What can 25 years of observing the same watershed teach us about groundwater? Can intensive pumping make groundwater deeper in valleys than on hills? Can decades of depletion be reversed by just a few exceptionally wet years? And how does fertilizer applied at the surface end up contaminating groundwater tens of metres below?

Professor Shekhar Muddu joins host Veena Srinivasan on the Water Data Podcast for a deep dive into the Kabini Critical Zone Observatory and what decades of field measurements have revealed about groundwater, agriculture, pollution and climate.

The conversation traces the evolution of the observatory from paired forested and agricultural catchments to a long-term interdisciplinary experiment studying groundwater levels, geochemistry, soil moisture, evapotranspiration and human water use.

Shekhar and Veena explore how intensive groundwater pumping altered natural groundwater gradients, how farmers responded to declining well yields, and how extreme rainfall events can produce large pulses of recharge. They also discuss research showing very high nitrate concentrations in parts of the aquifer, revealing how modern agricultural pollution can travel rapidly into deep groundwater through fractured hard-rock systems.

The episode also looks at the future of water observation in India, from satellite-based soil-moisture measurements to evapotranspiration monitoring, solar-induced fluorescence, carbon fluxes and the need for long-term environmental observatories.

The Water Data Podcast is a talk show on the science, systems, and stories of water, hosted by Veena Srinivasan.

For all references and further readings related to the episode, visit https://welllabs.org/wdp-sekhar-muddu/

Subscribe to The Water Data Podcast on your favourite podcast app—and catch video episodes on the WELL Labs YouTube channel @welllabs.

Subscription links: Youtube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, Castbox, and wherever you get your podcasts!

Recording by Nabina Chakraborty, Vraj Acharya and Nanditha Gogate. Video editing by Srisabari Varaguna Pandian. Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar and Kanishka Goyal. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.

What does it actually take to provide safe and affordable drinking water for everyone? And if households must store, filter, boil or buy water before they can safely drink it, can we really say the water system is providing a service?

In this episode of The Water Data Podcast, host Veena Srinivasan speaks with Professor Isha Ray, formerly of the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, about drinking water access, affordability, inequality and the hidden labour involved in making water safe.

Drawing on research from India and California, Isha explains why drinking water deprivation is not simply a problem of poor countries. From nitrate-contaminated farmworker communities in California to intermittent urban water systems in India, the conversation shows how marginalisation, infrastructure and political power shape who receives safe water.

They explore the idea of “source-to-sip” water safety, why household filters can be technically effective yet fail in everyday life, and why asking women to continually store, treat and monitor their water creates an overlooked burden of time, money and anxiety.

The episode also examines India’s intermittent water systems and the Hubballi-Dharwad experiment with continuous 24/7 supply. Isha discusses what researchers learned about water quality, child health, household expenditure and the time people spend coping with unreliable supply.

Finally, Veena and Isha tackle one of the hardest questions in urban water management: how should water be priced? They discuss metering, cross-subsidies, lifeline water, affordability and why safe drinking water must ultimately be treated as a public service rather than simply a household responsibility.

The Water Data Podcast is a talk show on the science, systems, and stories of water, hosted by Veena Srinivasan.

For all references and further readings related to the episode, visit https://dev.welllabs.org/wdp-isha-ray/

Subscribe to The Water Data Podcast on your favourite podcast app—and catch video episodes on the WELL Labs YouTube channel @welllabs.

Subscription links: Youtube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, Castbox, and wherever you get your podcasts!

Recording by Nabina Chakraborty and Nanditha Gogate. Video editing by Srisabari Varaguna Pandian. Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar and Kanishka Goyal. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.

How does saving water create a financial crisis for the utilities that supply it? And why do cities continue building water systems based on laws, infrastructure, and climate assumptions that are no longer relevant?

In this episode of The Water Data Podcast, Newsha Ajami joins host Veena Srinivasan to unpack the hidden risks inside modern water systems- from outdated water rights and groundwater overuse to drought, demand management, decentralised reuse, and climate resilience.

Newsha Ajami is an Iranian-American hydrologist, civil engineer, and environmental policy expert. Her work spans sustainable urban water management, the water-energy-food nexus, data science for environmental governance, and climate resilience. She is the founding director of the Governance for Risk, Resilience, and Recovery (GR3) program at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. She has also worked with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and served on utility and regulatory boards in California.

In this conversation, Newsha and Veena discuss why water law often fails to align with water science, how California’s experience with the Colorado River and Central Valley groundwater holds lessons for India, and why bringing in more surface water does not automatically solve groundwater depletion.

Newsha explains why she prefers the term “demand management” over “conservation,” how outdoor water use and lawns shape urban water demand, and why utilities often face financial stress when conservation efforts succeed.

The episode then explores decentralised wastewater reuse, comparing San Francisco’s on-site reuse model with Bengaluru’s apartment-level sewage treatment systems, emphasising how growing cities can avoid copying outdated centralised models and instead build flexible, modular, and resilient water systems.

The Water Data Podcast is a talk show on the science, systems, and stories of water, hosted by Veena Srinivasan.

For all references and further readings related to the episode, visit https://welllabs.org/wdp-newsha-ajami/

Subscribe to The Water Data Podcast on your favourite podcast app—and catch video episodes on the WELL Labs YouTube channel @welllabs.

Subscription links: Youtube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, Castbox, and wherever you get your podcasts!

Recording by Vraj Acharya and Nabina Chakraborty. Video editing by Srisabari Varaguna Pandian. Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar and Kanishka Goyal. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.