Nitish Kumar's Promise To Provide Statewide Tap Water Still Running Dry Eight Years Later

On 30 July, a member of the legislative assembly (MLA) from one of the ruling parties in Bihar protested against his own government.

The MLA in question is Binay Kumar Choudhary, who represents the Benipur assembly constituency and is also a spokesperson for his party.

Choudhary protested due to an acute water shortage affecting more than a dozen villages in his constituency. Due to the decline in the water table, exacerbated by insufficient rainfall and scorching heat, hand pumps have run dry.

The situation is especially dire in these villages — Nawada, Makrampur, Balni, Baigni, Belaun, Hawibhowar, Lagopur, Haripur, Baheri, Ramauli, Jagannathpur, Habidih, and Sajjanpura.

In ward number 13 of Pohadi West village, the tap water scheme is dysfunctional. Choudhary spoke to the executive engineer about it, who did not take cognisance of the matter.

Now, the MLA demands that water be supplied through tankers, and the loopholes in the tap water scheme be corrected swiftly.

The Tap Water Scheme

Choudhary is protesting against the Har Ghar Nal Ka Jal scheme. As the name suggests, the scheme promised to introduce tap water facilities in every nook and corner of Bihar.

When Nitish Kumar first presented his vision for the scheme ahead of the 2015 assembly election, most cities in Bihar did not have proper tap water facilities. Handpumps and even wells (in remote villages) were the recourse.

Providing tap water to every household in Bihar was part of the seven resolves of the Janata Dal (United) (JD(U)) and part of their 2015 poll promise.

Amid much fanfare, the scheme began in 2016 with the aim of establishing tap water connections in nearly 20 million homes. The initial estimate for the budget allocation to this scheme was Rs 30,000 crore.

Contractors were to be allocated 60-65 per cent of the budget for the completion of the projects, while the rest 30-35 per cent was meant for maintenance works for five years.

Things were looking good for a couple of years: local contractors and engineers visited villages for mapping purposes, Mukhiyas (village heads) and other office-bearers engaged with probable beneficiaries, the names were forwarded en masse, and so on.

The mood was so upbeat at the time that even people at the bottom of the economic ladder started to ditch handpumps in expectation of ‘big city-like tap water.’

Due to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s ‘Sushashan Babu’ image, few suspected large-scale malfeasances at play in a scheme decentralised down to the level of a gram panchayat ward. 

The promise of two hours of water supply in the morning, afternoon, and evening was so ambitious that even if 50 per cent of the results were achieved, the people of Bihar would have been satisfied. That would have already been a lot coming from ‘babus’ and ‘netas’ in Bihar.

But the excitement lasted only until taps were actually thrust into the ground. Rather than water, news of the failures started to pour out from various villages.

Problems Started Early

Common complaints included unfinished projects, weeks-long water shortages, taps installed in unwanted locations, and the flow of dirty, muddy water from the taps, among other issues.

In many places, people reinstalled handpumps near the taps in a symbolic representation of taking matters into their own hands.

The years 2020 and 2021 saw numerous reports of failures.

For instance, in January 2020, some residents of Darbhanga district said not even a drop of tap water had reached their homes even after three years of funding being raised in their names.

Towards the end of the year, in December 2020, it came to light that two of the three villages of Khajuri Pandu Panchayat in Aurangabad district did not even get tap water connections. In the third, more fortunate village, only 115 of the 225 targeted beneficiaries received a connection.

In the same month, residents of Daraunda block in Siwan district complained that despite the borewell work being completed a year and a half ago,  water still had not reached their taps. The borewell had already rusted and grass grew around it too.

Even the Benipur constituency, where Choudhary is now protesting, was among the first to experience issues with this promised scheme. Until 2021, it was tough to even get tap water connections for people.

These are but a handful of cases. Besides mainstream news, personal experience — of this writer as well as that recounted by vloggers, for instance — shows that in most villages, people have faced the wrath of high-handedness in the planning and implementation of this scheme.

Even Rajesh Verma, the Member of Parliament (MP) from Khagaria, protested against the scheme's implementation in Bhagalpur when he was deputy mayor of Bhagalpur municipal corporation.

Shivprakash Rai, a well-known right-to-information (RTI) activist in Bihar, revealed that most Mukhiyas were facing charges of seeking commissions and delaying the implementation of the scheme and degrading the quality of projects.

The state government, in response, sought to quell emotional anger by appealing to the retributive side of the human psyche.

First information reports (FIR) were registered against as many as 373 Mukhiyas along with contractors, supervisors, and Panchayat secretaries. The status of these cases is still unknown.

However, it is safe to say that misgovernance of this extent at the grassroots level cannot occur without a connection to the top. Right from the bidding process itself, the scheme's implementation was polluted.

A four-month-long investigation by The Indian Express in 2021 revealed that political patronage was the unofficial and core eligibility criterion for bagging the bid.

According to the newspaper, VIP contractors close to politicians, a nephew of an ex-minister and family members of then-deputy chief minister Tarkishore Prasad, were the alleged manipulators.

Such was the influence of these persons on the system that while formulating the policy and by-laws of the bidding process, no mechanism was formulated to check dummy competitors.

Prasad, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, shirked his responsibility by stating that this was all part of business. Ajay Alok, then JD(U) spokesperson, defended his government, calling this issue an aberration.

The matter went to Patna High Court, which asked petitioners to approach the concerned departments. Presumably, after pressure from the media and judiciary, the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) ordered a probe into the alleged irregularities.

After the Indian Express investigations, the scheme entered the national limelight, and not in a good light. The last time it had grabbed such attention, though of a contrasting nature, was when the Narendra Modi government used it as a template for its own Nal Se Jal scheme in 2019.

Alarmed by the incessantly negative coverage, the Kumar government put out a toll-free number for the people affected. Due to the high degree of scrutiny, the time frame to resolve any issues fell significantly. In April 2022, it was 72 hours. By May, it was 12 hours.

It varies to this day, changing as per the extent of public vigilance as well as the city.

Awaiting Water Supply

By October 2023, 3,393 hamlets and settlements were still untouched by the scheme. In addition, 7,326 settlements with poor groundwater quality were identified.

To ensure that those still without tap water could avail of the scheme, Rs 4,706 crore more was allocated.

Then came the major political move — JD(U) joining hands with the BJP ahead of the 2024 election.

In March 2024, Vijay Kumar Sinha, Deputy Chief Minister and PHED Minister cancelled 1,100 tenders worth over Rs 4,500 crore on irregularity charges.

All these tenders were floated under Lalit Yadav, a minister from the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) quota when the JD(U)-RJD alliance was in charge in the state.

While covering elections for Swarajya in Bihar earlier this year, this writer randomly checked whether tap water connections were functioning. It turned out that the problems identified with the scheme over the years persisted in most places. (Read the reports from Gaya and Kishanganj).

On the ground, people, including ward members associated with the BJP, now refer to this scheme as a total failure.

It's been eight years since the beginning of the project. The state government is left with no choice other than to pursue course correction on a war footing, to prevent it from becoming a grand failure from a total failure.