The heat is on and water pangs are already being felt across southern India. With summer just around the corner, frayed tempers and water conflicts seem to be on the rise; and the clamour for water worsens. As per a latest report, India tops the list of having the largest number of people living in rural areas without access to clean water. These whopping 63 million Indians, nearly as many as all the people living in the United Kingdom, spend hours queuing up for water, coping with the ill health of using contaminated water.

Even as agriculture and irrigation use up the largest chunk of fresh water; almost 90% of wastewater flows untreated into rivers, lakes and coastal zones: threatening health, food security and polluting water bodies.

Can this water wastage be reduced? Or can the water be atleast safely treated and reused? The World Water Day 2017 resonate this simple query: Why waste water?

And Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur city is echoing exactly that! Under the glittering hoardings and frenzied activity, its peri-urban area refuses to be a willing sewage receptacle for the city’s waste. The locals have joined forces, and reinforced their resources and strengths. With the help of ‘Decentralised Wastewater Treatment System or DEWATS’, they have begun to treat the waste water from their homes, before releasing it into the fields and rivers.

No longer a ‘dumping, stinking backyard’ for the cities waste, this peri-urban area is now what it should be for its people- a home and a haven.

To know more of this initiative, watch this film supported by The Rockefeller Foundation and Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group (GEAG) .