India Mark II
The pump was designed in the 1970s in a joint effort between the Government of India, UNICEF, and The World Health Organization (WHO) to address the severe drought and a water shortage affecting India during that period and to prevent evacuation of villages to refugee camps.
The requirements for the pump included the need for a design simple enough to be manufactured in unsophisticated workshops, easy to maintain, and costing no more than US$200 (in 1970s dollars).
The Mark II was based on the Sholapur pump, the most durable pump at that time, designed by Swedish volunteer, engineer, and inventor Oscar Carlsson of the Sholapur Well Service, operating under the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden and the Hindustani Covenant Church of India.
An Indian magazine listed India Mark II hand pump as one of the defining inventions of the country.
Many versions of the pump use cast iron riser mains (the pipe that carries water from the bottom of the borehole to the surface).
These pipes rust quickly (sometimes in just 2 years), and either leak water or separate completely from the pump rendering it useless.
As one can imagine, lifting up to 100 ft of iron pipe and cylinder from a well is no easy task and requires special tools, a tripod stand, the replacement parts, and most importantly, the know-how to do it.
Major criticism of the India Mark II is that its design makes it difficult to repair at the village level and hence, without government support, NGO intervention, or community savings systems in place, the pump is more susceptible to extended periods of non-function or permanent failure.
[7] Lower upfront hardware costs and widespread adoption of the Mark II pump makes replacement parts more accessible.
Unfortunately, higher maintenance costs and frequency of parts that need to be replaced can make the pump financially unsustainable in a poor community.
The government of Uganda, for example, enforces the standardization by placing high tariffs on pumps other than a variant of the India Mark II, known as U2.
