of sustainability, This is how a water management system should be. But this was conceived 15 years back and the problems 10 years later are going to be different. What is the space? What are the resources to adapt, to tweak, to tinker with that problem? That processes need to be given. And that also makes people empowered to work on the solutions. Second, it also needs to be inclusive. It also needs to bring people who are generally never part of the decision-making process. A very, very simple way is you including children in your discussions. Are schools part of the solution-making processes?

Neha:
And then why aren’t they part of it? What are the systems to include them? And this is where I work on enabling a platform. So you mentioned transition arenas. That’s one of the types. But to come down very simply, in India, many times WhatsApp platforms have been a very lucrative tool in getting people together. Whether it is easy, you click picture, it is live, people discuss. Obviously, there are also applications, there’s been dissemination of fake news as well. So yes, completely aware of that. However, with the correct moderation and curation, your WhatsApp groups can also be a great enabler of motivating, getting people, like-minded people together and making change possible. It’s a faster route of dissemination. In such a way, you can also have more formal structured spaces to engage with different mixes of people. And these are the ways in which it becomes more process-oriented. I sometimes feel that people have opinions about our work without actually engaging and understanding the nuances of that work. That’s where it reduces its implementation value.

Neha:
And this is the reason why also educating and sensitizing also becomes important. And that’s where these kind of places helps to understand each other’s opinions understand why and where are we coming from can we empathize with someone when we ourselves are not facing the problem in first place how do we sometimes we think ours is a bigger problem however we might be talking about the symptom the root problem could be something else do we have that kind of patience to move away and think big these are the kind of things that those spaces offer And that is where process-oriented solutions, they last longer than an output-oriented approach, where then that output becomes easier.

Neha:
Insufficient, not relevant to that area and at that time when the time is already passed away. So something engaging in trust building or distrust mending, understanding what justice means, which kind of justice, understanding what is kind of the future you want and where is that idea coming from? What is it? What is the trauma you have gone through? What are the issues your neighborhood is facing and why? And these are the discussions that these spaces offer safe enough space to speak about it, to challenge the norms that are already existing. Many times the values that we work on are very patriarchal. They are colonial legacies.

Neha:
So something like the idea of a beautiful river. If you see the movie Gandhi, the Sabarmati River was actually a non-perennial river. It was dry. It would only flood when there was excess monsoon. So the spillage would be flowing in the river. We as Indians have mostly non-perennial rivers. The aquifers need to be fulfilled. It needs to be wet. It needs to have water in it. Not all rivers. That is not an indicator of a good water system. A river has many types. It has to retain its type. So if it’s a non-perineal, it functions as a non-perineal water system, water channel in a larger system for a reason. When you try to change that as a perineal, like it has water for 12 months, it is over-soaked. when there is excess water during monsoons, then it starts flooding. And the flood is not because of the river. The flood is because we have chose to live in the area that is supposed to swell when there is excess water. So now these kind of issues are happening. Where do we discuss this? And who has put this idea in our head that this is how a good river looks like? So this is where we also need to challenge our own notions of what kind of image do we want to live in? Is this image fed by some media?

Neha:
Do we dream about a river which is not even Indianized? Are our emissions completely imported? Does it make sense in the context that we are living in? So these are the spaces we need to also course correct. We need to educate ourselves. We need to get interesting people who help us to challenge. So these spaces are also something that helps you to challenge and it creates a new way of oak that we do not know everything.

Neha:
We also need to maybe support a kind of culture where we say, hey, I did not know this. Now I have corrected it and now I want to do this. The idea of correction and moving on is something that we don’t support. We think failures are bad and that is also something this project, the question you asked me before, what needs to change is this. The projects that are supporting, in transition, we also want people to experiment with the solutions. When we say experiment the failures go hand in hand you try, you fail then you learn from those failures try again so the space for experimentation also needs a culture of accepting failures and making failures actually a win and these kind of spaces allow it so more the failures better you know the great person Einstein himself has said this so therefore I’m coming back to the larger answer yes we need process oriented approach to support or the output oriented approach But without that, your outputs are going to be irrelevant in course of time.

Hari:
I can see three keywords popping out. One is, of course, process. So I would even say that some of the development which happens in India might be input oriented, not even output oriented or outcome oriented, you know, spending money on a scheme, for example. But you’re saying that, OK, we need to shift mindset to process. Okay, now if this process has to work to create and continue to create good outcomes on a continual basis, right? Then, you know, sometimes it will have to challenge the status quo, challenge the way in which we are conditioned to think about things or it is acceptable to think about things. And you’re saying for that, the culture has to evolve maybe to allow a certain bit of cognitive dissonance. And my question to you would be, I mean, I totally understand and would agree with this.

Hari:
But given the current political climate, and given the long term nature of sustainability, and given the fact that, you know, we have to change our paradigms in order to be able to adopt the process of inquiry and, and establishment of new knowledge and practices, and innovate there, what is the process by which the culture itself will change, do you think? Is it, you know, when the air pollution gets so bad and the water gets so bad that it affects the common man and their voting power? Or is it already happening? Will it happen with the next generation of leadership, for example, which will move beyond a very hierarchical approach maybe? What is your perception on this? Because if you’ve come back to India and you’re practicing transformative reparative governance with a process-based approach, which has its root in your desire to challenge our norms and our notions of what is desirable even and how we may achieve a desirable, sustainable future while dealing with tricky issues such as justice, right, which are so easy to sweep under the rug. What is your personal view on this and what gives you hope when it comes to the change in our culture itself to support this?

Neha:
Very deep question. For me, I actually practice this. I don’t think so. I am that big of a person to create a change in the society. But I have small enough agency to create a small ripple that can connect to another ripple to create a wave. That’s what I believe in. And the idea is to do what you can. So for me, the issue with our society or also the societies right now, what is happening globally is we are fed with certain information and that information we don’t even know if it’s correct or wrong. And sometimes we are even detached so much from what is happening. I feel a lot of us who also are working in this society, in this sector also talk in such jargony, inaccessible language that even solution makers are not accessible. The questions that are created, those are difficult to even comprehend even for the people who are facing that issue themselves. So I feel there is disconnect in the people who are also working towards the same people. So that needs to be changed. So for me, the easiest goal is do you know what you’re so the first that you are taking right now in making this podcast

Neha:
And I’m really trying hard to also talk very simply so it also reaches to an audience who doesn’t work in the same field or maybe someone in his 12th grade who wants to aspire to do something for the nature and gets inspired so are we speaking in that terms and second for me is working on descent is really important so how do you create space for change and as I said till we do not speak about failure, we will not work towards change. How normal is it to talk about, you know, I changed my job. I had designed this, but now this makes more sense. Oh, I had this opinion. However, upon knowing this new information, I plan to do this. Without this, the system, the complete system becomes very rigid. And this is how patriarchy, gender norms, casteism survives. Because rigidity is celebrated. Flexibility is not What are the ways in which we celebrate flexibility in schools? Why do we only celebrate a child who is winning in a certain subject?

Neha:
Do we also celebrate a person who has evolved, who has shown a significant improvement as much as someone who is consistent? So these are some things that should change from the start. Also, idea of, for example, and to give a very specific example, look at our municipalities, how they function. Look at the department, look at the title of departments. It is land, water, health. These departments, they came from just when the Britishers left. I mean, it’s carrying almost like more than 50 years of legacy. We cannot have the same departments. We don’t even, when it comes to health, we want modern facilities. We want modern education because with health, we are very serious. But why not with the sustenance of the city? It’s an organism itself. So, how do we change how does a city functions? So, then what kind of people, what kind of education, what kind of approach is required? So, for that, we need people and we need different spaces and we need different approaches to how you look at failures. So for me, that for me is the pivotal part in change.

Hari:
The three things which are popping out for me are, first of all, you’re focusing on your agency, like every good stoic should. And then you feel that creation of spaces is very important. I think this is what you’re doing with the reparative approach and even transition management had the notion of spaces, arenas for frontrunners to get together. So that is very important to create. And you feel that society might become more open in terms of allowing for process-based innovation towards co-creating a future when we have a transformed relationship to failure. And since you yourself are a practitioner of these transition experiments or the facilitation of then you are no stranger to failure. And I think in sustainability, anybody who’s really been in the field for more than a few years probably understands like.

Hari:
Like the level of failure you have to deal with to stay in the field, right? And maybe as a culture, if we rethink what it means to succeed, and maybe failure is learning, right? So if we value learning, then we should value the learning which comes from failure. And maybe that’s the way in which we will evolve. I would also say if our systems are rigidly set up from obsolete or let’s say yesterday’s paradigms, then they might just create that failure organically and that might set the stage for rethinking how to do things. So interesting thoughts. But what I’d like to now ask you is if we brought it down to brass tacks and if we talked about a city like Bangalore, and let’s say we wanted to deal with the water problems here. So you would obviously know that everybody who lives in Bangalore knows that there are tons of challenges we have with water. What would the approach of reparative governance be? And can you talk about your work in this retraction?

Neha:
Oh, yeah. Thanks for getting that. I actually am right now working on this project called More for Nature, where I work on institutionalizing citizen science towards transformative water. So in Bangalore, the lakes are a huge pool of contamination.

Neha:
And that needs to change. And interestingly, Bangalore also has a very thriving citizen groups that are working on lakes development. By the rest of the country it looks a very inspiring it is an inspiring space to have people so connected to their cause however for me when I started approaching and started talking to people I realized which kind of people are connected so it’s great to have people participation to solve these issues and ask right questions, get government to be accountable get things moving and that’s

Neha:
Hands down is one of the most inspiring cities for me to work. However, there is also a kind of a problem here in thinking and also realizing which kind of people. So are these people elite, upper middle class, educated people? And many times then their aspiration of how lake should be is actually a very beautiful public space. It is not a space for thriving, say, reptiles or aquatic animals or fisher communities or any communities whose livelihood depends upon the water. Second, the idea of looking at water as an ecosystem, the lakes as an ecosystem has not been discussed because the lake has also been imagined, as I said, only a public space. So the area, how much where there is water is reduced and we have more gardens it’s great to have people around so then that engagement with the water increases but then the use of that water changes

Neha:
Suddenly, people have issues with more frogs, with snakes, because then that becomes an issue. But again, as I said before, it’s us who is coming in the water’s vicinity. The water is not coming to us. And then we change the typology of how that water body should perform in that urban setting. So it actually becomes detrimental to change so yeah i’m basically creating swimming pools and aquariums in a city to serve you as an aesthetic indulgement so that’s not the reason why we all should be coming towards so we also need people to ask those critical questions about and also you know represent the water body themselves so how does that happen and that is something i’m working towards. So when I create this space to think about the future of Bangalore water bodies, I also try to get people who have never been part of the discussion. There are also people coming from the government side who talk about how things are difficult also within the government, how the capacities are limited. So some of the lakes come under the forest. So then whom does it go through? So all these things becomes a huge governance challenge. And first thing is to get Set it on the table and then sort it out. Then mend the relationships. Also understand the aspirations of people. Also correct them to think through a water ecosystem perspective.

Neha:
Also sensitize how it is to live with real water body than a very fake aesthetic, plastic, imported idea of how a lake should be. Having a lake and then building a golf course around absolutely does not serve to the health of the lake. So what does health of the lake differ from lake beautification projects? So what are the indicators to help to work towards these goals? And they can be co-created as well. So these are the efforts that I’m right now working in Bangalore. And of course, as I said, it is really inspiring to work in the city where A, descent is better. People are very proactive. They have time. They want to do good things. And it’s good to ride on the wave. And then making changes is easier because the base requirements of dissent and listening is there. So at least from what I experienced so far, and getting critical thoughts is possible. And or at least there is a space to make possible. There are a lot of NGOs, civil society organizations that helps to bring, surface the critical questions which have not been discussed earlier. So for me, that has been personally for me a very inspiring process.

Hari:
I think you’re stressing dissent and when I think about what science means, right? Like it’s always challenging the old paradigm and finding something which is closer to the truth, right? And these constructs which you’re dealing with okay this is a good lake has a golf course around it and has a beautiful thing and so on and so forth versus what is an actual indicator of lake health and how do you actually create healthy lakes so it’s it’s clear that you have to challenge a lot of conditioned notions of of what success looks like in terms of water in bangalore so coming to a related point you’ve been if i have understood correctly you’ve been critical of the technocratic approach in your writings and in your work and some of your work challenges that.

Hari:
Do you feel that the technocratic approach is completely misplaced and needs to be completely replaced. And if we move towards complete informality, wouldn’t it be utopian chaos which would occur? Or is there a different way of thinking about it? And is there a space for coexistence and co-creation between them? Especially since you mentioned the government as well and their perceptions also might change.

Neha:
For me, there are two separate questions and I will answer each one of them. So I did not say I opposed to technocratic innovations. I opposed to technocratic hegemony, which would mean weighing higher priority towards engineering solutions, engineering mindsets, saying engineering is better than something. That is the problem. Technocratic engineering is one type of solutions amongst many other approaches. And because of which the other solutions and approaches, they get eclipsed. Sometimes we just point fingers with one kind of government, but government itself is divided into cities, states, centers, departments. There are departments whose mandates overlap. So, road department thinks of something, but then that intersects with the water department. Then in Bangalore, you have lakes and tanks. And that is something that shouldn’t happen. Yes, pipes and civil engineering is important. So is social science. So is natural science. So is art. So is creativity. Why don’t these perspectives get enough spotlight, enough support? Why isn’t a natural scientist governing or leading a solution? Why isn’t a behavior scientist, anthropological expert leading a solution? Why it’s always urban planners, civil engineers?

Neha:
Technocratic, any kind of different engineers are the ones who are leading the solutions. When the problems itself are not planning or engineering based, as we said earlier, the problems are wicked, the problems are interlinked. To give you an example, in Bede, there are women who are sugarcane cutters and their uterus are being taken out because the five days of menstruation cycle

Neha:
Yeah, it becomes a problem to the sugar cane owner so that he needs his labor and so on and so forth. And with this, so what kind of problem is it? Is it a health problem? Is it a gender problem? Is it an employment issue? Is it a water issue? Is it an agriculture issue? Then and to this, then why do we have engineers solving this problem? Who can even frame this problem? It’s like for any kind of body issue, do you go to only one kind of doctor or do you prioritize only one kind of doctor? We don’t. We go to a general practitioner. The general practitioner directs you to a right kind of an expert. Then we have processed doctors such as surgeons. Then we have a mental health doctor. We go to so many different kind of physicians. But then when it comes to cities, why do we go to only one kind of discipline for answers? That is my problem. So we need to have equal amount of respect and support to other approaches as well. That is what I meant by technocratic hegemony. So prioritization and using only one kind of approach to solve all kind of issues. The second thing that I work on is informality.

Neha:
Informality is not opposite of formality. The opposite of formality is hybrid and that is what is informality. So when we talk of informality, I meant that for any kind of system to happen, we provide formal mandates, formal policies. To do something, these are the steps to be taken and this is how it happens. As you know, the world is changing, the issues are changing and those mandates that have been obviously designed for maybe a well-intentioned reason may not happen and it needs to be flexible. Something like if I send an email to someone and that person has not read because of many reasons, I can just call or WhatsApp and say, hey, can you check that email? Is this illegal? Is it wrong? No. What has this done is that expedited the process. so that a person will read the email, maybe an answer. So these are how relational networks actually expedite the formal processes. And that’s what I meant by informality.

Neha:
Something like WhatsApp platforms are working faster than a formal website. And so I have this issue of I get really overwhelmed by too many technical spaces and I do not understand this technical mechanism or do this, do that, upload KYC. It is very overwhelming. So something as simple. And we also know, oh, this person is using this platform, so this must be safe for. So, you know, this kind of relational network actually helps to situate formality much better. This is what I meant by informality to drive governance faster and more in a trusted manner.

Hari:
If I were to ask you for what your asks were, three asks to anybody who might be listening to this, and whether they’re a 12th standard student or a government adhikari or an engineer who’s trying to solve for water, what would your three asks be from whom?

Neha:
Wow firstly thanks for uh having this a hopeful question because all of them made me feel really bad of what i’m working towards like it was all about talking about problems so liking the fact that we are talking about hope and future yeah my first thing would actually be i think i already mentioned about creating a culture to talk about failures openly and it’s not just about in our department it’s just

Neha:
Everywhere like from from a unit of a family between friends in an office space in a school it should be just cool to be hey i tried and this failed so i’m doing this now that should be i think the basic thing without that we cannot work towards change so first would be that and then whatever it needs curriculum teaching how a family parents interact between friends yeah so whatever it takes. So that will be my first one. And the second is in our field specifically,

Neha:
How do you make, how do you institutionalize working through failures is something funders, government can make it happen. And for that also setting people like us, allowing failures to happen. I understand the impact of failures, of course, health, lives. I’m not talking those kinds of failures. I’m talking about giving space for trying new things, being empathetic, considerate to actors, to people in the field who are already working, not pressurizing them. This is where, for example, when I work in getting people and the government actors, authorities together, it also creates a space of compassion and where someone from the government says, hey, but we are only three people in the government. We are incapacitated to do a certain project. So could you help? Could you be part of it to gather data. And that’s where these connections between the government and people through citizen sciences are actually working well.

Neha:
So, being open and compassionate has helped. So, what are these avenues, means, channels, support systems that can be generated? How can funders provide spaces, provide funding, provide projects that can support this kind of thinking, that can be a catalyst to this kind of culture, would be something I would hope for. And the third is, how do we participate more meaningfully? And that is something I would talk in a place of responsibility and accountability. Like how proactive, how informed and how empathetic we are. This is also coming from a place of facilitator. So when I go to different cities to facilitate discussions, It becomes a real difficult ordeal to get people on that table. Of course, there are people, all of us are busy, all of us have so many things to do. But then what is democracy if we, our sir, do not participate in those processes?

Neha:
At the day of voting, we take that as a holiday, we do not even vote.

Neha:
If there are places, there are ways to engage and make democracy happen, have you been responsible enough and done your duties to make democracy happen I know this is a huge philosophical question but do you participate in your RWAs Resident Welfare Association do you know where your water is coming from, do you know how much you are paying and we always talk about how much taxes we pay but do you know where all those taxes are going do you know who is doing those work, we all use Blinkit as a service but do you know what harms it produce. So these are certain things which are right out there and we don’t question. And then what is your responsibility in that? I think being ourselves responsible, ourselves, hold yourself accountable. And the day we start holding ourselves accountable, if we all of us are part of a problem in some way, and that also inculcates then a space for humility and therefore we also start accepting failures. Oh my God, I did not know this. It’s my ignorance that made me react in a certain way and I will correct myself. If you live with that kind of emotion, then you also help empathize with someone who has made those mistakes. And that’s where the space for learning, being flexible also operates. So for me, finally, it comes down to how do we change? How do we work as a more informed, more empathizing, and more proactive citizen?

Hari:
So, thank you, Neha. Thank you so much for agreeing for this interview. It’s been extremely deep and very valuable. And I’m absolutely sure that it’s going to change the perceptions of a lot of the people, especially the young people who might read it or listen to the interview once it’s on the side. Thank you so much.

Neha:
Thank you.

Hari:
Yeah, thank you. Bye-bye.