 Good afternoon, everyone. On behalf of South Asia Office of International Water Association, I welcome you all. I'm Dr. Prasanna Zubdev. I handle South Asia operations and with me I have Mr. Jainathan Karunanthi who handles Indie operations. Welcome you all to this panel discussion as a part of South Asia webinar series. And the idea behind South Asia webinar series basically to promote a dialogue in South Asian countries. For example, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India. And to discuss the relevant challenges, to discuss the relevant problems and try to come up with effective and efficient solutions. And to begin today's discussion, we have Mr. Asan Mansuri who is a senior program lead at SEVAS from SEPT University. As speakers, we have Mr. Ritesh Bhairagi who is chief officer of Sender Municipal Council. And we have Mr. Ashish from Karad Municipal Council who is the city coordinator. One announcement unfortunately our co-moderator Ms. Arya will not be able to join us due to some health issues. And basically one housekeeping rule, please keep your devices on silent during the presentations or during the discussion. If you have any questions, please write them in the chat box and we'll cover the questions toward the end of the webinar. However, after the presentations of both the cities, if you have any quick questions, we'll give you five to 10 minutes to address them and then we can go ahead with the webinar. So I think with that introduction, I'll hand it over to Mr. Asan Mansuri from SEVAS. Over to you Asan. Yeah, thanks Dr. Prasanna and thanks Jairan for organizing this important webinar topic which is very close to our heart as well, which talks about academia and government collaborations to attain scale and impact. I think it's very important to in this present situation that we see that a consultant gets engaged with the government and then moves on. But how this relationship between academia and city governments have taken place over the years is what is going to be discussed today and how both these entities work in partnership to attain the impact and the scale not only at city level, but also at the state level from where the in the state of Maharashtra that we're going to talk about and how that is being recognized nationally as well. So again, on behalf of SEVAS and IWA, I welcome you all to the webinar. Thank you all for joining. Today, we will be having two presentations. It's a case study of two cities. One is Senner Council, which is in Maharashtra and other is Karad Municipal Council. They both have actually won a recent award at the IWA Kigali Conference where both were recognized for their wash and climate initiatives and they have been one of the frontrunners in the state of Maharashtra to demonstrate these activities and then share these ideas at a country level as well. So both these presentations will be made today and without further ado, I would like to call upon the Chief Officer of SINNER, Mr. Ritesh Beragi. Just to introduce Mr. Ritesh, he is an IT engineer and has completed BE in Information Technology from Government College of Orangabad in 2012. After that, he started to work in NANDED as an Assistant Commissioner from 2020 and after completion of three years at NANDED, he was positioned as the Chief Officer of SINNER Municipal Council, which is a Class B city and because he has been leading some of the great works that are going on and SINNER has now become a model city for not only citywide inclusive sanitation but around the entire climate wash linkages as well. So we are happy to have you Ritesh Ji on this webinar and we look forward to hearing from you about how the Government Academic Collaborations have worked for you and what the city has been able to attain in these years of journey. Over to you Ritesh Ji. Good evening everyone. Am I audible? Yes, you are. Thank you. Good evening to everyone. My name is Ritesh Beragi. I am currently working as Chief Officer in SINNER Municipal Council. Can you please share the screen? Is this screen visible? Yes. Go ahead. Thank you so much. As you can see we have with the collaboration with the safety and safety with their CVAS program including Sanitation Service Delivery and SINNER. Recently we all know that we got the prize at the IWA in Kigali for the service delivery mechanism. That is a case study for the reuse of treated waste used water used water and as well as at the resource centre. As you can see the SINNER it is located in a Nassip district of Maharashtra. It is approximately 85,000 populated city of a medium size. It covers around 22,000 households plus some of the commercial establishments as well. City has a 52 square kilometer of area, has a 14 of election awards and we can see the around 5000 slum population is there. As we have it is a representation of largely as we can see the 4000 plus small medium size city as we have seen in earlier slide. We have improved the FSSM in that case we have 90% of access to the own toilets of safe onset containment. Earlier we have a government has launched the ODF first scheme and in SBM the mission which is the mission scheme of the government of India. The government has proactively launched the ODF, ODF plus and ODF plus categories. In that case we have 90% of individual own household toilets which are accessible to the households. Some of our we have some of the case we have the community and public toilet as well. In that case we have a septic tank the household individual household have septic tanks which are not which don't have the schedule dislodging mechanism earlier. That is the case we have the household we have access to the own toilet but the septic tanks has a they don't have a dislodging mechanism schedule dislodging as we can say. So in that case the more each property or the household has a septic sludge that is the collected that is remain at that case for the longer time of period. So in that case we have come with the schedule dislodging concept. In that schedule dislodging we have divided the city in different parts and we have in the survey delivery mechanism we have initiated the concept of schedule dislodging in which the each part of the city is a dislodged in a periodic manner. The septic tank which is get a collected the sludge for the period of a longer time they don't have a mechanism or have a mechanism of calling when the septic tank gets full or it get smelly and in that case only then the municipal council or the service they have provided the service of dislodging. But in schedule dislodging they have launched the concept of periodically dislodging the septic tank and it was a dislodged and get back to our FSTP plan where it gets treated and we have the operational mechanism we can we can see in the next upcoming slides. In the second case we have the grey water treatment plant in that case we have the small grey water treatment plant where we have intercepted the sewage water or we can say the grey water which is the used household water and it is get intercepted at the one part of the which is called as ashore garden where we have intercepted the water and it get treated in our water treatment plant and it it is get used reused for the maintenance of the garden. In the both cases in the FSTP sorry in the both the projects that is the fiscal sludge treatment plant and grey water treatment plant we have 100% use of a treated use water and the sludge is used for the as an we can say the fertilizer for the maintaining the garden and the urban forest. We have to maintain the urban forest and the garden which can be seen in the the first slide where we we have seen with the some of the human sacred group who were given the tender or were give a part the import for the maintenance of that garden we can get it in the next some of the slides. As you can see sanitation solution in 2012 we have the partnership with the safe university and the SEAWAS program in 2012 itself. Since then we have collaboration in a different part like in a technical assistant maintenance then for the build up in the project and then day to day maintenance and operational operation of the that plant. Here we can see 30% of the open defecation it was in the back then then high dependency on the community toilets and community toilets are non-function. These are the then we have tapped the first issue of the access access to the toilets. In that case Government of India also launched some of the their own initiatives for access access toilet access even to the toilets individual toilets per se. In that case we have individual household toilet scheme from the SBM Swachh Bharat Mission which was the flagship program of Government of India. In that we have some of the IHHL and other schemes where the beneficiaries get some of the cash amount in for building the toilets that is of the I think 12,000 per individual household toilets. The Government has provided 12,000 and Municipal Council of Sindhar also passed the resolution where we as a Municipal Council in our own funds we give the amount of 5,000 per individual toilets that is 12,000 from the Government of India and 5,000 from individually from our Municipal Council funds that 17,000 of the amount is provided to the beneficiary and we have given the we have promoted them to build up a toilet to have larger access to them. Then from the collection part of you we have we have the septic tanks that the sludge which get collected in the septic tanks we have the our in the participation of the one of our partner that is Sumit facilitator. We have the septic tank collecting vehicles where we can we have send the vehicles to the different part of the city in the periodic manner so that the sludge which get collected in that septic tanks get the sludge in a periodic way so that it not so it not get earlier that is the case where septic tanks remain in that sludge get remain in that septic tank for the longer period so that and it was not get collected in the what can I say that in the larger way. So they have collected the sludge from the septic tanks in a periodic way and they get transported to our treatment plant. As we can see on the as till till today we have 4,723 plus septic tanks have been covering the over 8,583 properties and 3.4 crore liters of septic has been treated from in our FSTP plant and 5 to 7 septic tanks are disilleged per day as compared to 7 to 8 per month in the 2017 when demand of the disilleging was happening. For that purpose we have imposed the sanitation tax on the in our property tax itself sanitation tax we have collected 300 per year and that is 900 per 3 years that is the case and that is sanitation tax is for which is get collected in in the form of a property tax it get credited in our one of the escrow account and that escrow account we have we have the non-profit and non-loss basis we have the one of our partner sewage facilitator and we pay them from that the sanitation tax the money which is get collected in that escrow account we pay the service charges to the our partner of the sewage facilitator from that account itself. So we can say that household get promoted for paying the sanitation tax and they get better they get better service on that behalf as we can see that 8000 of square meter of urban forest and landscape in the barren land earlier that the SWM side as a before we can see the picture of in the site in the corner where the land it was a barren land when we acquired that land for the SWM sewage solid waste management purpose then we launched our solid waste management component and as well as FSTP component in that landscape itself. So after we can see the after image we have maintained the two we can say the urban forest or garden which are maintained by the self-help group these are the women's group who are who are giving we have given the contact them to them to maintaining that garden earlier that woman work in the industries like a MIDC from we have the two MIDCs in the adjacent to the our city and they have a very hardship job over there. So they left that job and we have taken a meeting to have such and we have briefing we have given a briefing about that project and we have brought some of the self-help group friendly clauses in our tender document by that purpose we have given given the tender to the self-help group and now they are only maintaining the garden earlier they were they were doing some hardship job in the industries and now they are maintaining the garden through this purpose. So we have the well persons with that project first one is the obviously the sanitation purpose recycling the resources and maintaining the garden and secondly we have also provided them employment or per se the what employment and through we have empowered the women's. So we can see the two three goals of SDGs sustainable development work we have achieved through this project as we all know the importance of the global warming and all those climate change and mitigation and adaptation issues. So we have the environmental economical impacts of the project that is the reuse of a treated water contributing to the carbon mitigation. We can probably say that 46 million plus liters of fresh water has been saved due to reuse of a treated used water as we can as I said earlier that we have maintained the urban forest and maintenance so the resource recycling is the one of the component and secondly the 10,000 square meters of land they develop in the form of urban forest and gardening by using the treated water then we can see the CO2 equivalent to 2268 metric ton simply start over the 25 years through the urban forest and garden at the FSTP plant as well as we can see the CO2 equivalent to the 231 metric ton to be mitigated over 25 years through solar units at the FSTP and gray water treatment plant. One thing is also in the ribbon to mention over here the FSTP and gray water treatment plants are 100% used from the solar units. So here we can also say that we have saved the energy or we are using the 100% of the green energy over here. The SHG and the FA as I have mentioned earlier this is the convergence of the SBM and SHG that is annual M we have providing the employment to the needy humans or needy we can say the people from the providing for the providing them to this gardening and all this activity and the maintaining the garden. Gray water treatment plant it is a run operationalized and maintained only by the self-help group that is we have provided the technical some of the technical training to these human for the gray water treatment plant and through this plant we have meant they the woman itself maintaining the garden and operating the gray water treatment plant itself. So we can see the convergence of any element SBM. Next the second part about the this project is IT and ML monitoring the system of SSSM that is we have the two app over here that is a Sanit app and a Sanit track. Sanit track is used for the tracking the septic tanks vehicles movement that is we have divided city in the three parts and the one part is get covered in one year. So and the GPS enabled vehicle is moving from property their track and their route map is already already decided and the Sanit app is helpful for tracking the movement of the vehicle and Sanit app is also one of one also other app which can be used for the tracking the the household where the vehicle the vehicle a dislodging vehicle where it goes to the household for dislodging the septic tanks the Sanit app maintained the record of the all the household where the vehicle has reached and where the septic tank is dislodged and the tap also provided the household owner there after the dislodging the septic tank the tap provided that the owner signs sign on that app so that we have authenticated and tracking about the movement of the vehicle and the tap helps us to get to get reached to the individual household and the owner itself giving their authorize sign for dislodging the septic tank. This is the timeline where we can see from 2012 itself we are in we have a great partnership with the safety United City and with the SEAWAS program where the they have provided consistent support from the right from the inception of the project to the building their project and to the now the day-to-day operation and maintenance of that project from 2012 we have developed our city sanitation plan best making and we have achieved a motive or we have targeted to making Cinder as an ODF city and safe management of a vehicle switch then in 2017 we have we have get that tag of ODF as on 22nd of 2018 we have a designing model a tender document and installation of a FSTP plan through involvement of a private private player in 19 we have operationalized our FSTP plan and we have in the same year we have declared as an ODF plus plus city. We have continued the support of ODF sustainability and as a safety management activities into 2020 as well and in 21 we have involvement of SHGs for the operation maintenance of garden and urban forest to tendering process as I have said earlier we have brought the some of the SHG friendly tender documents and we have given given some of the technical training to the SHGs to operationalize and the plant itself and to maintain the garden and urban forest through which we have provided them employment and livelihood and 2020 the started the reuse of treated water and slush through the SHGs as I have mentioned earlier. Here are the learnings from the Cinder are being scaled up in the Maharashtra and other cities of India as I have mentioned that we have the September city in collaboration with Cinder and safety is also working with the other ULBs as well like YE and other cities are also approaching or having interest in making their own cities having that kind of a model for their sanitation and SHG programs. So we have a Swachh Bharat mission and through which safety is planning to have a 1000 plus FSTP or implementation in India and 300 plus FSTC alone in Maharashtra. So we have now the SHG 6 goal that is sanitation and clear drinking water. The Cinder principle council and along the all other council are trying to have some of their own initiatives in the field of sustainable development goals through which we have the through we can achieve the resource recovery and use of clean energy like this FSTP and grey water transplant plant. And secondly we have as earlier I mentioned the SBM and NLM carbon is initial to launch at the national level also being implemented in Maharashtra that is a pretty simple offer SBM and NLM having a some such a kind of a projects small scale of project can give a livelihood or employment to the needy women's who are working in the hardship jobs and also we have through this SBM we have access to the toilets having a scheduled dislodging through which we have a periodically cleaning of septic tanks like we have a model in a similar like a three-year of target of a completely dislodging city as per work as a case. So this kind of model or this kind of convergence is bound to happen or is planned to happen in different cities of Maharashtra and India as well. So these are some of our recognitions. Recognitions like we have as we can see in the slide the Seventh CSR and these are the Seventh CSR impact awards second prize in ninth FIS SSA award and the other also awards are also to mention next. These are the partnerships and collaborations that we have that is Bill and Belinda Grace Foundation these are our through which we have got the finance and other technical support and also the safety universities see was they are right from the inception to the building or planning the project or through the maintenance and day-to-day the constant technical support of thank you so much all of you. Thank you Ritesh ji for this detailed presentation. I think it's an extensive work that the city has done and maybe just to quickly summarize what Ritesh ji just said that this city has played the collaboration the way the collaboration happened in this city is that SEAWAS only played a role of an enabler. So the SEAWAS team did not do any activities by themselves but they built the capacities of the local government to do schedule de-sludging, FSTP O&M, SHG engagement, urban forest and also all the activities were led by the city governments only the research that was required to be done for these specific activities was technically supported by SEAWAS. So we need to understand that the doer here is the city government and not the SEAWAS team and I think that's the essence of the relationship that these organizations have built that you need to identify yourself as an enabler rather than a doer if you want to have an impactful and an institutional program. So for example the Siddharth project has actually ended for SEAWAS but these activities that Ritesh ji just mentioned still continue so that's why it has been institutionalized in a system only when the city governments run the show and not the external agency that come in. So thank you Ritesh ji for the presentation. There are some questions on the chat but what I will request I think I see Nasreen as a question but if I post it on the chat we have one more presentation from another stalwart city. Once we have that we will open up the questions to the audience as well and we'll reflect back sorry apologies but we have to we are a bit cognizant of your time and the time of the commissioner that we have right now. So moving on to the next presentation we have Ashish Rokade ji from Karad mencical council and Ashish ji is a yes there is. So Ashish ji has been working as a city coordinator at the Karad mencical council since October 2020 and he is leading the activities around sanitation and solid waste management. He has been one of the champions to implement whatever you are going to hear from him in next few slides and next few moments that he has actually led and made that things happen along with the chief officer of the city and before joining KMC he had done his master's in construction management and has eight years of experience working with Tata projects and other construction head in Mumbai. So thank you Ashish ji for joining at a short notice and apologies for a short notice I know the chief officer of the city had to go for a election duty last moment called so and that we have to learn by working with the government so that's our learning but over to you Ashish ji for sharing some of the excellent work that Karad has done and many accolades that Karad has won under the state of Maharashtra the cleanest city and all so as well as the SBM. So over to you Ashish ji I'll share the screen for you Thank you Ashish ji to provide us opportunities to what Karad has done in this sector please share your screen so that that yeah am I audible to everyone yes Ashish ji you can see the slides let's start now I think I will explain this all PPT in Hindi so that I can explain it in a better way no problem yeah so is everyone comfortable with Hindi yes yes please go ahead Ashish ji yeah no yes sure first climate resilient wash services delivery in Karad this topic is such that in this situation in the scenario the global warming which is increasing is very important for that that topic we have done the work climate friendly wash activities that we have done the initiatives that we have done that I am going to explain to you next slide you first vulnerability in India is increased to a climate change that all we know your brats are your floods are your climate change and your early raining or without season heavy raining or I was up climate change key was a story increasing so this core use Karina Kelly or just a play a lot of the population is 1,853 slum population, as you can see in the map, Karad is surrounded by river Krishna from 3 sides so we have lots of water to drink and as per the mentality of people to waste also but to tap it a little bit, we have taken some initiatives such as metering the water connections as you can see here, we have metering the water connections metering helps to reduce the wastage of water people understand how much water we have used and how much we have wasted the water charges also increase and because of the economical pressure, people reduce the wastage of water for that we have metering the water and secondly, what happens in slums those who have separate water connections, there is more wastage of water to reduce that, we have given some group connections i.e. 3 or 4 slum households have given one slum connection so that their requirement per day is fulfilled in 10 to 15 minutes of water supply so the remaining time of the water used to be wasted to tap it, we have given one connection to 5 households so that the water can be used efficiently and secondly, the situation of groundwater, people know that the level of groundwater is getting down so to recharge that, we have installed rainwater harvesting system on each and every building of Karad Municipal Council and we are giving 1% property tax subsidy to the households who are installing rainwater harvesting system next please after that, we took the second initiative that the water that is getting collected from our sewage in Karad, we have 100% sewer connectivity so from that around 8.5 to 9 ml water, we have used water collection every day so we have to trade it in STP so how much water is being collected in a huge quantity and because our city is on the river side so the biggest problem in front of us is that where is the use water coming from because river is available, 24 by 7 water supply is available, so where will this water go so instead of leaving it in the river, we have done that we have a water supply agency here we have given that water to the agricultural field they supply the reused water so the requirement of fresh water for sugar can that requirement has gone down because of that, our recycled water has also been reused so around 9 ml per day, the requirement of fresh water has gone down next please as you can see here, this chart has been made 93% IHST coverage and we are targeting 100% to IHST coverage 7% dependency is on CTPT now we have to reduce that too till 2025 we are targeting this SEVER network has 100% coverage because of that, along with 5 pumping stations we treat the sewage after the sewage treatment, we separate the sludge and make it compost we store the solid waste management compost separately and use the recycled water compost separately because the composition of the compost is different because sometimes we get heavy metals in sewage after testing, we know that there are some heavy metals so we cannot use 100% there so we use the compost in urban forest we use the compost of solid waste management next as I just told you, for solid waste management services we have MRF facility, dry waste plant there are 2 wet waste plants 90 ml per day capacity and we do segregation of dry waste there are around 13 types of dry waste segregation we do that by bellying it and then sending it back to the recycler and another noticeable initiative is Biomedical waste plant is the best plant for the PPP model the space requirement for that plant municipal council has provided Karad hospital association has seen the erection and operation maintenance it is the India's first plant of biomedical waste which is on PPP based model next carbon sink is a main helping activity which reduces global warming for that we have taken support of the Miyawa forest team as we call urban forest there are around 5 projects of urban forest we have covered about 32,000 square meter area 28,500 plants are fully planted 2 more projects are going on around 47,000 tons of CO2 in the next 20 years it will be sequestering for that around 20 million liters of fresh water we have saved due to use of treated waste water next action taken for isolating climate friendly initiatives use of climate friendly initiatives use of rainwater harvesting and use of renewable energy sources for that municipal council is taking the initiatives but until we can't achieve anything what we have done is 5% incentive is being given to municipal council property tax which has solar panels on top of houses which are using renewable energy are giving 5% incentive to property tax and those households using biogas plant are giving 1% incentive and those households are giving 1% incentive and the second we have incorporated rainwater harvesting system while giving building permission rainwater harvesting is compulsory and the second we have done when there is a feeling of plinth in the building we have compulsory 30% of our CND waste material so that we can reduce the CND waste material also and we install rainwater harvesting also next mitigation electricity consumption plays a big role as we all know that water supply scheme and water treatment electricity consumption is very high for both as you can see in the chart there is comparison of Nakur, Rajgod and Karad for water supply we have 61% electricity consumption for water treatment 26% and remaining is street light and municipal council buildings so if we can replace water treatment and water supply consumption with renewable energy we can also do carbon sink and in CO2 emission we can use CO2 emission next what we have done for that first of all we are installing solar panels of 1.5 kW on our toilets on city pts now 5 city pts facilities are installed remaining 6 and we are in process we have installed 72 kW solar panels on city pts which is our requirement of 350 kW remaining 280 kW we are also in tendering process along with that we have biogas plant of 5 ton per day capacity with that biogas we produce energy with energy generator and that energy we use in solid waste management plant the belling machines and the wet waste shredders and for street lights we use the same biomethane plant electricity currently we have 760 kW solar projects under construction so that we can reduce so that we can produce 3000 units per day electricity we can also reduce CO2 emission over the next 25 years now we will generate 2888 MW of clean energy in the next 25 years with current capacity for 2368 tons of CO2 emission next slide please I shifted on the next slide I think there is a net problem hello next slide please next slide please I think net issue next slide please next slide please next slide please we got first facilitation from MPCB in 2019 in 2019 after that we got first rank in 2020 and 2019 we got first rank on national level and after that we got first rank in west zone in 2021 in 2021 Mahjeeva Sundara Havian who is my earth mission in Maharashtra state government we got second rank in 2022 we achieved first rank in 2023 again we achieved first rank again after that we signed MOU with SEAWARS SEAWARS supported us for implementation of solar power project at STP which is 72 kW after that we supported SEAWARS in urban forest in each land we made an urban forest with SEAWARS and its operational maintenance SEAWARS we are in touch with SEAWARS and we have engaged SHG there are two SHG's engaged in that land for ONM we are in 2024 we are developing urban forest with SEAWARS support and also we are starting reuse of treated water project through SHG next slide please here are some recognitions and achievements of Karad Municipal Council first we got green building certification for 2022-2025 period after that as I told you earlier in 2023 we achieved first rank in Mahjeeva Sundara Havian competition in SBM we got 3 star Garbage Free Certification as you can see the certificates of Mahjeeva Sundara are displayed there and second achievement is that in 2022 we achieved water plus in ODF category the highest ranking of water plus we achieved that too in 2022 there are only 4 water plus cities till 2022 in Maharashtra we are one of them please as I told you Karad has initiated under process we will take more initiative to reduce carbon emission hopefully we will take more initiative and we will succeed in reducing carbon emission for that SEAWARS technical support will be required I request Asim to be with us for this target achievement thank you thank you Asim I think exceptional achievements of Karad city and we know that it has been a stalwart even before we started work but we are helping you to improve I think all activities you are leading so thank you very much for an excellent presentation and your kind words Prasanna you wanted something to share I just wanted to take a minute here to mention that the work done by both these municipal council first of all thanks a lot for excellent presentations very detailed and very informative and just wanted to mention that work done by these two municipal council was celebrated at our recent conference in Kigali Ravanda which happened in December 2023 Sindhar municipal council Mr. Biragi was there so they were recognized as inclusive urban sanitation champions for their work in disposal and reuse and Karad municipal council they were felicitated as a climate smart city and I take this opportunity to also reach out to other municipal councils who are here because I am aware that most of the municipal councils are doing some exemplary work and we would request or we would encourage them to reach out to us with their projects and we will be happy to take it to the global scale we will be happy to note it down and make it reach more and more people the excellent work that you are doing in the end thank you Asim for and Sivas for the excellent support that you have provided these municipal councils over the years and I am sure that you will keep doing it in future as well and we will keep working together as it is so again over to you Asim for the question and answer session Thanks Prasanna and I think when learning that Sivas and the cities have that at some point of time we will exit and we have to recognize that fact so that is the power of our collaboration that they know that one day Sivas will go but we have to sustain the activities from a larger public good perspective they see the environmental and the public good benefits because of which they are continuing even without Sivas support so we are there with them to support but we will be moving on as well as they will also be moving on but we hope that the activities continue and stay institutionalized for the larger public goods that we want to attain and also attain our SDGs so once again thank you very much to all the presenters I think there were some questions that were posted on chat and maybe I will try to cover them there were a few questions that had come up so maybe starting with the first one I think what Nasreen had asked it is for Sinner CO so she has asked that while city Sinner council implemented the sanitation tax were there any apprehensions or problems that they faced from the citizens and if yes how were they mitigated what do you say yes we do face some of the opposes or something we can say the apprehensions from the citizens but we have convinced them that instead of paying for the one time that is when we call for the septic time for the dislogy we have to pay 3,000, 4,000 or 5,000 at one place so you can pay as a 300 of amount in a per year and that itself is in our property tax and yearly we can say it is just 900 rupees so in the 3 years it gets without a call without any I mean to say to wait for the septic tax to get stored or it get full from the sludge we have the service for the periodically dislodging from the septic time so we have convinced them instead of for in another 3 years we have to dislodge our septic time so instead of they have to call us and that is also vehicle is available or not at that particular time and they have to pay any ways over 4,000 or so at one place so we have convinced them that in the property tax they have no as such apprehensions to pay in the property tax itself and 300 I think it is a very low amount of price at one place in the year so we have imposed that tax and now we don't have any opposition or say they have fully consent for this type of model and they are happy with that and I think thank you Ritesh ji for extensive answer and just to add to what Ritesh ji just said in the scene and for other participants as well that we need to recognize that when the dislodging actually happens these tanks are very big so generally they end up doing 2-3 trips and each trip cost you 1000 so they actually end up paying 2-3,000 for a dislodging and that is also an emergency dislodging because there is a distress that is there at the household that they can't use the toilets and against that they have to pay any amount and the ULB is charging only 1000 but if a private operator comes up they charge for a distress fee which is very high so against that the city is providing a simple service which is like a free service a notionally free service where like your door-to-door waste the solid waste that gets collected daily instead of that the septage is collected once in every 3 years so I think that is the analogy to that I would like to share in addition to what Ritesh ji just said thank you Ritesh ji once again now moving on to the next question and that is for Ashis ji that what are the norms that your STPs are attaining while you are demonstrating reuse and for example the CPCB norms are they attaining or the MPCB norms and with a specific mention of because hospital waste is also maybe coming to your STPs so how are you able to manage that you have a biomedical solid waste facility which is excellent but your waste water is a mix of everything so what norms are you attaining on your STP so that it can be reused, how do you monitor it for the STP we attain the CPCB norms in the STP we have incorporated the online system which is attached to the CPCB so if there is any changes in the process we get alert if there is any changes in our treatment or any problem in treatment or we cannot attain the required criteria so the system gives us alert so we can alter the treatment process or make required changes in treatment process and the second question that you asked was it the waste water which norms are you attaining those CPCB norms we target and the waste water of the hospital the whole sewage water is connected to our sewer system but the waste of the hospital is collected separately the collection of vehicles is different the collection is separated and the biological waste is collected separately and the waste is treated differently it is not treated on solid waste management or STP okay great and I think to add to what RCC said the STP itself and where they regularly monitor because as a compliance to MPCB they have to report both of them at the STP so yes the second process is that MPCB officials visit STP because we also don't know when they visit once in a week they visit and collect samples and for their lab test we have 2 times in a month 3rd party test reports our lab does daily testing of over recycled water and MPCB officials collect samples once in a week so 3 times our over recycled water okay great thank you yes Jayan and Prasanna so actually I have a question for all three of you what was the functional modality of this collaboration I would like to know some basics about who approached whom and how did it come to be because it is very difficult to see such beautiful collaborations happening and over a very long term and if someone wants to get into such collaborations it might be academia or government how to approach the opposite party and how to get this collaboration started okay great so may I take a dig at that first so I think what happened that when we started this work in Maharashtra we have a long term relationship with the government of Maharashtra since almost 2009 when we started the benchmarking project and during that period when we started work in Sinner we had met the Ms. Malini she was the secretary of MDWS and when she said that we want to develop some plans around what do you say city sanitation plans and that concept was very new at that time the NUSP had just come up in 2008 and the cities were still struggling for what CSPs so we started this work in 2012 in Sinner along with other three cities Y and Ngoli and Ambedjogai now what had happened that we built such a good relationship over that the city's households saw a value in our work that it was not only a typical consulting assignment but it was a research led detailed project report where based on their municipal finances we said that the city can only become with their own funds ODF and implement FSM the schedule de-studying part and not go for wastewater because they didn't have that much of funds only available so what they could do from their own funds so this type of decision making we were able to help them and then this cities actually came back to us because once we exited from there our program or commitment for the state and the city was to help them prepare a realistic city sanitation plan this cities came back to us they wrote to us that if you can provide us support to implement this rather than just keeping it as a report in our shelves you would like to implement that and that's where we signed an MOU where the city signed the MOU with us it's a non-financial MOU that we did we are supported COS was supported is being supported by Gates Foundation HSBC so we supported this work under our ground to the cities and beyond that the way I think and it's a if my team can actually put the link of one of the documents where we call ourselves as enablers we don't do it things ourselves we see to it that we follow the city government systems so that it can be replicated we can do excellent work in one city but we can't scale it up if we don't follow that so for scaling it up we saw to it that we follow the government process not to be any of them and making city the owner of the activity rather than COS so that's how we build our relationship and it has moved on since then and similarly we engage with Karad through the state government of Maharashtra under the Mahjee Vasundra mission so it has been a long journey but I think a very fruitful learning journey that we had over the years yeah Thank you so much Asim we would like to hear it from either of the speakers See you sir Yeah, just like Asim said Yeah We got connected through Mahjee Vasundra We had an MOU with CWATS for three years This is not a financial MOU CWATS providing us the technical support and the guidance to carbon sink activities and to reduce the CO2 emissions and they also providing us the support how to use the renewable energy how to run the renewable energy projects and urban forestation Great Nitheri Hello Good The sub-tuner city as in collaboration with the government of Maharashtra and government of Maharashtra has chosen a municipal council for the CACP plan We have interacted with the CEPT through this CWAS program They have designed us for the CACP plan and that is when we have get in touch and since then they have been in collaboration We have planned the city sanitation action plan We have identified the gaps in our sanitation plan which we have designed the plan and then designed the tender document and building the project and then after we have the collaboration for the operation and maintenance Great Great, so I think there are some questions that were posted and maybe I will take that up quickly I know we are just a minute away from the end of this session and I know CWAS to go for another meeting as well and both RCC also have to go, so somebody has asked a question that the people living in Sinner were supportive of and as well as Karad were supportive of his activities Just to reflect, I think it's not only the citizens that we have to deal with we have to also deal with the executive team as well as the political wing Whenever a new activity starts, there are always some apprehensions but the strength that an academia can bring is around the research of that activities and showing that the things that are being done are for the larger environmental or the public goods So we did face not challenges I would say but some hiccups I would say project hiccups I would say by initiating the project but once people realize and once we were able to convey that properly through the IEC and the BCC campaigns that the cities did we now are actually getting the demand from the citizens side that we hope that the scheduled services are still continuing we hope that the water will still be supplied daily on a regular basis and all So that's the mindset that people have changed So now if they stop, I think they would be questioned why did they stop? So we hope that this awareness and the impact that the cities have been able to create will continue and people will keep on asking for this as a service Great, so I think my job is done for the day, that's what I feel right now and we are almost running out of time Prasanna ji or Jayanand K you want to say just a quick request to everyone if you can switch on your camera we'll just take a group photo if that's okay with everybody whoever can switch on their camera please do it so that we can have a quick picture by the time everybody is doing that, yes okay, thank you so much so if there are no more questions I think we can close the webinar ask him any comments or can I just, yeah Yes, I'll just final words from my side I think I wanted to thank each and every one of you I think to the IWA team for organizing this webinar on a very different topic which is around academia and government relationships I think this is, I feel it's a missing discussion that's not happening in the sector right now but thank you for bringing this up, I would like to thank both Rite and Ashish ji for joining the webinar they are really short of time but thank you for taking out time and sharing your work that the cities have done, so we are thankful for your support that you have given us as well till now and we hope that our partnership continue not the least but the very important, the participants on the call we have still stayed back, I was told 150 have registered and 25 have joined, so I was like this is the best, I have generally seen a turnout of half but we had a better turnout at least and we still have around 80-90 people still online so thank you to all the participants we hope that this webinar was useful and some insights we were able to share that you can scale or replicate in your work that you are doing once again thank you very much all of you on behalf of CWAS, the city governments and the IWA team, thank you, namaste I think vote of thanks has been already given by Sim, so in the end I would just like to encourage everyone that please reach out to us, be in touch please let us know if you are doing an innovative project, if you are doing such excellent work and we would love to take it to a global scale and I have already posted two programs in the chat box that is inclusive urban sanitation and climate smart utilities and India office we are based in Chennai we will be always happy to help every one of you to apply and to reach to the global scale as well thank you so much, thank you so much for attending the webinar thank you Asim, thank you Ritesh for taking the time out and thank you so much