Tested, not tried

Tested, not tried

But all these technologies -- membrane or FAB reactors -- which Indian companies flaunt are foreign concepts. The government and companies have little to show for technologies that have worked under Indian conditions. The government has spent Rs 320 billion in 50 years on rural drinking water supply. Under the Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission, more than 77 research projects have been sponsored, out of which 15 have been conducted by CSIR laboratories. But a paper presented during last year's National Workshop on Priority Research and Technology Programme for Rural Water Supply and Sanitation, says: "It is an area of serious concern that most of the completed projects have not been able to demonstrate a proven technology which can have effective application for solving water and sanitation problem". Most technologies have failed in villages though they gave promising results in labs.

"A large number of water treatment plants installed in various states to tackle toxicity in drinking water sources have not met with much success. The complexity, high cost and inconvenience of these technologies, compounded by lack of trained manpower in villages, have constrained their implementation and sustainability," said Annasaheb M K Patil, Union minister of state for rural development, at a workshop organised by NEERI in 2003.

Several research institutes under CSIR, such as the Lucknow-based Industrial Toxicology Research Centre and NEERI have developed indigenous water treatment technologies after decades of research. But most of these technologies have only worked in labs. "We have a tendency to ignore issues. These technologies aren't checked for performance. We must have a performance test for all technologies and a national organisation to verify them," says M V Nanoti, deputy director of NEERI.

In the 1970s, NEERI developed the Nalgonda technology for defluoridation of water. It was a simple method which added aluminum salt to water and followed it by flocculation, sedimentation and filtration. The technology was launched with much fanfare and it worked well initially but now most plants using it have failed (See Down To Earth, 'The Dark Zone', Vol 11, April 15, 2003).

NEERI, with funding from the Union urban development ministry, in the mid-1990s developed a pesticide removal unit which could be attached to household taps. The system, which was filled with granular activated carbon, claimed to treat water for lindane, dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) and dichloro-diphenyl-dichloroethylene (DDE) in concentration below 5 microgramme per litre. NEERI claimed that the unit could remove 60-90 per cent pesticides, 99 per cent organic carbon and 100 per cent faecal coliforms in two cubic metre of water. But the unit was never marketed, and today it can't be used because we have new kind of pesticides.

Devotta says, "We need to differentiate between technique and technology. Not all techniques are technologies. NEERI has developed both, some of which have worked and some have not. We will now revisit all the technologies developed by us to understand the problems and challenges."

Many institutes have developed technologies to extract activated carbon from coconut husk. The Guru Jambheshwar University in Hisar has developed coconut coir pith carbon for removing fluoride. Tamil Nadu's Annamalai University has developed low cost carbon for removing dyes released by textile industries. The carbon, which absorbed 92 to 95 per cent of the dye, was developed using palm nutshell, cashew nutshell and broomstick. But all these technologies have just been experiments.

"The problem is that a research institute thinks its job is to develop technology; a company only thinks of marketing and the government only funds pilot projects. All the stakeholders are working in isolation. There is no one to take these technologies to commercial scale applications," says Devotta.

Companies say they do invest in research. "We invest one per cent of our Rs 200 crore turnover on research. We have indegenously developed resins to treat fluoride, iron, nitrates and arsenic," says Sharma.

But while Indian companies have mastery over resins, membranes are still way off. Only Chennai-based Membrane Technologies Ltd manufactures ultra-filtration membranes in India. All other companies import, claiming that they need infrastructure and demand to manufacture membranes. "We were making membranes with Hydranautics of Netherlands. But the MNC shut down and we stopped manufacturing the membranes," says Popat.

Government agencies claim to be doing research on membranes but companies are doubtful of their products. "Bhavnagar's Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute took 20 years to make a membrane. But it has a rejection rate of 95 per cent only as against the world best of 99.8 per cent. Who will buy their membrane?" questions Popat. 12jav.net12jav.net