Dubai teen turns birthday savings into clean water for 3,000 Indian villagers

What began with a Dubai teenager reading about arsenic contamination has ended with villagers in Uttar Pradesh filling bottles and large containers with treated drinking water from a solar-powered plant he helped design and fund.

Eighteen-year-old Vehaan Subramanian, a student at Dubai College, has completed a water treatment plant in Parsiya village in Lakhimpur Kheri district, designed to serve more than 3,000 people across 1,000-plus families.

The plant, commissioned on September 6, can treat about 2,000 litres of groundwater an hour and is now being used by residents, according to village head Laxman Prasad Rana.

Laboratory tests supplied by Vehaan show arsenic levels in the untreated groundwater falling from 0.026mg per litre, or 26 micrograms per litre, to below 0.005mg/L after filtration, which was below the laboratory's detection limit.

The before-treatment sample was tested at an EIAC-accredited laboratory in Dubai on September 10, while the treated-water sample was tested at a NABL-accredited laboratory in Lucknow on September 18. The tests also showed turbidity falling from 2.61 NTU to nil, while iron and sulphate in the treated sample were below detection limits.

From LinkedIn post to village water plant

For Vehaan, the project began with a LinkedIn post about arsenic contamination in India's groundwater.

"I had heard of water contamination before, but I did not realise the scale of the arsenic problem or that water could look completely normal while still containing a dangerous contaminant," he said.

The more he researched, the more the issue moved beyond scientific curiosity.

"What affected me most was that arsenic is invisible," he said. "A family can draw a glass of perfectly clear-looking water from a hand pump, drink it every day and have no obvious reason to know that something harmful is in it."

His initial question was how arsenic could be removed from water. It soon changed.

"If we already know how to remove arsenic from water, why are people still drinking it?" became the question behind Project ARUNA, or Arsenic Removal Using Non-Regenerative Adsorption.

"I did not want the project to end with understanding the problem, doing an experiment or publishing a research paper," Vehaan said. "I wanted to see whether I could follow the problem all the way from research and chemistry to engineering, government approvals and, ultimately, safe water coming out of a tap in an affected village."

Vehaan researched groundwater data and existing community treatment systems before developing his own design.

He also worked with Professor Rehab Mahmoud and researchers associated with Beni-Suef University on an advanced adsorbent for arsenic removal. Their research was published in the journal Catalysts in May.

But he deliberately chose not to use that research material in the first village plant.

"The research material still required further long-term testing, scale-up studies and continuous-flow field trials," he said.

Instead, he selected granular ferric hydroxide, or GFH — a more established treatment medium for arsenic removal. "Research is not about proving that your own idea must be used. It is about using evidence to choose the most appropriate solution," he said.

Designed for a village, not a laboratory

The final system was designed around conditions in rural Uttar Pradesh, including unreliable electricity and groundwater containing iron as well as arsenic.

Solar panels power the system, while groundwater is pumped from a bore about 200 feet below the surface into a 2,000-litre raw-water tank. It then passes through treatment stages for iron and other impurities before the arsenic adsorption stage.

Vehaan said the aim was not to make the plant technologically complicated.

"It was to create something robust enough to operate in a remote village, effective enough to address the actual groundwater conditions and simple enough for local people to maintain," he said.

The plant was built with local workers, including masons, plumbers, welders, painters and electricians. Vehaan was on site with Rana overseeing the work.

Before the plant was installed, Parsiya families relied on groundwater from hand pumps for drinking and household use. Those who could afford it bought drinking water, while some families used small household filters when electricity was available. Rana said commercially available RO filters did not last long because of the groundwater contamination.

"Villagers knew there was a problem with the water," Rana said.

"Water collected from the hand pump would turn yellowish within a few hours of being left in a container. The floor around the hand pump had become permanently yellow-stained, and white clothes would turn yellow when washed in the groundwater."

Residents also reported illnesses including stomach ulcers, kidney stones and jaundice, Rana said, although he stressed that medical confirmation would be needed to establish whether they were caused by the water.

"The plant is operational, and residents have started collecting and drinking the treated water," Rana said.

The facility is in a central location beside the village office, government school and primary healthcare centre, with residents using three taps to fill bottles and larger containers.

"Some people just collect water for immediate consumption in bottles. Most people fill it in large containers and carry it with them using vehicles," Vehaan said.

"Residents collect water both for immediate drinking and for use at home. Having the facility within the village makes it convenient for the community," he said.

Vehaan said he funded half of the project from savings accumulated over the past seven to eight years. The rest came from fundraising through a reading club he started, called Chapter One: Giving Back, and donations from family and friends.

The initial installation cost was about Rs700,000.

The project also involved Uttar Pradesh Jal Nigam and local authorities. Vehaan initially approached the National Mission for Clean Ganga, which forwarded the request to Jal Nigam. The authorities eventually identified Parsiya and allotted government land for the project.

An initially considered site at Golbojhi could not be used, with the project later moving to Parsiya.

For Vehaan, obtaining government support was a key turning point.

"Receiving government support and having land formally identified for the project was one of the points when ARUNA stopped being just a research and engineering project and became something tangible," he said.

The plant is owned by the village under a Build, Operate, Transfer model.

Rana has been trained in routine maintenance, while other residents have been trained to clean the tanks and solar panels and backwash the filters. Vehaan has committed to annual water testing and replacement of treatment materials according to the results.

The project information says the treatment media is expected to last about three to four years, with excess media currently stored in the village for future replacement.

Vehaan said long-term sustainability was one of the biggest considerations when designing the plant. "I do not want ARUNA to become a plant that works during an inauguration and stops working a year later."

What started as a single pilot has already generated requests from surrounding communities. Rana, who is the Pradhan for four small villages, said there had been "many enquiries" about similar plants.

The next proposed site is Golbojhi, a remote hamlet where access is currently difficult because of rain. Another village, Chahmalpur in Lakhimpur Kheri, has also requested a plant.

Vehaan hopes to install two more plants by November and at least 10 during the following academic year. Each additional plant is expected to cost about $8,000, with funding being sought from UAE companies through CSR initiatives, Indian donors and crowdfunding.

For Vehaan, the requests from other villages have changed the ambition of the project. "Originally, my objective was to build one pilot plant and prove that the model could work," he said.

"But after speaking to people there, I began thinking about whether ARUNA could eventually become a repeatable village-level model."

And the moment that convinced him was not a laboratory result or an engineering milestone.

"People from neighbouring villages started asking us, 'Can you build one in our village too?'" he said. "That is where I realised that the first plant should not be the end of Project ARUNA. It should be the beginning."

Tomas Duckling, Headmaster of Dubai College, said Vehaan’s initiative reflects ‘exactly’ the proactive approach they encourage students to adopt.

“This [project] fits perfectly within our whole-school approach for ‘Service for all’, where we want our students to use their amazing abilities to make the world better. And this seems a perfect example.”

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