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Jal Jeevan Mission may reach 100 million households by August
The mission has a special focus on 117 so-called aspirational districts in the country, where development indicators have been historically poor, and on schools and anganwadi centres, which cater to children and maternal health needs.
The Union government expects to connect 100 million households with tap water connections by August under the ambitious Jal Jeevan Mission, a senior official familiar with the plan has said, as the programme enters a critical phase in achieving its overall target of reaching every rural family by 2024.
As on July 21, the marquee programme has covered 98.4 million households, or 51.47% of the total, up from about 17% in 2019, when the scheme was launched.
The mission has a special focus on 117 so-called aspirational districts in the country, where development indicators have been historically poor, and on schools and anganwadi centres, which cater to children and maternal health needs.
“There is no internal target of 100 million households as such, but the government expects to achieve that number by August,” said Vini Mahajan, secretary, department of drinking water and sanitation at the ministry of Jal Shakti.
A national study by the health ministry has found improvements in health outcomes in places with access to clean water supply, Mahajan said.
According to numbers reported by the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), cases of water-borne diseases have come down 66% — from 17.7 million to 5.9 million between 2019 and 2021 — in areas with clean drinking water.
The mission has so far linked 84.2% (865,000) of all government schools in the country with a tap water connection, and 80% (894,000) of anganwadi centres have been covered, according to Mahajan.
Nearly 820 million people in 12 major river basins of the country face “high to extreme” water stress. Getting to a water source is a long haul in rural India. According to a National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) survey, in Jharkhand, it takes people 40 minutes one way, without taking into account the waiting time. In Bihar, it’s 33 minutes. Rural Maharashtra clocks an average of 24 minutes.
The piped water mission, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2019, aims to change this. The programme has entered a critical stage, as officials race to meet the deadline amid a disruptive Covid-19 pandemic.
In aspirational districts, 47% households now have tap-supplied clean drinking water. This represents a 40% increase in coverage since the start of the mission.
Yet, progress by individual states has been skewed. Some large states have lagged in work such as laying pipelines or completing last-mile connections. The Centre has identified 13 “focus states where progress with respect to bulk of residual work needs to be ramped up”, Mahajan said.
“There are outliers. We are separately working with them on the nitty gritty. We are trying to drill down to the actual problems,” said Mahajan said. However, she said all states expect to meet the 2024 national deadline. These include Uttar Pradesh, where only 14% households have been connected so far, according to the mission’s dashboard.
One reason for UP’s slow overall progress is that it had chosen to award works in severely water-stressed areas like the Bundelkhand region, Mahajan said. Jharkhand, another outlier, has managed to link 21% households. West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh are also among states which need to ramp up the mission, she added.
Officials are now ensuring that reporting of tap-water coverage is authentically validated with steps such as a mandatory formal resolution from gram sabhas and uploading of completion videos to a centrally monitored portal, the official quoted above said.
