Relook at ‘HarGharJal initiative’

With the JalJeevan Mission taking piped water to every village in India,and has risen from 1.2% in 2019 to 97.5% in 2023. This has eased women’s burden of work, but acceptance is slow.

So, let us relook the points and targets under the HarGharJal Mission.

About the Mission:

• HarGharJal is part of the broader JalJeevan Mission,which focuses on sustainable water supply management and water resource development in rural areas.
• The mission aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6, which aims to ensure access to clean water and sanitation for all.
• HarGharJal, which translates to "Water to Every Home," is a flagship mission launched by the Government of India.
• Objective: Its primary goal is to ensure that every rural household in India has access to clean and potable drinking water. The mission aims to provide tap water connections to all rural households by 2024.
• The mission focuses on improving and expanding the rural water supply infrastructure, including the creation of piped water supply systems.
• This involves constructing water sources, storage tanks, distribution networks, and individual household tap connections to deliver safe drinking water directly to people's homes.
• Administered by:It coordinates efforts across government departments and agencies, including the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation and the Ministry of Jal Shakti, to ensure a holistic approach to water management.

The Dataraising voice:

• Besides making women’s lives easier, piped water connections also mean reducing individual dependence on groundwater.
• Recent estimates from the Central Groundwater Board of India pegs about 20% of the country’s groundwater blocks being “critical” or “overexploited”.
• Uttar Pradesh has 13% of such blocks.

What are the loopholes?

• A major challenge transporting water to villages sprawled across hundreds of kilometres is leakage.
• Unlike in cities and urban settlements where pumped water is stored in tanks, most of the villages with new tap connections don’t have centralised or even individual storage tanks.
• Untreated water supplies are frequent in many regions causing diseases like Diarrhea, cholera etc.

Suggestive measures

• States/ UTs have been advised to plan and implement piped water supply schemes of bulk water transfer based on safe water sources such as surface water sources or alternative safe ground water sources for the villages with water quality issues.
• Rural Water Supply Department of State declares the village as ‘HarGharJal’ village on the basis of work completion report of the field engineer associated with the project the villages are marked as ‘reported HarGharJal’ in JJM IMIS.
  • The Gram Sabha should take a stand on the certification process.
• The copy of certificate provided by implementing department, resolution passed by Gram Sabha, and a small video capturing the Gram Sabha is reflected on JJM Dashboard for every village that is certified.