Soon, 24/7 water for 10,000 naxal-hit villages

A government initiative to extend round-the-clock water supply to one-fifth of the villages in 78 naxal-hit districts, courtesy solar energy, is all set to turn them into every metropolitan city’s envy. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jun 13, 2012, 08:52:39 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A government initiative to extend round-the-clock water supply to one-fifth of the villages in 78 naxal-hit districts, courtesy solar energy, is all set to turn them into every metropolitan city’s envy.

The Union ministries of finance, new and renewable energy, and drinking water and sanitation have come together to ensure that clean drinking water is supplied to 10,000 naxal-hit villages on a 24/7 basis under the Integrated Action Plan of the central government. The lives of villagers in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district have already witnessed a sea change due to the installation of a solar energy-based dual pump piped water supply system.

A one horsepower submersible pump, energised by solar energy, has been installed in existing high-yielding bore wells and the pumped water is stored in 5,000-litre tanks. Water is then supplied to about 250 homes in each village.

The project cost for each village is low (about Rs 5 lakh) because the system is run through solar energy, as opposed to electricity. Moreover, the system is non-polluting in nature.

Spurred by the success of the project in Gadchiroli, the government is planning to replicate the system in at least 10,000 villages – at a cost of Rs 500 crore. Villages with a population between 150-250 have been chosen, considering that the system can cater to a maximum of 250 people per day. The remoteness of the villages, spread across nine states, was also taken into consideration.

In the collaborative effort, the ministry of new and renewable energy would provide subsidies at the rate of Rs 70 per watt to install solar water pumping systems, and the finance ministry's Clean Energy Development Fund could pay part of the budget — Rs 229 crore. The rest of the expenditure would be borne by the drinking water ministry.

“Once the National Clean Energy Fund clears the project, we will seek cabinet approval for its implementation,” a senior government official said. The Centre believes these villages can get the regular water supply system within 18 months of gaining approval, and implementation of the scheme will be entrusted with the state governments. Villagers can run and maintain the hassle-free system for five years, making it India's biggest solar energy driven water project.

Despite the Centre spending crores to bridge the development deficit in naxal-hit areas, provision of drinking water continues to be a major concern.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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