- Bilkul Online
- Ahmedabad | 10 Dec 2025
Professor Meera Mehta, Professor Emeritus, CEPT University and Senior Advisor at the Centre for Water and Sanitation was honoured with the International Water Association’s (IWA) 2025 Award for Practice for her five decades of pioneering work in strengthening water and sanitation governance and finance. The recognition was conferred at the opening ceremony of this year’s Water Development Congress, held on December 08, 2025.
Prof Mehta was one of the three global leaders recognised by the IWA for advancing water security, governance, and innovation across low- and middle-income countries.
The IWA Water and Development Awards, a key component of IWA’s distinguished global awards programme, celebrate individuals whose leadership and work deliver measurable impact where it is needed most. Prof Mehta, through her work, has shaped sectoral reforms across countries, with landmark initiatives such as India’s Service Level Benchmarks and the Performance Assessment System, which have together improved Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services for more than 115 million people. Her sustained efforts have advanced evidence-based policymaking, enhanced institutional capacities, and set new standards for urban water and sanitation systems globally.
IWA’s recognition underscores Prof. Mehta’s enduring influence and her commitment to building resilient, equitable, and accountable water and sanitation frameworks worldwide.
Prof Meera Mehta :
Prof Mehta has over 50 years of experience in water, urban development, and infrastructure finance. Her experience spans across countries in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. She served as the Director of the School of Planning at CEPT University before joining USAID’s FIRE-D Project in India, and later the World Bank and its Water and Sanitation Program in Africa. She has consulted for many national and international agencies, including UNICEF, the World Bank, ADB, WaterAid, HIC, Government of the Netherlands. She has written widely and published papers on housing, urban development, water and sanitation, and financing.
She was a board member at IRC, a global not-for-profit organization driving resilient WASH systems, and on the Steering Committee of the Stockholm-based intergovernmental organization Global Water Partnership (GWP). She was a member of the WHO-UNICEF working group on post-2015 deliberations on water supply and sanitation. She has been a member of various national and international Technical Committees related to water and sanitation. She was one of the Editors of the IWA’s WASH development journal.