Water is undoubtedly an important public good. A water-secure nation will not only provide clean and safe drinking water to its citizens but also would ensure a healthy and economically productive society. Provision and access to clean and safe drinking water and sanitation are vital to improving the overall health of the country’s billion-plus population.

Recognizing the Need:

• Article 47, Constitution of India: confers the state with the duty of providing clean drinking water and improving public health standards.
• United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED): has selected ‘leaving no one behind’ as the theme for this year’s Water Day.
• Goal 6, Sustainable Development Goals 2015-2030: talks about ensuring the availability and sustainable management of clean water and sanitation.
  • Goal 6.1: Achieving universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all.

U.N Initiatives:

• United Nations had included among the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the objective of halving the number of people lacking adequate access to clean water by 2015.
• Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are MDGs next edition.
  • In SDG, 17 Global Goals have been identified.
  • Clean water and sanitation is the sixth goal of SDGs.
  • Under SDG, it is targeted to achieve the following global goals by 2030:

1. Universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all.
2. Access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations.
3. Improve water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping and minimizing the release of hazardous chemicals and materials, halving the proportion of untreated wastewater and substantially increasing recycling and safe reuse globally.

Statistics on Clean Drinking Water:

• United Nations:
  • 2.1 billion people do not have safe drinking water at home.
  • 80% of those who have to use unsafe and unprotected water sources, reside in rural areas.
  • More than 700 children under five years of age die every day from diarrhoea due to unsafe water and poor sanitation.
  • Women and girls are responsible for water collection in 8 out of 10 households.
  • Nearly 2/3 of the world’s population experiences severe water scarcity at least for 31 days per year.
  • The intense impact of water scarcity could displace 700 million people by 2030.
  • Water consumption of the world is doubling every 20 years, which is more than twice the rate of increase of our population.
• Central Water Commission:
  • Only about 1123 km3, (690 km3 from surface water and 433 km3 from groundwater) can be used due to topographical constraints and spatio-temporal variations in resources.
• National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) (2011-12):
  • 5% households in rural India had improved source of drinking water and among these, 85.8% had sufficient drinking water.
  • 1% of the rural households do not have drinking water facilities within their premises.
• World Health Organization:
  • It recommends around 50 Ipcd (litres per capita per day) of safe drinking water.
  • 84% of Indians who don’t have access to clean water and sanitation live in rural communities.
• Review of the Millennium Development Goals, United Nations:
  • Out of the 35 Indian states, only 7 have achieved full coverage of having a safe water source for their villages.
  • Ground water in most cities and around 19000 villages contains fluorides, nitrates, pesticides, etc. beyond the permissible limits.
• Planning Commission,2010:
  • Between 1995 and 2004, the proportion of unsafe districts (semi-critical, critical and overexploited), the proportion of area affected and population affected has grown from 9% to 31%, from 5% to 33% and from 7% to 35% respectively.

Government Initiatives in India:

• Access to Drinking Water in Rural India Rural drinking water supply is a state subject in India.
• The country has already spent an estimated Rs. 1,105 billion on providing safe drinking water since the First Five Year Plan was launched in 1951.
• Bhore Committee (1946): The ‘Environment Hygiene Committee’ advocated for the provision of safe water supply to cover 90 % of India’s population within a timeframe of 40 years.
• Accelerated Rural Water Supply Programme (1972): It aimed at speeding up coverage of drinking water supply.
• Swajal Dhara (1999): Focused on empowering and involving local communities in tackling water and sanitation issues.
• International Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (1981-1990): Aimed at 100% safe drinking water coverage of both rural and urban population.
• 73rd constitutional amendment (1994): The amendment incorporated specific provisions of entrusting the responsibility of drinking water supply to Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs).
• Technology Mission for Drinking Water (1986): It was renamed as Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission in 1991.
• National Water Policy (1987): It gave a concrete direction to the approach adopted to create sustainable water infrastructure.
• Department of Drinking Water Supply (1999): It was created in the Ministry of Rural Development.
• Bharat Nirman: Focused on creating good quality water infrastructure in rural areas.
• National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP): Assists States in providing adequate and safe drinking water to the rural population.
  • NRDWP now targets providing rural populations with 40 litres of water daily to cover domestic uses.
  • A performance audit of the NRDWP was conducted by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India in 2018 to assess how far the objectives of the programme were achieved between 2012 and 2017.
  • It found that insufficient community involvement, lack of long term sustainability plan, over-reliance on depleting groundwater resources and lack of focus on operation and maintenance of created infrastructure is not serving the purpose of building water secured rural India.
• ‘Har Ghar Jal’: It has been recognized as a goal to be achieved by 2030.
• Strategic Plan: In 2011, the Ministry came out with a strategic plan for the period 2011-22. The plan identified certain standards for coverage of habitations with water supply, including targets for per day supply of drinking water.
• Swajal: It is a pilot project designed as a demand driven and community centred programme to provide sustainable access to drinking water to people in the rural areas.
  • It was originally launched as a pilot scheme in February 2018 in six States of Bihar, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan.
  • Later, it was extended to all the 112 aspirational districts identified by NITI Aayog.
• Atal Bhujal Yojana: It is a World Bank-aided scheme based on community participation to ensure sustained groundwater management in overexploited and ground water-stressed areas in seven states.
  • It has been found that 1,034 blocks out of the 6,584 assessed blocks in the country are overexploited.
• National Water Quality Sub-Mission (NWQSM): It was started as a sub-programme under NRDWP.
  • It aims to address the urgent need for providing clean drinking water in already identified 28,000 arsenic and fluoride affected habitations.
• Swajal Dhara: It is a programme to enable the rural community shoulder the responsibility in management, operation and maintenance of water supply systems at village level, in a decentralized, demand-driven, community-managed approach.
• National Rural Drinking Water Quality Monitoring & Surveillance Programme: It was launched to further strengthen community participation in the drinking water sector.
  • Under the programme, five persons in each Gram Panchayat are trained to carry out regular surveillance of drinking water sources for which 100% financial assistance including water testing kits, are provided by the Government.

Government Institutions Related to Drinking Water:

• Central Water Commission (CWC) regulates the use of water to irrigate surface waters, the industry and potable water. It also mediates in disputes related to the inter-state water allocation.
• Central Groundwater Board (CGWB) monitors groundwater levels and rates of depletion and the production of water resource inventories and maps.
• National Rivers Conservation Directorate (NRCD) oversees the implementation of Action Plans to improve the quality of the rivers in India.
• Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) promotes basin-wide pollution control strategies.
  • It liaises with State Water Pollution Control Boards for laying down standards for the treatment of sewage and effluents.
  • The Board is also responsible for action in the case of non-compliance by agencies.
• The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation is the nodal Ministry for the overall policy, planning, funding and co-ordination of the National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) for rural drinking water supply in the country.
• Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) deals with planning, formulation, monitoring and reviewing of various watersheds based developmental project activities.
• Central Bureau of Health Intelligence (CBHI) performs the collection, compilation, analysis and dissemination of the information on health conditions in the country.
• Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is responsible for the drafting of standards pertaining to drinking water quality.

Challenges:

• Due to a 3-fold increase in population during 1951-2010, the per capita availability of water in the country decreased from 5177 m3/ year in 1951 to 1588 m3/ year in 2010.
  • As per the report submitted by the Committee on Restructuring the Central Water Commission (CWC) and the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) 2016, if the current pattern of demand continues, about half of the demand for water will be unmet by 2030.
• There is a lack of installed drinking water supply capacities.
• India also suffers from low level of socio-economic development, education and awareness about the access and usage of water.
• Water resources are not evenly distributed. The unequal spatial distribution could be easily observed by the fact that the Brahmaputra and Barak basin, with only 7.3% of the geographical area and 4.2% of the country’s population, have 31% of the annual water resources.
• A person in rural India has to spend, on average, 20 minutes to fetch drinking water.
• Climate change poses fresh challenges as more extreme rates of rainfall and evapotranspiration intensify the impacts of floods and droughts.
• With an annual groundwater extraction rate of 251km3, India is the world’s biggest consumer of groundwater. 60% of the districts face groundwater over-exploitation.
• Water pollution is also a major issue.
• There exists demand pressure from various sectors, changing cropping pattern, high rate of urbanisation and industrialisation.

Solutions:

• Different states in India face completely different water related challenges and thus ”one size fits all” approach would not be applicable.
• Rainwater harvesting is one of the most important initiatives which can help in a long way in sustaining the supply of safe drinking water in the rural areas.
  • The Central Government is working on a master plan envisaging construction of about 23 lakh artificial recharge and rainwater harvesting structure in rural areas and 88 lakh in urban areas.
  • Central Ground Water Board has prepared a conceptual document entitled ‘Master Plan for Artificial Recharge to Ground Water in India’.
• Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) need to make the drinking water supply schemes truly functional.
• There is need for regulatory mechanism by the State governments to check the overexploitation of water resources.
• Better data on water quality and quantity, and a robust hydrological information system is needed.
• Sub-basin level water management: Several basins are inter-state thus it would require the riparian states to come to a consensus, which is a complex process and would take time. Therefore, water management at the sub-basin level should be initiated.
• Water source improvement: Currently, as per CPCB report 2018, 351 river stretches on 275 rivers across the country have got polluted due to the discharge of both municipal and industrial waste water over the years. Also, the groundwater quantity and quality is degrading at an unprecedented rate which needs an immediate response.
• Integrated water and waste management: Open defecation, domestic solid waste, wastewater and waste from cattle are the major cause of water contamination in rural areas and it has high negative health impacts as well. Therefore, sanitation management would be a crucial element in achieving water security.
• Supply and access augmentation: On the supply side, wastewater reuse and recycling and rainwater harvesting should be encouraged across the country without further delay. On the access front, households and farms with poor access to water should be targeted on priority.
• Demand side management: The Government will have to come up with innovative policies, incentives and subsidies, for increased adoption of water efficient practices and agro-ecology based crop selection in the agriculture sector as the groundwater sources are finite.
• Capacity building of institutions involved in water resources management is the need of the hour.
• Institutional and legislative reforms: Water is segregated amongst so many institutions that accountability is difficult to be defined. There should be an umbrella agency that controls the governance of the water sector.
• Revival of traditional wisdom: The community needs to be made the guardian of water resources in their locality.
• Preparedness for disasters: Drinking water is heavily affected during disastrous events, thus people should be made aware of actions to be taken for restoring drinking water sources.

Case Studies:

• Tamil Nadu: In 2001, the state government made it compulsory for each household to have rainwater harvesting infrastructure and the results are now reflected in the improvement of overall water quality within 5 years.
• Bangalore and Pune: In a similar experiment, housing societies were required to harvest rainwater.
• Kadwanchi village, Maharashtra: The efforts by the local community to improve water availability have been lauded in a UN report that highlights the importance of finding nature-based solutions to meet global water challenges.
  • The villagers also built nine check dams apart from de-silting nearly 25 km of stream.
  • The report notes that reservoirs, irrigation canals and water treatment plants are not the only water management instruments at disposal.
• Sponge City, China: The city aims to recycle 70% of rainwater.
• Ramgarh, Rajasthan: The villagers construct ‘beris’, a traditional system of rainwater harvesting. Shaped like matkas (pitcher), these shallow wells are dug up in areas with gypsum or bentonite beds which prevent rainwater from percolating downwards but guide them towards the wells through capillary action.

Conclusion:

• It is to be remembered that in order to widen the access and availability of drinking water in rural areas, every effort to preserve and use the water judiciously with active participation of the village communities must be made.