Shilpika Gautam - striving for poop-free Ganges
Posted on: 12/Dec/2017 3:33:42 PM - No. of views : (2991)
Shilpika Gautam seems to belong to where she desires to be! She has now quit her lucrative London career and started working for WaterAid that sets up practical toilets along riverside. It is beneficial in either ways � reducing burden on the river and eradicate open defecation. So, it�s ultimately two targets with one throw!
It was 2 years ago that Shilpika Gautam quit her job as an investment banker, as she decided to quit life as banker and get back to her hometown ďż˝ India. She was born and brought up in Agra, India. She has not been in India for over 10 years which she realized one fine day!
A meaningful job!
Shilpika has always been interested in setting up a career for herself that is meaningful and holds tangible impact. She strongly believed that if she has to bring some change, it is possible only from India, and here in India!
Now, it has almost been an year since she got back to India. Since her return, she has been constantly communicating and being in touch with NGOs to understand the prevailing dire issues here. As she has already been into river cleaning up drivers in Europe, she held enough knowledge about water pollution.
With that, she set up a paddleboard along Ganga river along a stretch of 2500 km. She decided to analyze the damage caused to the river and document all of it.
She started with the journey with the aim of making the people aware about how plastic usage can devastate various parts of the river. However, along her way, the realities were different and her perspective got eventually changed.
Though the Ganga Action Plan was launched in 1986, aiming at improving the water quality of the river and bring it to acceptable standards, there is no substantial improvement and the objective still remains as it is! Untreated sewage is one of the major factors of pollution threatening the life of river.
Over 85 percent of the pollution entering the river are out of the 50 cities lying along the river side. The reasons are
- Improper treatment capacity that doesn�t cope with the generation of sewage.
- The treatment facilities are not fully used to their fullest capacity due to poor underground drainage system
When these problems are not address, there is certainly no use of building toilets! Shilpika thus decided to associate with WaterAid and mark an end to the issue.
Poop-free Ganga
Though there are several solutions, identifying and implementing a solution that can practically be possible for the given space is the challenge. So, the solution is to build toilets that can double up as on-site waste treatment. Thus, in communities including Fatehpur, Kanpur, Samastipur, Sahibganj, etc., they are planning to set up twin-pit toilets and eco-vapor toilets.
The former would accumulate wastes in two pits. Once it gets dried up, it shall be sent to faecal sludge management and used as compost.
With the eco-vapor toilets, a vapor-permeable membrane is used for speeding up dehydration process in twin-pit systems, thus ensuring no sort of bacterial growth or contamination of groundwater.
In the campaign name called Poop-free Ganga, Shilpipika is campaigning to crowdsource funds.
Shilpika says once you begin with addressing an issue, people begin relying on you, and you will be responsible to handle the challenge and provide solution. When you don�t have enough power to bring solution, things turn tough, she adds.
