(Photo by Michael McElroy)
One of India’s biggest challenges is providing clean water to all of its 1.3 billion citizens. Many of the country’s most sacred rivers—such as the Godavari, Ganges, and Yamuna—are heavily polluted from factory waste, agricultural runoff, and untreated sewage. And much of India lacks basic water and sanitation infrastructure, forcing tens of millions of Indians to forage daily for water and toilets, like this man in Mumbai’s Sewri slum, who has just filled his containers from an illegally tapped water line. NGOs, the government, and business are working to improve water and sanitation, but much remains to be done. One organization tackling the problem is Splash, a Seattle nonprofit that has set a goal of providing clean water to every public school in Kolkata by 2020, about 2,000 schools serving more than 400,000 children.
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