KERALA RISING · FROM EXPORTING PEOPLE TO EXPORTING IDEAS A. It cannot prove hydrology, and the program does not claim to. It verifies that a correctly built asset of the right type exists at a location and persists across dry seasons, and it cross-checks the panchayat’s aggregate against open-data well levels. The honest claim is a credible functioning-asset register, not a per-pit measurement of groundwater. Q. Won’t people just dig a pit, photograph it, and fill it back in? A. That is the central gaming vector, and the persistence check is built precisely for it: only provisional points land at build, and the full reward and the leaderboard position depend on a dryseason re-image showing the asset still functions. Filling it back in forfeits the reward. Q. Water is seasonal. Won’t the program go quiet half the year? A. Building happens before and during monsoon; verification of persistence happens in the dry season. The two halves keep the program active across the year, and the dry-season ranking is when the rivalry peaks, because that is when water matters most. What would make this program fail Water Secure fails if the persistence check is too weak or too strong. Too weak; if provisional points are generous and re-verification is lax, and it 149