00:00And joining me first on the show is Parmeswaran Ayer, who spearheaded Prime Minister Modi's flagship Swach Bharat mission as
00:09Secretary in the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation from 2016 to 2020.
00:15Sir, I appreciate your time here on India today and particularly today when Prime Minister Modi completes 25 years in
00:22government.
00:22You have written an article that Gujarat under Narendra Modi between 2001 and 2014 served as a laboratory for water
00:32governance reforms that were subsequently scaled nationally.
00:36What did Prime Minister Modi do differently in Gujarat?
00:40Was it the political polarization of water, the institutional architecture or the insistence on execution that made those lessons scalable?
00:55Yeah, no, thanks, Maria. It's a great question.
00:58You know, today, water is a major developmental challenge globally, right?
01:03You know, whether you're talking of climate change, variability, droughts, floods.
01:08And so water is pretty much on the top of the development agenda, not just in India, but everywhere.
01:13So we thought this would be a good time to look at water, the water story in India.
01:18And then when we started looking at it in detail, we saw a lot of the big programs which are
01:24going on in the government of India and in the States.
01:26The Jal Jeevan mission, the Jal Jeevan mission, the Jal Shakti Abhiyan, before that the Swaj Bharat mission, a lot
01:33of them trace their sort of origin in terms of the laboratory you refer to in Gujarat, you know, 25
01:41years ago.
01:42So when Chief Minister Modi took charge, in fact, today, 7th October 2001, he was looking at a lot of
01:50challenges, but water scarcity in a water stress state was on top of the agenda.
01:55And it was fascinating how he took water governance, you know, I'm stressing the word governance, and put it at
02:03the top of his developmental priorities for the state of Gujarat.
02:06So that was the first thing which was very different from anyone else had done in a state.
02:12The prioritization of water and water writ large, I'm talking of river development, I'm talking of irrigation, I'm talking of
02:20drinking water, cutting across water resource management.
02:24So I think that was the first thing.
02:25Then he set about it in a very systematic way, right?
02:28So the whole Narmada story, which greened Gujarat, took a lot of persistence, effort, dedication, leadership by Chief Minister Modi
02:37to make that happen.
02:38That led to the greening of Gujarat.
02:41Kach, I mean, it's transformed if you look at it today.
02:44But then they also started talking of micro-irrigation in those days, 25 years ago.
02:50And then drinking water and sanitation through community-led initiatives, setting up the institutional architecture through an organization called VASMO.
02:59So a lot of these seeds of governance of water were sort of started, triggered by Chief Minister Modi, which
03:08was very different from other states.
03:09And then many of them then got scaled up in a fascinating manner over the last decade when he became
03:16Prime Minister.
03:16So when they talk of the Jalji Vin Mission, which is looking at the largest drinking water program in the
03:22world, where coverage is exceeded 82%, river cleaning through Namami Ganga, micro-irrigation, PMK-SY.
03:30Then you're looking at, you know, per drop, more crop, the Jal Shakti Abhyan, groundwater management through the Atal, Bhujal,
03:39Yojana.
03:39So a lot of these programs, they were seeded, so to speak, which is why we have used the word
03:46laboratory, in Gujarat.
03:48And coming out of that, but taking them to scale nationally, there are significant lessons, Maria, for the world, particularly
03:55the global south.
03:56And, you know, happy to share some of those key messages from the case study, which along with my co
04:01-authors, Dan Smith and Nitin Basibi, launched this morning here at IAM Bangalore.
04:06Sir, you know, in your article, you say that there are four Ps, which is political leadership, public financing, partnerships
04:14and people's participation.
04:16Of these, how critical was Prime Minister Modi's personal political ownership?
04:27Look, I think that's the most important P in the four Ps.
04:31The first P and the fourth P, people's participation.
04:35But political leadership, you know, that's at the heart of governance.
04:40And when we talk about water governance, without that political leadership at the highest level,
04:44none of these programs could either have been conceived or implemented at such a scale,
04:50which is why that Delhi declaration, which we did in October 2018,
04:56where Prime Minister Modi and Secretary General Guterres jointly signed that
05:00in an international conference, which had 55 ministers from around the world, it became critical.
05:06So that personal leadership of Prime Minister Modi, earlier Chief Minister Gujarat,
05:12that made all the difference, because that's the wind at your back.
05:15When you're implementing a program, when you have that level of political leadership and support,
05:19but we had actually much more than that, right?
05:22We had the communicator in chief, which was very, very important to articulate the mission goal
05:28and then monitor its success.
05:30Yes, the partnership, the third P, and then public financing, putting your money where your mouth is, right?
05:36Many programs around the world in different countries have the right policies.
05:40Right.
05:41But if you're not willing to prioritize the financing for those programs, they're not going to happen.
05:46So I think those four Ps could be applied in any developmental context.
05:50And we were fortunate that we had the Prime Minister putting his kind of personal stamp and leading this program.
05:57Ms. Sire, you worked closely on the Jaljeevan mission after Prime Minister Modi announced it in 2019,
06:06building on lessons from Gujarat.
06:09What was the biggest conceptual shift, moving water from being seen primarily as an engineering infrastructure problem
06:18to treating it as a governance and service delivery challenge?
06:22And how much of that thinking came directly from the Gujarat experience?
06:30Look, I think most of it came from Gujarat, to be absolutely honest.
06:34And if you see the four big takeaways from the case study,
06:38and they are at the heart of the answer to your question.
06:41So what are these four things?
06:43We are saying first, we learned this from Gujarat.
06:45Lead with governance, not necessarily with infrastructure.
06:49And when we talk of governance, we have highlighted the four Ps, which I just mentioned, right?
06:54So that's the first key message to the Global South and to all our states in it.
06:59The second message is when you're dealing with water, you have to manage both the resource and the service delivery.
07:06So it's water resource management and service delivery of water together.
07:10So that's very important.
07:12You can't be doing them in isolation.
07:13That's the second key lesson which came from Gujarat.
07:15The third is putting communities at the heart of the story.
07:19The Village Water and Sanitation Committee, the Pani Samhiti, as they call it in Gujarat, under the Gram Panchayat.
07:25Getting them to lead and manage and getting them to own and be accountable is fundamental.
07:30And the fourth, whether it's Gujarat or India, think big.
07:34This is doing things at scale, right?
07:37I mean, it's a big lesson for political leaders from other countries like in Africa.
07:40You have to think big, put out a vision, create the capacity, find the resources, public and private, and then
07:48go out and deliver and monitor.
07:51All these lessons, I think, were germinated in Gujarat and then they were scaled up in India.
07:58My last question to you, sir.
08:0025 years after Prime Minister Modi became Chief Minister of Gujarat, your research now traces a 2001 to 2026 journey
08:08from Gujarat to India and potentially now the Global South.
08:12If you strip away the politics and look purely at governance, what is the one institutional lesson from the Modi
08:22years that you believe has had the greatest lasting impact and what, according to you, remains unfinished?
08:33Okay, I think that if I had to pick one, I mean, there are many, I think putting community, the
08:37Jan Andolan, making sure that the user, the user, not just benefits, but takes charge.
08:45So putting communities, the user at the heart of management, of accountability, I think that is one of the highlights
08:52of the water governance story, apart from all the four Ps, I think that's critical.
08:57And I think going forward, what needs to continue is focusing on, which the JJM is doing now, on the
09:05sustainability of these programs, because you've got to keep working at it, right?
09:09That's an important lesson which we have learned over the last 25 years, that the work never stops, you can
09:16achieve big goals, but you've got to keep working at it to sustain the benefits.
09:21So I would say that needs to continue and it is continuing.
09:24All right, Parmeswaran, I appreciate your time. Thank you for sharing all those stories and giving us a glimpse of
09:31how Prime Minister Modi thinks and works.
