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Telangana now has its own brand of drinking water, calls it Mission Bhagiratha
In a bid to encourage people to drink only tap water, instead of running after branded and packaged drinking water, the Telangana government has come up with this unique idea of creating its own brand and calling it “Mission Bhagiratha.”
Branded drinking water bottles – be it Kinley or Bisleri or Bailey or Himalayan – are now passé at all official meetings in Telangana.
For the past one week, the Telangana government has been using its own brand of drinking water, which is nothing but piped drinking water being supplied to every household in the state.
The packaged drinking water under the brand name of “Mission Bhagiratha” has now been made compulsory in all government meetings. On Friday, state minister for Panchayat Raj Errabelli Dayakar Rao formally launched this new brand at an official programme in Palakurthy in Jangaon district.
“This is not like any other brand of drinking water purified and packed in factories. This is the same water which everybody is getting through their drinking water pipeline. We are only promoting it as our own Telangana brand,” Dayakar Rao said.
Mission Bhagiratha, a flagship programme of the Telangana government, is aimed at providing safe drinking water to every household. “We have achieved 100 per cent target of providing drinking water connections to all households in the state. It was acknowledged by Union minister for Jal Sakthi Gajendra Singh Shekhawat last week,” Mission Bhagiratha engineer-in-chief G Krupakar Reddy said.
In a bid to encourage people to drink only tap water, instead of running after branded and packaged drinking water, the Telangana government has come up with this unique idea of creating its own brand and calling it “Mission Bhagiratha.”
Reddy said his department has designed a unique bottle, which is different from other packaged drinking water brands, so that people could recognise it. The department doesn’t have a separate bottling unit, but it has procured PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles, lids and labels.
“However, we are not going to sell our brand of drinking water in the market like any other brand. Our Mission Bhagiratha water bottles are supplied free of cost, in all government offices, from gram panchayats to the chief minister’s office and also at all public meetings,” he said.
He said the intention of the government was not to make money out of this project, but to convey the message to the people that the drinking water being supplied to their homes through pipes was absolutely safe and pure. “If officials and leaders use the packaged Mission Bhagiratha water, it will give confidence to the people,” he said.
Reddy said the drinking water being supplied under Mission Bhagiratha was totally tested in the laboratories before being released through pipes to the households in the city. “We have around 75 government labs across the state where chemists and microbiologists conduct regular testing of water samples, before it is released through pipelines,” he said.
The official further said unlike other drinking water brands, which are processed through reverse osmosis (RO) plants, the Mission Bhagiratha brand of water is only ultra-violet light processed. “The RO plants take away all minerals, whereas UV-processed water just kills bacteria and retains essential minerals,” he said.
What is more, most of the brands use PET bottles which have to be discarded after use as each of them weigh around 12 grams. However, bottles used in Mission Bhagiratha brand are reusable as they weigh 19 grams each and the water can be preserved up to one month.
