• Nal Se Jal was launched in August 2019 as the big public infrastructure programme of the Modi government’s second term with the goal of providing drinking water supply to every rural household by 2024.
• It’s a high-profile welfare push on the same lines as making India open defecation free and distributing eight crore LPG connections under the Ujjwala scheme before the deadline in 2019.
• Nal Se Jal has a massive outlay of Rs 3.6 lakh crore, of which the central government is contributing Rs 2.08 lakh crore, with the rest coming from the states.
• Unlike in south Haryana districts such as Mewat and Rewari, where there is water scarcity, providing drinking water network to each and every household in the rural belt of Ambala, Panchkula, Kurukshetra or adjoining Karnal districts was not among the biggest challenges faced by Public Health Department (PHD) officials. These districts already had an extensive piped network.
• Currently, of the 31-lakh total rural households in the state, 26.39 lakh or 85 per cent have tap water connections. Of this, 17.66 lakh households already had connections before August 2019, when ‘Nal Se Jal’ was launched, Union Jal Shakti ministry data shows.
• In Kurukshetra, for instance, nearly 80 per cent of the households in rural areas already had water connection. 
• Except for some parts of south Haryana, there is hardly any shortage of water in any of the districts. The water supply network is also fairly well distributed across most of the districts, they added.
• The bigger problem was regularising the large number of illegal connections across villages and replacing rusted pipelines that were laid about three decades ago.
• In many villages, people had installed their own pipes and were drawing water from an authorised connection in nearby vicinity or from submersible pumps. 
• In rural areas of Haryana, the state government has a fixed water charge — Rs 40 per month for general households and Rs 20 per month for SC households.
• There is still some reluctance, but villagers in rural Haryana are coming to terms with the fact that now they will have to pay for the water they consume. 

Next task — activating the paani samitis   

• With 100 per cent water connections now in place in the three districts, the next task in hand of state government officials is to ensure the operation and maintenance of the water infrastructure. And it is here that the newly constituted paani samitis (Village Water and Sanitation Committees) will be brought in to help with water supply management. 
• The paani samitis in every village are mostly headed by the sarpanchs, and have 50 per cent representation from women and 25 per cent from SC/ST communities. 
• The paani samitis will not only decide the kind of infrastructure required for every village, but at a later stage they will also fix charges to be paid by residents for piped water.
• Eventually, the PHD will hand over the operation and maintenance of the water infrastructure to the paani samitis.
• The idea is to involve the local community in decision-making and help them manage their resources. The paani samitis at a later stage will be responsible for generating the water bills. They will be allowed to keep the revenue generated from water bills and use it for maintenance of the pipelines.