LSE Undergraduate || 30 Under 30 Women in Scotland || Diana Award Recipient

I’d love to begin with asking why you decided to take a degree that grounded in economics and policy making?

In high school, I studied quite a broad range of subjects and I was very much that person that couldn’t really make up their mind. There was a point where I said I wanted to do computer science, and then I said I wanted to study English, then I realised I should probably do quite a broad degree. So I thought about economics. My high school actually didn’t offer the subject so I decided to teach myself because I thought it was so interesting. 

Then, in my degree, I liked the maths side and then I also liked social policy because it covered both politics and sociology. I always wanted to do a degree that I felt like I would make a change in the future with, and I was also quite interested in the civil service. 

One of the most notable things that you’ve done is lookint at climate change and water policy. Could you talk a bit more about your interest in that, where your interest came from, and what you’ve done in the space?

I’m mostly interested in the intersection between water policy and how that affects public health. This involves a lot of the stuff that you may have seen in the news around sewage and how untreated wastewater is being released into our rivers and the problems that this can have both in terms of people getting ill from being in our waterways and also in terms forever chemicals (PFAS) entering our drinking water. I do a lot of things to raise awareness for that such as political lobbying work and simply raising awareness about the issue. When I was younger, because my grandparents are all rural farmers in India, I would go and visit and I would see the irrigation systems that my grandfather had in his farm and I became interested in the topic via that. I’d also hear about how there would be typhoid outbreaks in my grandmother’s village, which is obviously very unfortunate, and quite scary, then I’d be a bit confused because I’d think: why is that still an issue? And then my interest just continued as I’ve gone through university. I remember there was this event that I went to where I spoke to someone from the Royal Society of Chemistry, and they were telling me about how they’ve like found links between these forever chemicals that are entering our waterways because waste water is not being treated properly, and disruption to our hormones and our endocrine systems, and these chemicals are linked to testicular cancer and infertility. I’m definitely very interested in how water policy can be used to improve public health as well.

I find it scary. It’s not something that’s touched on enough. I feel people have suddenly got the issue in their heads with all this stuff around Thames Water, but prior to that there was deadpan silence on the topic. I was a bit hesitant to talk about the issue because it sounded like I was some kind of mad conspiracy theorist!

Me and my colleagues were initially focused on raising awareness at the start, just because in order to tackle this problem, we needed to make people aware that it’s a problem in the first place, right. 

How did you find taking part in political lobbying? Was it something that came naturally to you?  

I find it interesting how quickly things happen once you’ve formed a connection with a colleague who’s interested in similar things. If they’re going to an event, they’ll invite me along and then you meet other people and then they’re like, oh, this thing is coming up, would you like to come along? It’s being attended by XYZ person. You go along to that and then you build up a kind of community of people that you’ve met . I find it’s definitely people helping each other and not gatekeeping. I also think the rise of social media made people realise that actually they do have a lot of capital to engage in public policy. 

You recieved a Diana Award for your work, could you tell us a little more about that?

When I was in the UK Parliament for water, we had collaborations with Global Citizen and Watching UK. We had a few things shown at COP 26 in collaboration with Water UK, so I received the award for quite a broad range of things. I found out about the award last year during my exams, actually in the library! I was thrilled to have been nominated and to receive the award was amazing because I had no idea I’d been put forward for it! 

Looping back to what you’re saying on government policy, if you could change a certain policy or enact specific reforms, what would you do?

It would be around the idea of accountability.  Companies should be held more accountable for how they treat wastewater and whether they release sewage or not. I think a good place to start would be that right now, one of the main problems that from my perspective, is that we measure the release of sewage in time units. So we say; we’ve had sewage discharged for one hour or 45 minutes, but we don’t tend to collect volume measurements. In that one hour it could have been, for example, 100 litres of sewage, or it could have been 1 million litres. We don’t know because we don’t measure that, we only measure the time, right. So, as a result, water companies can get away because as long as they release sewage within a certain time limit, they don’t face any repercussions. I think that including volume measurements, which we can do reasonably easily, would help a lot with traceability and making sure that things get flagged up when they happen, as opposed to people having to point out and build up media support before it is addressed. I think it would make the system a lot more efficient. 

Are there any particular events, which you think have made a considerable lasting impression on you?

There was one in London, about a year ago, and there were a couple of MPs there as well as people from a range of other organisations. One representative was from breast cancer UK, and she was an amazing woman who told me about how some of the forever chemicals in our waterways are linked to breast cancer in the UK, which is terrifying once again. It really emphasised the link between water quality and public health to me, and definitely had a lasting impression of thinking that this is definitely something that we need to start talking about.

Is there anyone you’ve met who has been a particular inspiration to you, either within water policy or just generally?

I haven’t met her like in person, but her name is Elizabeth. She’s a marine biologist based in New York, and she’s also the founder of the Urban Ocean Lab, which is a think tank for coastal cities and how they can protect themselves from erosion, and other coastal risks. I think that I’d quite like to start a Think Tank one day. 

And then there are people in my everyday life, my mum, sister, and I’ve got some powerhouse friends at university such as my friend Aleesha Bruce who does a lot of work around diversity and inclusion in universities who really motivate me to go out and do more. There is no end to my list of inspirations, I suppose. 

Would you have any particular advice for people who are going to look at you and think I want to do what she’s doing, whether that’s working in policy, advocacy, or taking an issue that you care about and trying to make change?

I think it is just finding like minded people and then that will lead you on to other like minded people and then that kind of snowballs and then eventually you become the person that’s introducing others to the community. I think even just searching up ‘this issue’ youth group or ‘this issue’ change group will usually help you find something.