From School Project to Saving Bengaluru’s Lakes

Yeah, so growing up, I've always been near lakes. You know, I often visit the lakes to get some exercise, jog around the lake, look at the birds, and just enjoy nature in general.

But I remember a couple of years ago, I remembered a headline from long back when I was a kid.

That showed how Bellandur Lake caught fire, and as a kid, I didn't really think too much of it. But now I thought I could do something to help however small it may be, but to help improve the situation.

The idea behind 15 minute cities is very simple.

To simplify it, it's basically we design neighbourhoods and cities where all our basic amenities like groceries, parks, schools are all in a short walk away, they're all a short walk away.

Older areas in Bengaluru already see developments in neighbourhoods like this, where you have local kirana stores is what we call them. So the thing with these neighbourhoods is they, not every neighbourhood will actually allow for specialization.

Not every neighbourhood can have a big hospital or large universities, so that's where a good transportation system comes in, like public transport, like our Namma Metro, BMTC bus service.

So it's not about a restricting movement within neighbourhoods, but it's about giving people the choice to have their basic amenities nearby and giving them a good transportation network so that they can visit amenities all around the city in Bengaluru.

I'm not too sure, but I think the way Bengaluru has grown naturally, that most of these neighbourhoods already do have that strong community with them. I think the only thing that's missing in Bengaluru is the public transportation and maybe infrastructure improvements.

So basically, these floating wetlands are like rafts, which plants can float on the surface of the water, and their roots are basically hanging into the water and they absorb excess nutrients and any heavy metals like nitrates and it basically purifies the lake over time slowly.

My current prototypes are very small scale and are experimental, so not all of them use fully sustainable materials, but I'm trying to understand the local feasibility specific to some lakes in Bengaluru to just test what plants work here and what are the contaminants present in Bengaluru's Lakes.

In terms of this idea, the cities like Hyderabad have already tested it. I'm not sure of the exact name of the lake, but cities like Hyderabad have employed floating wetlands to purify their lakes, and the results seem promising.

So it's very small scale, I've basically arranged for lake water from a couple of nearby lakes, and I've built the rafts at my house and I'm testing it at home.

In a few days, I'll get to know the results of how effective these plants are.

So I think it all depends on the plants and what type of plants are used because this is a very simple, it works on Phytoremediation and yeah, so I'm currently testing out in a very small scale environment using lake water.

I believe, I think it has to do a lot with the perception of data. So data, like in general, when you think of data, it feels credible and trustworthy in a way.

So when your decisions or whenever you're making a claim, when it's backed by data, they feel it's more trustworthy for both policymakers, for the government, and for public support, and the data not only helps us prove a point, but it also shows what is working, if something's not working, if something's working better than the others, and it allows us to refine over time.

So Turbo Wear is basically a clothing brand, and it started from a mix of both passion and concern.

So I personally, I'm a Formula One racing fan, and I think the thrill and the excitement that comes with the speed should not be on our city roads, but they should be like specific to the racing track, and I think that's how my whole, that was my thought process behind road safety.

I think I wanted to use fashion as a way to spread the message that speed belongs on the track and not really on city roads.

The project is still growing. We've tested it out, we've tested a minimum viable product within close family and friend circles, and the response seems to be positive.

Now our next step, me, along with my co-founder, we're developing new designs which are more attractive to the youth, and we're probably going to be exploring partnerships with road safety related NGOs to expand our impact, perhaps look into donations and things like that.

While some parameters like the concentration of biochemical oxygen demand, dissolved oxygen were slightly above the permissible range, I found that the bacterial contamination, specifically fecal coliform, bacteria, and total coliform bacteria was concentrations levels were at least a couple million PN per 100 ml, and it was exceeding the permissible range by a lot.

This basically has a lot of public health concerns. It can cause a lot of diseases, especially some certain strains of bacteria.

My study was based on Ulsoor Lake using data from government sources because at such a scale, it's hard to collect data, on-site testing for a long time because there are a lot of parameters in play through seasonal changes and, you know, cost related barricades because we have to buy sensors for a lot of parameters, so I found the best approach was to go directly to the government's website and extract data from there

I am fortunate to have access to certain resources, certain connections for mentorship, and you know, even just building projects itself, it requires a lot of persistence because sometimes you don't know what will happen.

Like I said before, when it's time to collect data for the Ulsoor Lake, it was very hard to collect data on site.

So I think the biggest thing that I've learned is adaptability and finding solutions where, you know, almost all hope is lost in some cases, and I believe there will be some institutional challenges when it comes time to implementation, so I haven't reached that stage yet, but I believe there will certainly be some challenges there.

In general, I think we have to live by Bengaluru's nickname, you know, Garden City of India, where we have to protect our parks, our lakes, our nature, and consider eco-friendly urban design wherever possible.

In terms of the role of young people, I think there are a couple ways we can go about this, so there's not only advocacy and community engagement, but also innovation in the STEM areas through engineering and building more sophisticated versions of, let's say, the wetlands I'm building, to see how we can incorporate artificial intelligence into these wetlands, or perhaps even sensors into the wetlands to track how the plants are working in real time.

I think it's not just large-scale projects like these or public advocacy, but I think people can start small in their personal lives, like reducing plastic waste, using public transport wherever possible.

You know, like I guess me along with many other people in the city are very excited about the new Yellow Line Metro, which has recently opened, and we are all super excited for more metro expansions to come. So I think with small things like this, just changing our daily habits, even if it takes a little bit of effort, I think we can make Bengaluru more like environmentally responsible.

Thank you.