Clean drinking water from taps is a privilege in India. That’s simply because piped water provide is not universally readily available in numerous locations and tap water is not potable. Besides installation of a seamless network of provide, dependable and genuine-time monitoring of water top quality, the well being hazards linked with piped water demand a lot of ‘trust’ for it to be consumed straight from taps.
Recently, Puri in Odisha became the initial Indian city to provide 24×7 secure drinking water from taps for residents in July this year. It’s certainly a laudable work for a city, which is also a important tourist hotspot, to provide clean water to almost two crore individuals annually. The city has installed water fountains to do away with the use of plastic water bottles and decrease 400 metric tons of plastic waste.
Puri may well have taken the lead in 24×7 provide of top quality tap water, but the road to realize one hundred% target for each household in India is no cakewalk. In addition to offering potable tap water connection in rural India below the government’s flagship ‘Har Ghar Nal Se Jal’ scheme, aspects like steady water provide and top quality checks, testing and contamination-free of charge water at regional level are a concern, as also a genuine-time surveillance technique to track and log customer complaints, take away overhead water tanks, pumps and RO-based water filters—the efforts to realize a seamless provide are far and wide.
“What Puri has achieved is commendable and can certainly be done across India with proper planning. However, some challenges remain like legacy water pipelines with leakages, undetected mixing of water supply with sewerage and uncertainty in source water availability all through the year,” says Dr Sunderrajan Krishnan, executive director, India Natural Resource Economics and Management (INREM) Foundation, a analysis institution probing societal challenges regarding water, public well being, agriculture and the atmosphere.
Even although the efforts of the city are laudable, specialists also really feel the focus should really not be to realize the coverage but sustain the gains in the extended run. “All this can be achieved through efficient service delivery benchmarks with adequate operation and maintenance of created infrastructure,” says Anshuman, associate director, water sources, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi. TERI is a not-for-profit, policy analysis organisation working in the fields of power, atmosphere, and sustainable development.
Country below a mission
Clean drinking water is a must for the population to have decreased burden of water-borne ailments and to have an enhanced life. But it also demands substantial capital investments for connected infrastructure and necessitates effective operation and upkeep for sustained and helpful service delivery, apart from sufficient awareness generation and capacity creating of relevant stakeholders (beneficiaries, relevant departments, and employees, and so on) on drinking water provide systems, well being, and hygiene. This is anything that Odisha has accomplished.
Water-borne ailments due to water contamination have been a by no means-ending problem in the state but authorities have now ensured 24×7 provide of standard network, top quality handle at tap connection and stressed on top quality checking of surface and groundwater. “Because water is not a commodity, it’s a public good, so, quality drinking water is closely linked with human health, human development index and economy,” says G Mathi Vathanan, principal secretary, housing and urban development division, Odisha, who spoke with Sunday FE and explained how the step-by-step method of the ‘drink-from-tap’ project began in 2017 when Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik launched a mission named ‘SUJAL’ for universal coverage of tap water in each household.
“By 2019, our pipeline network had crossed 80% of the target in many urban local bodies. With 10% area left to be covered, the government then came up with the ‘5T’ governance mantra in 2019 [5T stands for transparency, technology, teamwork, time, and transformation]. We zeroed in on ISO-10500 quality water, an ‘assured quality water’ standard, besides 30 other parameters, which include chemical and metal content, water treatment and storage reservoir, IoT-based real-time monitoring of water supply quantity and quality, etc,” says Vathanan. By October 2023, the state plans to cover 17 cities such as Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Rourkela and Baripada.
While international cities like London, New York and Singapore have extended ago been supplying top quality piped drinking water from tap, India has enhanced significantly in the previous couple of decades in access and provision of secure drinking water to urban and rural populations.
As per the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5, 2019-20), in the last 5 years, access to enhanced drinking water sources for the household population improved across all the 22 surveyed states and Union territories (except Sikkim, which registered a 5% decline), informs Anshuman of TERI.
“Except Manipur, Meghalaya, Assam, Tripura and Ladakh, all other 17 states and UTs recorded above 90% population having access to improved sources of drinking water,” he says.
Furthermore, the Central government’s mission to provide drinking water and connections is an ongoing mission pursued considering the fact that 2019, when the Jal Shakti Ministry was formed. Announced as one of the most aspirational programmes on August 15, 2019 by PM Narendra Modi, the Rs 3.5 lakh-crore Jal Jeevan Mission aims to provide a functional household tap connection (FHTC) to 157 million rural households by 2024. The mission is below implementation in partnership with states/ UTs to provide tap water connection to each rural household with Rs 50,011 crore as spending budget in 2021-22. With states’ personal sources and Rs 26,940 crore as 15th Finance Commission tied grant for water and sanitation to rural regional bodies or Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI) this year, more than Rs 1 lakh crore is getting invested in offering rural drinking water provide.
Under Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), Karnataka was allocated Rs 5,009 crore by the Centre in July for 2021-22. Similarly, Kerala was allocated Rs 1,804.59 crore in June this year, Tamil Nadu was allocated Rs 3,691.21 crore, and Andhra Pradesh got Rs 3,182.88 crore this year.
Gujarat plans to provide tap connections in 11.15 lakh households in the course of 2020-21. In 2020-21, Rs 883.08 crore was allocated. Including state share, there is assured availability of Rs 1,777.56 crore. Gujarat has been allocated Rs 3,195 crore below 15th Finance Commission Grants to PRIs and 50% of it is to be employed mandatorily for water provide and sanitation.
In Odisha, Rs 364.74 crore in 2019-20, Rs 812.15 crore in 2020-21 and Rs 3,323.42 crore in 2021-22 have been allocated as Central grant below JJM to make provision of tap water provide, as stated by MoS for Jal Shakti Prahlad Singh Patel in Lok Sabha on July 29 this year.
Two years on, the states and Uts displaying progress below the JJM and covering one hundred% of households with a functional tap water connection are Goa, Telangana, Puducherry, and Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Daman and Diu, Daman and Nagar Haveli, as per official information. Haryana and Bihar are anticipated to join by the finish of this year. UTs may well be in a position to achieve the similar in 2022, and by 2024, most states can be estimated to attain one hundred% water access. “This will encourage other states to pace up and achieve the mission targets well in time. The urban and rural drinking water supply coverage has to be looked at holistically by the states, though,” says Anshuman of TERI.
As per the Jal Jeevan Mission’s official information released, more than 78 districts, 933 blocks, 57,179 gram panchayats and 1,14102 villages across the nation have assured tap water connections along with 75% government schools and 66% anganwadis centres.
Problem locations
The fundamental challenge in coping with the provision of secure drinking water would be to sustainably guarantee effective service delivery with sufficient quantity. This indicates making certain 24×7 access to secure drinking water of sufficient quantity (for instance, 135 litres per capita per day (lpcd) to urban population and minimum 55 lpcd to rural population) and sufficient top quality conforming to norms (BIS: 10500, 2012).
For instance, the Delhi government has set a target of offering 24×7 water provide to each household by 2024, but provide is an problem. On an typical, a household in Delhi gets about 4 hours of water provide per day and the Delhi Jal Board, as the government agency accountable for provide of potable water to the National Capital Territory of Delhi, supplies about 935 million gallons of water per day (MGD) against the demand of 1,140 MGD.
DJB now plans to discharge treated effluent of higher top quality at Palla along the Delhi-Haryana border and lift it at Wazirabad for additional therapy. This will give an extra 95 MGD of water by December 2024, apart from 50 MGD of water from Himachal Pradesh by December 2022. By October next year, the board will draw 25 MGD from the reservoirs developed in the Yamuna floodplains to retain excess water in the monsoon season and about 200 MGD of groundwater will be extracted from locations with higher water tables. Overall, Delhi will have 1,305 MGD of water readily available to meet the demand of its residents by March 2025, as per news reports.
Besides the historically recognized challenges in water provide and distribution such as higher leakages/losses, higher non-income water (NRW), inequity in distribution, poor operation and upkeep, amongst other individuals, there is a have to have to engage with regional communities.
Another challenge is to convince individuals to drink from taps, which in turn will let go of the technique of water storage in vessels, drums, overhead tanks, considering the fact that these have a higher threat of contamination. “While one city in each state (or maybe a part of it) could actually move towards this possible goal, for the system at large to go towards it is really difficult at present. If the water is indeed pure to drink, after that it is a matter of developing trust in people,” says Krishnan of INREM Foundation.
Water conservation measures like rainwater harvesting, aquifer recharge, repair of conventional water bodies, desilting of ponds and lakes, watershed development, afforestation, and so on, are crucial for escalating the groundwater availability, which will support in attaining water safety in villages.
Anshuman of TERI feels a majority of the Indian population has continually faced challenges in accessing drinking water of sufficient quantity and top quality, historically. Inequitable access, inadequate provide, unreliable provide timings compounded with water top quality challenges from time to time have rendered individuals to rely significantly less on the conventional water provide. “A majority of the population, especially in urban setup, relies on individual household drinking water treatment units. The situation is less of a choice in rural setups where communities have to depend on public handpumps, stand-posts, borewells, etc, for their drinking water needs. This situation must change, and India should head towards achieving a reliable and safe source of drinking water through taps within the households,” adds Anshuman.
Many options to the current challenges are taken state-sensible. Problems like land acquisition in states can take time to start off a project. Rural locations that have an current water provide can demand time-to-time evaluation of tube wells, handpumps, or tap water for water top quality and availability. “We ensure water treatment plants in such areas or surface water-based sources to treat water. If needed, we can install a capital-intensive sedimentation tank. But the idea is to push states on groundwater availability,” says a government official linked with Jal Jeevan Mission.
For water scarcity locations in states like Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu coastal belt, there is provision of bulk water transportation. “We have a solar-based water pumping system installed in Odisha, Jharkhand and Majuli in Assam. So, not all states have the same model. We take a broader approach,” the official says.
While therapy is not a difficulty, standardising the practise as a method is essential. Vathanan, the principal secretary of housing and urban development division in Odisha, says, “The quality of water is compromised not at the end route but from treatment plant to supply to the distribution plant. The network has to be fixed, keeping in mind the ferrule point, which mostly gets contaminated due to breakage or due to poor connection or supply. For this purpose, we have changed all leaky pipelines throughout the state.”
Testing and evaluation
Water pipeline is continuous and a considerable method. And in this method, the JJM has begun to empower citizens to monitor water top quality. While groundwater contamination is a enormous difficulty and has been the trigger of extreme public well being dangers, drinking water contamination due to geogenic (organic causes) and anthropogenic (human-made) activities has led to extreme water-borne ailments in the previous.
To combat the problem of poor water top quality, the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation below the Jal Shakti Ministry has introduced Water Quality Management Information System (WQMIS), a devoted one-cease facts portal which enables individuals to register, book and get their household water tested at the nearest government-affiliated laboratory by paying a nominal charge. The portal has received 4.9 lakh samples for water top quality testing as of July this year.
The technique has been attempting its most effective to make water top quality management not just for public well being engineers but empower communities and girls to monitor water top quality at the neighborhood level employing Field Test Kits (FTKs). “In rural areas, we are building the capacity of public health engineers by providing certain standards to the supply of water,” says a senior government official.
Puri has launched ‘Jalsathis’, an all-girls crew to facilitate new connections, field water top quality testing, reading water meters, distributing water bills, collecting user charges and sensitising individuals on water conservation. Also, a chlorine dosing technique with automated programmable logic controllers (PLCs) is installed to guarantee suitable water top quality at the customer finish. “We have liberalised the connection process and exempted the documentation process which is a major hurdle in getting a connection,” says Vathanan.
To tap polluted water and avoid its flow in the rivers and other freshwater bodies, Indore in Madhya Pradesh has worked in more than 7,000 outfalls of grey water. The city has claimed ‘Water Plus’ tag which is accorded to cities below the Swachh Survekshan survey on the basis of their efficiency. The administration has constructed seven sewerage water therapy plants and the city reuses about 110 million litres of treated water each day.