SANSAD TV: PERSPECTIVE: TAP WATER FOR ALL BY 2024 – INSIGHTSIAS

Introduction:

Jal Jeevan Mission was launched on 15th August 2019 to provide clean tap water to every household by 2024. At the time of launch of this mission, only 17 % that is 3.23 Crore rural households had tap water supply. Despite Covid-19 pandemic, in the last two years, more than 5 Crore households have been provided with tap water connections. As of today approximately 8.26 Crore that is 43% of total rural households have tap water supply in their homes. Prime Minister launched the Jal Jeevan Mission App for improving awareness among stakeholders and for greater transparency and accountability of schemes under the Mission. He also launched Rashtriya Jal Jeevan Kosh, where any individual, institution, corporation, or philanthropist, be it in India or abroad, can contribute to help provide tap water connection in every rural household, school, Anganwadi centre and other public institutions. Addressing the gram panchayat and Pani Samiti members the Prime Minister said the vision of Jal Jeevan Mission is not just to make water accessible to the people but also a big movement of Decentralization.

Jal Jeevan Mission:

JJM envisages supply of 55 litres of water per person per day to every rural household through Functional Household Tap Connections (FHTC) by 2024.

It is under the Ministry of Jal Shakti.

The mission ensures:

• Functionality of existing water supply systems and water connections.
• Water quality monitoring and testing as well as sustainable agriculture.
• Conjunctive use of conserved water.
• Drinking water source augmentation.
• Drinking water supply system, grey water treatment and its reuse.

 Salient features of Jal Jeevan mission:

• Jal Jeevan Mission aims at ensuring potable water supply in adequate quantity at the rate of 55 litres per person per day and of prescribed quality to every rural household of the country through Functional Household Tap Connections (FHTC) by 2024.
• The provision of household tap connection in rural areas will help in removing ‘drudgery’ of women, especially the girls. It will also improve the ‘ease of living’ for people living in rural areas.
• JJM focuses on integrated demand and supply-side management of water at the local level.
• Creation of local infrastructure for source sustainability measures as mandatory elements, like rainwater harvesting, groundwater recharge and management of household wastewater for reuse, would be undertaken in convergence with other government programmes/schemes.
• The Mission is based on a community approach to water and includes extensive Information, Education and Communication as a key component of the mission.
• JJM looks to create a jan Andolan for water, thereby making it everyone’s priority.
• The fund sharing pattern between the Centre and states is 90:10 for Himalayan and North-Eastern States, 50:50 for other states, and 100% for Union Territories.
• The Central government has recently released the operational guidelines for JJM.
• For the implementation of JJM, following institutional arrangement has been proposed:
  • National Jal Jeevan Mission (NJJM) at the Central level
  • State Water and Sanitation Mission (SWSM) at the State level
  • District Water and Sanitation Mission (DWSM) at the District level
  • Village Water Sanitation Committee (VWSC) at Village level
• Every village will prepare a Village Action Plan (VAP) which will have three components:
  • Water source & its maintenance
  • Water supply and
  • Greywater (domestic wastewater) management.

Current Scenario of water supply in rural areas:

• For many years, the central and state governments have been making efforts to increase access to safe and adequate drinking water.
• The provision of a basic quantity of drinking water in rural India has been achieved through hand pumps, dug wells, household water supply (HWS), etc.
• Thus, while states like Sikkim managed to achieve high levels of HWS, a relatively low percentage of rural Indian households have access to this.

Challenges faced:

• In rural drinking water service delivery, there is inadequate attention given to taking measures to sustain the source of the water, in most cases groundwater is a challenge.
• This proposed mission will make source sustainability measures mandatory prior to pumping and distributing water to households.
• Another issue with the traditional approach to service delivery was that the provision of drinking water was viewed primarily as an engineering solution, with schemes being planned and executed by the public health and engineering departments.
• However, water is an ideal sector for the applicability of the principle of subsidiarity, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level.

Jal Jeevan mission – a solution:

• With adequate capacity building and training, water can be most efficiently managed at the lowest appropriate level.
• Adopting this principle, the Jal Jeevan Mission’s first preference will be to have community-managed single village ground water-based schemes, wherever sufficient quantity and good quality of groundwater exists.
• Wherever adequate quantity of safe groundwater is not present, or where it may be technically not feasible to have single-village schemes, surface water-based multi-village schemes will be promoted.
• Further, in some remote regions, where it may not be techno-economically feasible to have household water supply schemes, local innovations, such as solar-based schemes will be encouraged.
• It is not commonly known that household waste water from HWS amounts to about 75% of the amount of water supplied.
• With the rural households to get HWS under the proposed mission, huge quantities of household waste water will be generated across the country, therefore making its effective management critical.
• There is a plan to include a mandatory provision under the mission for the effective channelling and treatment of household waste water, through appropriate and low cost drainage and treatment systems.
• Once appropriately treated, this waste water can be used for both recharge of groundwater as well as for irrigation purposes.

Way forward:

• An extensive information, education and communication will be needed to create a people’s movement for water management.
• The ongoing Jal Shakti Abhiyan will help in creating awareness about the importance of integrating source sustainability and water reuse.
• This integrated approach to decentralised, community managed, and sustainable water management is the backbone of the government’s plan to ensure that every household gets the benefits of water supply.

Conclusion:

The Jal Jeevan Mission will be a major step towards improving our people’s ease of living and meeting their aspirations of a New India.