The Nepal Weekly 
March 19, 2024
(Gokul Dangal is an enterpreneur working in the field of water management for around two decades. He is currently serving as the chief technical officer at the Best Paani, an organization working in the field of water management and rainwater harvesting. Best Paani is serving thousands of clients in 38 districts at present. Here are excerpts from an encounter with Dangal on various issues related with water management and rainwater harvesting in the context of World Water Day, March 24, 2024.)
TNW: Would you please shed light on the importance of World Water Day ?
Gokul: World Water Day is celebrated mainly to generate awareness among the people regarding the importance of water, which is facing crisis in the modern age. The idea behind celebrating the World Water Day is to disseminate the message about providing equal access to quality water to all the people. The quality and amount of water the members of a community gets access to should be equal. All the people, whether they live in village or town, should get equal amount of water.
TNW: What is the situation of water security and water availability In Nepal?
Gokul: In Nepal there are such remote places, where people have to walk for four hours to get 20 litre of water. The students living in such areas are forced to sacrifice their studies to fetch water from faraway places. As they have to carry water they reach their school 1- 2 hour late almost every day. Their parents are also equally suffering due to the scarcity of water. They have to spend hours to fetch water. In the urban areas also, we need to spend lots of money to get potable water in sufficient amount. People don’t have equal access to drinking water mainly due to the mis-management of water resources. There is abundant availability of water in our country, but what is lacking is proper management of water resources. We have to build proper mechanism and adopt proper technique to distribute water among the people in a systematic manner.
TNW: How do you classify Nepal geographically on the basis of availability of water?
GokuL : We classify the country into three regions on the basis of geographical structure, namely, urban area, rural area and remote area. The remote area may be in Terai or in the Hill area, where access to the water is very difficult. In the Terai, boring water may be in abundance while there may be little access to surface water. In the same way, in mountain region, sufficient amount of water may be available but the water is in the form of ice. But they don’t have running water. If we can properly manage the water then there won’t be shortage of water in any sector in Nepal.
TNW: What about the impacts facing the water sector due to the climate change?
Gokul: I have also been involved in research works in this regard. What we have found is that in our country the portion of water in the air has been significantly reduced leading to less humidity in the environment. Due to this we are going to face serious problem in the next 10-15 years. At that time, the plants will be unable to collect the water vapour from the atmosphere and store underground. So, the underground water source is under threat. Due to this our water sources will dry up and it will be difficult for the plants to survive in such an environment. The pattern of rainfall is undergoing tremendous changes due to the impacts of climate change. In one hand we are experiencing melting snow in our Himalayas these days as a result of climate change while in the other hand we are experiencing longer dry season. The window to receive rainfall has also narrowed down. Therefore, we will be facing bigger challenges to the availability of water in future. If we don’t take timely measures to mitigate these challenges, the coming generation will have to face a huge crisis.
TNW: What are the measures to tackle these problems?
Gokul: The main challenge is that we have to conduct research in this field. We should not dig water haphazardly and stop over exploiting the sources of water. We need to minimize its use and adopt methods for harvesting rainwater and focus on recharging ground water. Instead of throwing water into the river during rainy season, we should deposit them into the ground. If there is sufficient water stored underground we can utilize it when there is scarcity of surface water. If we properly manage the rain water we can also reduce the possibility of landslide. We need to identify those plants which absorbs water from the environment and spread such plants in our surroundings.
TNW: What is the importance of rainwater harvesting in the context of Nepal?
Gokul: Rainwater harvesting is not a totally new thing for Nepal. Even my grand mother used to collect and store rainwater in drums and utilize when needed. The water collected from the sky would be used for washing clothes, taking bath and sanitation purposes. But at that time they don’t have the technology to conserve them for a longer period. Water collected from the sky gets dirty in a few days. But now we have solutions to these problems. After Adding technology to it we can utilize the water even after 12-15 months. After proper treatment we can store the water for months and even we can utilize it for drinking purposes.
TNW: Has the rainwater harvesting technology become popular in the country now a days ? What is the current status of rainwater harvesting system in Nepal?
Gokul: I started working in the field of rainwater harvesting since 2006. Before that few people were working in this field by receiving fund from donors. But in 2006 I started commercializing rainwater harvesting. Unless we make the technology commercially viable it cannot be sustainable. So we encourage people to make investment in this field. Now people have started investing in it and this has become sustained as well. In fact, the money required for installing rainwater harvesting technology is not the cost, but its an investment.
TNW: What the government needs to do to encourage people to use rainwater harvesting technology?
Gokul: If the government provides tax incentives or discounts to those using this technology, then more and more people will be attracted towards this technology. There should be such provisions that makes it mandatory for people to to install rainwater harvesting system while constructing new houses.
TNW: Would you please highight about the activities of the Best Pani:
Gokul: Currently we are involved in 38 districts and we have plans to expand our services to all over the country very soon. We are also aiming to introduce our technology to the SAARC countries in future. We provide technology and technicians for water solutions and our main focus will be low income people. We also pay attention to sustainability while working in this field. We utilize indigenous materials so far as possible. We also pay due attention towards maintaining quality. We don’t comprise in quality. That’s why it has become possible for us to penetrate into hundreds of thousands of clients.
