Rural Water Supply Programme

Clean drinking water is a basic necessity of life. Supply of clean drinking water in the rural areas has always been one of the highest priorities of the government. A Technology Mission on drinking water named "National Drinking Water Mission" (NDWM) was launched in 1986, which subsequently was rechristened as "Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission (RGNDWM)" in 1991 with three key objectives:

1. Providing safe drinking water to all villages,
2. Assisting local communities to maintain sources of safe drinking water in good condition, and
3. Giving special attention for water supply to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

To achieve the objectives, Accelerated Rural Water Supply Programme (ARWSP) is being implemented to resolve the drinking water problem in rural habitations. The Central Government supplements the efforts of the states by providing financial and technical support. The Tenth Plan emphasizes participatory approach where PRIs should be the key institutions for convergence of drinking water supply programmes at the ground level. The strategy to achieve the Tenth Plan objectives can be briefly summarised as:

1. Accelerating coverage of the remaining Not Covered and Partially Covered habitations including those slipped back from fully covered to partially and not covered categories, with safe drinking water systems.
2. To tackle problems of water quality in affected habitations and to institutionalize water quality monitoring and surveillance systems.
3. To promote sustainability, both of systems and sources, to ensure continued supply of safe drinking water in covered habitations

Accelerated Rural Water Supply Programme (ARWSP) aims at achieving this objective. Considerable success has been achieved in meeting the drinking water needs of the rural population through the said scheme. There are more than 4 million hand pumps and 2 lakh piped water schemes in the rural areas.

The ARWSP was launched during 1972-73. It is currently being implemented through the Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission. The scheme aims at coverage of all rural habitations with population of 100 and above, specially the un-reached ones, ensure sustainability of the systems and sources, tackle the problem of water quality and institutionalise water quality monitoring and surveillance through a Catchment Area Approach.

As on 1 April 2005, 96.13 per cent of rural habitations have been Fully Covered (FC) with drinking water facilities and 3.55 per cent are Partially Covered (PC) and 0.32 per cent is Not Covered (NC) with drinking water facilities. There are slippages of FC into NC or PC due to various factors such as lowering of ground water table, systems outliving their lives, increase in population, etc.

Drinking water supply is one of the six components of Bharat Nirman, which has been envisaged to build strong rural infrastructure in four years (2005-06 to 2008-09). The task ahead is to cover all the remaining uncovered habitations and also to cover the slipped back as well as the water quality affected ones. Action Plans from State/UT Governments for achieving the goals of Bharat Nirman in a time bound manner have been obtained.

For ensuring sustainability of the systems, steps were initiated in 1999 to institutionalise community participation in the implementation of rural drinking water supply schemes by incorporating the following three basic principles:

1. Adoption of a demand-driven responsive and adaptable approach based on empowerment of villagers to ensure their full participation in the project through a decision making role in the choice of scheme design, control of finances and management arrangements.
2. Increasing role of government for empowering user groups/gram panchayats for sustainable management of drinking water assets and integrated water management and conservation.
3. Partial capital cost sharing either in cash or kind or both and 100 per cent responsibility of Operation and Maintenance by end-users.

Sector Reforms Projects, based on the above principles were sanctioned in 67 districts on pilot basis. With the experience gained from these pilot projects, reform process has been scaled up in the entire country through Swajaldhara launched on 25 December 2002. A notable feature of Swajaldhara is involvement of Village Water and Sanitation Committee (VWSC)/Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in planning, implementation, operation and maintenance. This would in turn ensure sustainability of the system. 10 per cent contribution is made by the community and 90 per cent funds are provided by the Central government. In case of SC and ST habitations, community contribution can be in the form of cash, kind, labour or land or a combination of these.

Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission (RGNDWM) adopts an integrated approach so that conservation and augmentation of water sources is interrelated with rural water supply schemes to provide sustainable supply of safe drinking water to the rural population. The Mission seeks to provide supply of 40 liters of safe drinking water in rural areas.

An initiative has been taken by Government of India in February 2006 by launching the National Rural Drinking Water Quality Monitoring and Surveillance Programme which envisages institutionalisation of community participation for monitoring and surveillance of drinking water sources at the grass-root level by Gram Panchayats and Village Water and Sanitation Committees, followed by checking the positively tested samples at the district and State level laboratories.

Another initiative taken by the Government is that from 2006-07 onwards focused funding to tackle drinking water has been started. Up to 20 per cent of ARWSP funds are to be earmarked separately for tackling water quality problems. For 2006-07, 20 per cent of ARWSP funds have been allocated for funding under water quality.