KERALA RISING · FROM EXPORTING PEOPLE TO EXPORTING IDEAS degenerates into the same build-and-forget scheme it was meant to replace, rewarding photographs of pits that silt up unwatched. Too strong, if the reverification burden is onerous or the clawback feels punitive, and households decline to participate at all. The calibration of the persistence check is therefore the program’s central design risk, and the pilot exists to tune it before scale. It also fails if the open well-level data and the asset register diverge without explanation, if the registers fill with ‘functioning’ assets while the water table keeps dropping. Rather than a failure to hide, this is treated as the program’s most valuable signal: a divergence means the asset type is wrong for the local hydrology, and the program adjusts what it rewards. The failure would be ignoring the divergence; the design makes it visible by publishing both series side by side. THE PERSISTENCE CHECK IS THE PROGRAM Every water scheme can fund a pit. Only a feedback loop can make the pit still be there next summer. Water Secure rewards the living asset, audits its persistence, and hands the panchayat a register it can take to the central water mission, which is how a conservation behaviour becomes a fiscal asset. 150