This is a reflection of two days with the INREM team at the beautiful campus of Institute of Rural Management, Anand.

The most important thing that has stuck with me is the origins story and the mission. INREM Foundation, short for India Natural Resource Economics and Management Foundation works with the vision of a world with clean water for everyone. This was started by professors at IRMA (Institute of Rural Management, Anand) in 1994 and has managed to sustain for about 20 years! 

Through observations in the sessions and interactions with INREM team, it seems abundantly clear that INREM’s work is much needed and it plays an extremely crucial role for improving water safety and security for the rural India. INREM’s super power is the grit and scientific temper of researchers that inform policy decisions through government partnerships along with having the empathy and tenacity of field workers for mitigation action through community based interventions.  

Recent achievements 

1. In Assam, INREM has managed to orchestrate a statewide initiative called Jaldoot Program through collaborations with key stakeholders and NGOs (Education Ministry, Jal Jeevan Mission, Reap Benefit and so on). The success of this initiative over the last year has led to it becoming a template for collaboration that other states are being directed to take up in the coming years. 
2. INREM launched a MyWaterBot, an AI ally for sharing mitigation measures for water quality based on the local data (as provided by Jal Jeevan Mission). The story and success of this pilot in one district from Jhabua has inspired Jal Jeevan Mission headquarters to initiate having a similar bot to operate at the national level. 

INREM and PROJECT TECH4DEV

INREM is one of the few orgs, who have dived deep into the ecosystem of Project Tech4dev’s platforms. Who have trusted whole heartedly in FOSS and the surrounding ecosystem to prepare for the digital transformation needed to sustain in the next decade of their work. 

The main objective of project tech4dev’s presence at the offsite was to prototype a few ideas in short span of time, build interest and capacity of team members other than Sunder and Kiran to ideate and implement chatbot based interventions, generate new ideas on using the chatbot as a tool for continued engagement of communities for the various programs. 

THINGS DONE DURING OFFSITE 

1. Trained Anurag (INREM team) on basics of chatbot and flow creation, who will continue to support INREM with further prototyping, piloting and supporting their respective programs  
2. WaterHealthAI, a GPT assistant for image recognition to identify fluorosis and arsenicosis  
3. Session on showcase of chatbot as a tool to generate new ideas from the team 

OUTPUTS FROM THE SESSION 

A quick showcase to share the different ways chatbot can be used, with open space to ask questions and clarify doubts. Followed by space for teams to think of ideas and share challenges that could potentially be solved using chatbot. Here is what emerged from teams who have had some exposure to chatbot as well as from team members who had not yet had any exposure

New Ideas

1. Karnataka team: chatbot can be used by the partner NGOs staff to report on the status of RO plants from respective villages (req doc for INREM team to work on and pilot in the next couple of weeks) 
2. Assam team: WhatsApp chatbot can be used to increase understanding of the stakeholders on the results of water quality tests performed (need more spec-ing and inputs from the team)
3. Connect the citizen question asker to an expert team member from the INREM team to provide better answers. (needs more spec-ing and inputs from the team
4. Water Champions Program: Use WhatsApp as a tool to engage the community of water champs as well as the community from Project ECHO. 

Challenges

1. MP team: Jhabua, AI chatbot is being used, but the onboarding can be made better with the help of videos (to explain the onboarding process) as well as guiding questions to start with (as many of stakeholders who get started do not know what to ask)
2. For the AI bot: There is a need to look at the questions being asked, and understand how the bot is answering, and for which questions the answers are not being procvided and for what reason. 

POTENTIAL FOR IMPROVEMENTS IN GLIFIC AS A PLATFORM 

1. Provide info for improved onboarding for new orgs: Putting together knowledge resource that provides basics as well as stratgies to leverage for reaching out and onboarding contacts. This can include how to use videos, links, QR codes. Which channels to leverage like WhatsApp groups, Facebook groups etc. 
2. Solve for new contacts and opt-in flows: Many times, the keyword being entered by the contact for onboarding may or may not be linked to the opt-in flow. This causes the chatbot to provide the opt-in message from gupshup. Doing a deep dive into this aspect and providing straightforward strategies to improve the onboarding experience can be done.

OTHER DISCUSSIONS 

1. INREM is taking support from GXCO for implementation of ERPNext 
2. Taking support from Sathi Development Services for org governance, audit and compliance related duties
3. Taking support from Fully Buffered Studios for branding purposes. 
4. Project ECHO is another platform being leveraged by INREM for facilitating the knowledge sharing and capacity building of communities to tackle health related effects of pollution. 
5. Glific is being used for community engagement, and experimenting new ways for communication strategy. 
6. Dalgo is being used as a platform for collating the water quality related information from Jal Jeevan Mission and use it in conjunction with Glific to democratize the access of the data to the citizens. 
7. With various ongoing projects, the support needed is for someone who can guide the strategy and adaptation of the new systems. In time someone maybe in the capacity of Fractional CXO could benefit if they are able to understand the DNA 

CONCLUSION 

The journey of INREM continues everyday, they are working tirelessly in rural India creating awareness among citizens about water quality around them, providing support to mitigate effects of bad water quality citizens, and support decisions makers with frameworks, networks and policy inputs that help rural India move towards having more and more Water Safe Communities.