Ulat bansi is for an audience that doesn’t know where their water comes from. Water cuts across class and hierarchy, age and geography. Ulat bansi, or upside down stories, can reach diverse audiences during an iterative process of building identity through research, prototyping, stories, participation, and embodiment. These processes build towards a water mela as a carnival of embodied forms of ulat bansi.

...Manifesto for water futures.

We agree that the global water crisis presents a communications design challenge of urgent immensity. From where we sit,

paani (water), ghats (steps), vidhushak (trixter), matkas (containers), ulat bansi (upside-down stories),
and melas (fairs) are the mediums of our message.

However, current public understanding about the use and management of water is broadly defined by embodied practice, everyday experiences, and faith. The perspective that developing regions have outmoded experiences and assumptions ignores the reality of daily practice and serves to create a hierarchy of meaning that places certain forms of water use and practice above others despite the apparent and real effectiveness of available options.

Rather than "powerful, fact-based narratives", we believe in narratives that respond to their audiences and allow for multiple interpretations. Sarcasm, word play, exaggeration, juxtaposition, false-belief, humor, optimism and rebellion are tactics needed to engage and inform diverse, international audiences of varying demographics and geographies. Facts may be starting points, but because we cannot control interpretation, they are not ends in themselves.

We believe that the water crisis is a social problem that cannot only be solved by scientific or technological means or other rational approaches. Irrational responses are therefore positive, justified, and appropriate.

The water crisis is not in need of novelty or innovation. It needs relevant visual identities, mantras, mythologies and stories carried by relevant mediums that entertain, inform, and inspire audiences that are socially, politically, and economically isolated.

Because policy makers lack political will and personal motivation to implement existing, effective, small, scalable solutions, we will always lack the full scope of raw field data and the presentation tools needed to make water crisis understandable and actionable for policy makers.

We value varied groups, not select groups. We value practice beyond thought. Leaders in our opinion are those that use personal invention and creativity to affect everyday practice and demonstrate how political, social, and economic barriers to water availability can be overcome.

The crisis is a complex mix of global and local implications for matter and meaning. It therefore requires responses that connect many locations from the most broad panoramic view to the most minute, localized interaction.
Four main issues characterize the emerging water crisis:

1. The problem is not scarcity. We have an abundance of water. The problem is access limited by changing ecological conditions, costs of technology, and social, economic and political disparities.

2. Inequitable distribution and out-of-equilibrium use cycles make available water unpotable and unsafe for living.

3. The water crisis is fundamentally complicated by outmoded ideas of rights and ownership. These concepts seek to create additional divisions and further amplify problems of access.

4. Standards do not currently represent or account for contemporary water use. These standards create incompatibilities in both meaning and matter when policy is made and when technology is developed to respond to the crisis. The existence of current standards, their role in international trade, and their high cost of acquisition and participation means that so-called developing regions are placed at a disadvantage.