Team Blitz India
THE Narendra Modi government’s flagship drinking water programme, Jal Jeevan Mission, has crossed a key milestone, with about 75% of the country’s rural households have been provided with tap water connections so far.
As on date, nearly 145 million rural households have been fitted with a functional tap water under the scheme. So far, 11 states and Union territories have achieved their target of 100% coverage ahead of the year-end deadline (Goa, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Gujarat, Haryana, Telangana, Puducherry, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram).
When PM Modi launched the programme in August 2019, only onesixth of India’s roughly 192 million households across 600,000 villages had a functional water tap.
Getting to a water source is a long haul in most of rural India. According to a 2013 National Sample Survey Organisation survey, in Jharkhand, it took women 40 minutes one way, without considering the waiting time.
In Bihar, it was 33 minutes and in Uttar Pradesh, 38 minutes. The water mission aims to change this drudgery. Overall, the pace of implementation appears robust. A calculation by the Jal Shakti ministry showed that, on average, more than 85,000 rural families are being covered each day.
Yet, states where progress has been significantly behind the national average include Madhya Pradesh (60.94%), Kerala (52.37%), Jharkhand (51.38%), Rajasthan (47.15%) and West Bengal (45.76), according to latest data on the mission’s dashboard. The government has stepped up monitoring and is holding special reviews with local authorities in laggard states, an official said.
