Jal Jeevan Mission Achieves Milestone Of Providing Clean Tap Water To Nine Crore Rural Homes; Details Here

In a big boost to Modi government's ambitious plan to provide clean tap water to every household in the country by 2024, the Jal Jeevan Mission has achieved the milestone of providing tap water connection to over 5.77 crore rural households in the country in a short span of two and half years since its inception, thereby increasing the access to clean tap water supply to over 9 crore rural households.

At the announcement of the Mission on 15 August 2019, out of 19.27 Crore households only 3.23 Crore (17 per cent) households in India had tap water connections, a Jal Shakti Ministry release said on Wednesday (16 February).

In over two and half years after the scheme was announced, 98 districts, 1,129 blocks, 66,067 Gram Panchayats and 1,36,135 villages have become ‘Har Ghar Jal’, according to the ministry.

In Goa, Haryana, Telangana, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Puducherry, Dadar and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, every rural household has tap water supply, it added.

Many more states like Punjab (99 per cent), Himachal Pradesh (92.4 per cent), Gujarat (92 per cent) and Bihar (90 per cent) are on the verge of becoming ‘Har Ghar Jal’ in 2022.

To achieve the mammoth task of providing tap water supply to every rural household in a span of five years, Rs 3.60 lakh crore has been allocated, the ministry said.

Rs 60,000 Crore has been allocated to ‘Har Ghar Jal’ in Union Budget 2022-23 to provide tap water to 3.8 crore households.

In addition, in 2021-22, Rs 26,940 crore has been allocated to states as 15th Finance Commission tied grant for water and sanitation to Rural Local Bodies and Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs).

There is an assured funding of Rs 1,42,084 Crore for the next five years i.e. up to 2025-26. This huge investment in rural areas across the country is accelerating economic activities and boosting rural economy, as well as creating employment opportunities in villages, according to the ministry.

In a paradigm shift from earlier water supply programmes, Jal Jeevan Mission focuses on water service delivery and not just building water supply infrastructure.

The motto of the Jal Jeevan Mission is ‘no one is left out’, thus ensuring every household irrespective of its socio-economic status, gets tap water supply.

Under the Jal Jeevan Mission, quality-affected villages, Aapirational districts, SC/ST majority villages, water-scarce areas and Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojna (SAGY) villages are prioritised for providing tap water supply.

In last 24 months, tap water supply has increased four-fold from 24 lakh (9.3 per cent) to about 1.36 crore (40 per cent) households in 117 Aspirational districts. Similarly, more than 1.15 crore households (38 per cent) have been provided with tap water supply in 61 districts affected by Japanese Encephalitis-Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (JE-IES).

In case, the building of surface water-based systems takes time in quality affected areas, as an interim measure, community water purification plants have been installed to provide safe water @ of 8-10 lpcd to every household.

Further, 8.46 lakh schools (82 per cent) and 8.67 lakh (78 per cent) anganwadi centre across the country have been provided with potable tap water supply for drinking & cooking mid-day meals, handwashing and use in toilets. 93 thousand rainwater harvesting facilities and 1.08 lakh grey water reuse structures have been developed in schools across the country.

Jal Jeevan Mission is a ‘bottom up’ approach where community plays a vital role from planning to implementation, management, operation and maintenance. To achieve this, Village Water and Sanitation Committee (VWSC) or Pani Samiti are being constituted and strengthened; Village Action Plan are developed through community engagement; Implementation Support Agencies (ISAs) are engaged to support village communities in programme implementation and create awareness among people.

So far, over 4.69 lakh VWSCs (Pani Samitis) have been constituted and more than 3.81 lakh Village Action Plans have been developed across India, the ministry said.

To build the capacity of the community to efficiently manage the water utility, Jal Jeevan Mission is conducting capacity building programmes with the help of Implementation Support Agencies (ISAs), 104 Key Resource Centres (KRCs), and sector partners working in the area of water across the country.

Water quality monitoring and surveillance activities are given top priority under the Jal Jeevan Mission. Five women in each village are being trained to test water samples of any kind of contamination by using Field test Kits (FTKs), which are being procured and handed over to Panchayats. T

he FTK helps to test water on nine parameters such as pH, alkalinity, chloride, nitrate, total hardness, fluoride, iron, residual free chlorine and H2S. More than 9.13 lakh women have been trained so far to test water quality through FTKs.

There are 2,022 water testing laboratories in the country. Of these, 454 laboratories are NABL accredited. For the first time in the country, water testing laboratories are opened to public to get their water samples tested at nominal rates.

Many states have provided mobile vans to enable collecting and testing water samples in faraway remote villages.

Jal Jeevan Mission leverages the use of technology to ensure transparency, accountability, proper utilisation of funds and service delivery. Every water supply asset created under Jal Jeevan Mission is geo-tagged.

Hydro-geo morphological (HGM) maps are used in planning single village scheme to identify drinking water sources and construct aquifer recharge structure. Household tap connections provided by JJM are linked with Aadhar number of the head of the household and more importantly all financial transactions are undertaken through Public Finance Management System (PFMS), the ministry said.

To ensure transparency and accountability in implementation of Jal Jeevan Mission, all information about Jal Jeevan Mission is in public domain, it added.