WINTER 2014
Beyond Providing Clean Water:
A Profile of Development Engineer Syed Imran Ali
the four on-and-off years Ali spent in a slum
called Mylai Balaji Nagar on the outskirts of
Chennai, India. There, about 10,000 residents
continue to rely on highly polluted surface
water. Ali first showed up in the ramshackle
sprawl of a town in 2009, as part of a University
of Guelph-IIT project that he started. His goal
was to remove contaminants from the water
system, which was drawn from a polluted
lake and was pumped, often untreated, into
standpipes where it was used for bathing,
food preparation, and drinking. But the
longer he stayed in Mylai Balaji Nagar, the
more Ali learned that the residents’ views of
clean water did not necessarily cohere with
his or his university colleagues.
By Tamara Straus
In August 2010, while floods from monsoon
rains covered a fifth of Pakistan, Syed
Imran Ali, an environmental engineering
PhD student from University of Guelph, sat
in a newly built lecture hall at the Indian
Institute of Technology in Madras. Ali was in
South India to research safe water systems
in slums—and, as is typical in academia, a
visiting professor had come to give a lecture
and graduate students were expected to fill
the hall. The lecture, by a Purdue University
professor, was on a stochastic method
to predict floods, and as Ali sat there, his
demeanor, characteristically courteous,
attentive, and collegial, started to shift.
“I started to think: I don’t know what you’re
talking about, and I don’t think anyone else
in this room knows what you’re talking
about,” said Ali, now a postdoctoral fellow at
UC Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing
Economies. “Moreover, I began to think: I
don’t care. Talking about forecasting floods—
when there was a flood next door and people
were dying in it—was just untenable.”
Ali went back to his office, turned on
his computer, and began calling NGOs,
government agencies, and UN offices,
offering his water and sanitation expertise
to help respond to cholera outbreaks in
Pakistan displacement camps. He was told
he would need to formally apply, and he was
told he would need to be interviewed, and he
was told he would need to be approved before
being sent into the field. He also sowed
confusion when he explained his background:
a Canadian engineer, of Pakistani origin,
working in India, seeking to go to Pakistan,
India’s enemy, to help with the flood.
Finally, Ali got hold of the number for the
Pakistan headquarters of Médecins Sans
Frontières (MSF/Doctors Without Borders)
and found himself on the phone with the head
of mission, an Italian nurse, “who was totally
frazzled.” “He asked me,” said Ali, “whether I
could work a water treatment unit. I told him I
could figure it out. He told me to send him my
CV. That evening, I had a phone conversation
with MSF in London, and two days later I was
flying to Pakistan.”
Ali’s job was to set up a water treatment
Syed Imran Ali is one of two fellows in the inaugural DIL postdoctoral
scholars program. (Photo courtesy of Syed Imran Ali)
unit, to supply safe water to one of the many
camps for internally displaced persons in
Sukkur, Pakistan. Sukkur had been the third
largest city of the Sindh province, but by the
time Ali arrived in August 2010 the Pakistani
army was evacuating 350,000 people from
low-lying areas and bringing them to the
higher grounds of what would become a
refugee city of half million. Ali was told an
experienced WASH (water, sanitation, and
hygiene) specialist from MSF would supervise
his work. But the specialist got held back at
another camp with a cholera outbreak, so the
26-year-old had to wing it. “It was sort of like
Lego,” said Ali of his experience assembling
the MSF equipment entirely from manuals.
He worked there for five weeks, treating river
water and training local staff to operate the
water treatment plant.
Since that time, Ali has grappled with what it
means to be a development, or humanitarian,
engine