ABSTRACT
Groundwater derived arsenic in drinking water supplies in India is overwhelmingly, though far from exclusively, a problem for the rural poor. In the year that Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”, it seems timely to consider how their work might speak to efforts to improve the lives of the rural poor in India through drinking water arsenic remediation and mitigation. Five major themes are highlighted: (i) end-user involvement in priorities and co-design; (ii) science informed policy: randomized controlled trials represent an approach that would enable better more robustly informed unbiased decision-making about the “best” remediation/mitigation approaches than hitherto often opportunistic implementations; (iii) transparency (and consequent improvement in governance and reduction in asymmetric business relationships) including through appropriate (iv) stakeholder guidance is also required to optimize decision-making; and (v) a more equitable role for women is indicated in both better decision-making and implementation processes.
