Akash Ganga Center for Collaborative, Entrepreneurial and Sustainable Solutions for Water: A BITS Center for Excellence

Sustainable Innovations collaborated with US-based GIS Corps and India-based Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) to use satellite images for designing the pipe network, measuring the rooftop area and numbering the reservoirs. This methodology significantly cut down costs, time and labor spent on the program.

ACCESS for Water

Aakash Ganga, River from Sky, is a domestic rainwater harvesting system. It channels rooftop rainwater from every house in a community, through gutters and pipes, to a network of multi-tier underground reservoirs. Aakash Ganga’s strategy is to form public-private-community partnership or social enterprise to provide drinking water to the people. It rents roofs from home owners or acquires rights to harvest their rooftop rainwater. The local government or Panchayati Raj Institution (PRI) leases, at no cost, about 10,000 M2 land next to the shared community reservoir. A social takes care of the post-implementation upkeep and holistic sustainability ― social, cultural, economic, institutional, political, operational, and ecological. One half of the harvested rooftop rainwater is stored in the reservoir attached to the house for the exclusive use of the home owner. The other half flows to the shared community reservoir. People who live under thatched roofs or who cannot afford to have their own reservoirs take water from the shared reservoir.