Jal Jeevan Mission - Har Ghar Jal

To improve the living standards of people of the country, Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) was announced on 15 August 2019 to provide Functional Household Tap Connection (FHTC) to every rural home by 2024, six years ahead of the Sustainable Development Goal—6 target which can become a model for other developing countries.
The mission will give a boost to the manufacturing industry, creating job opportunities, and helping the rural economy.
This assured tap water supply in rural homes will reduce the drudgery of women and provides them with quality time to educate themselves, teach their children, learn a new skill, and explore better livelihood options.

Focus on Service Delivery

Rather than merely infrastructure creation, the focus has shifted to the assured supply of potable water to every home.
For this, massive training and skilling programmes are being taken up for the capacity building. Public Health Engineering Department and Gram Panchayats and / or its sub-committees are playing the role of public utility.
Under JJM, the priority has been given to water quality-affected habitations such as desert, drought-prone areas, SC/ST majority areas, Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana villages, 112 Aspirational districts, and 61 Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES), Japanese Encephalitis (JE) affected districts.
It will address the issue of water borne diseases due to contamination of the groundwater, which is a major source of drinking water in India.
As the building of surface water-based systems takes time, the provisions have been made to install community water purification plants to provide safe water.
Drinking water quality testing laboratories in various states/UTs have been available to the general public so that they can get their water samples tested at nominal charges. To enhance the community participation, at least five persons in every village, preferably women, are being trained to use Field Testing Kits (FTKs) for testing water quality at the village level.

Special Focus on Children

As the children are most susceptible to water-borne diseases due to spending considerable amount of time in their educational spaces, making provision of potable tap water in these institutions has been taken up in a campaign mode.
On October 2, 2020, a 100day-campaign was launched to ensure potable tap water supply in adequate quantity in these premises.
So far, States like Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana have provided tap water supply to 100% of schools and Anganwadi centres.
In India, 5.4 lakh schools and 4.86 lakh Anganwadi centres have started getting potable piped water supply.

Making Water Everyone’s Business

With end-to-end approach the focus of the JJM is on source sustainability, water supply, grey water treatment & reuse and operation and maintenance.
For this, every village has to prepare a Village Action Plan co-terminus with 15^th Finance Commission period by dovetailing all the available resources under MGNREGS, JJM, SBM(G), 15th Finance Commission grants to PRIs, District Mineral Development Fund, CSR funds, community contribution, etc. to achieve long-term water security.
The motto of Jal Jeevan Mission is ‘Building Partnerships, Changing Lives’. For this, Jal Shakti Abhiyan (JSA) to make water everyone’s business, was launched in 2019 in water-stressed areas. Further, Atal Bhujal Yojana has been started in 78 water stressed districts of 7States, to conserve water by involving the village community and Gram Panchayats.
JJM focuses on the involvement of women at every step.

Features of the Village Action Plan

Village Water & Sanitation Committee and its role

Also called as Pani Samiti, is a Sub-committee of Gram Panchayat.
Consist of 10-15 member comprising of
- up to 25% elected members of GP
- 25% representation from weaker sections (SC/ ST) of the village
- At least 50% women
Headed by Sarpanch/ up-sarpanch/ traditional village head etc. as decided by the Gram Sabha
Panchayat secretary/ patwari/Talati may act as Secretary of the Committee
Function as local water utilities
Play lead role in planning, implementation, management and operation & maintenance of in-village water supply systems
Mobilize and motivate community to contribute 5% or 10% of in-village capital expenditure in cash and/or kind and/or labour
Ensure periodic water quality testing
Develop and collect water user charges

Technological Interventions

A robust JJM-IMIS captures physical and financial progress under JJM with a dedicated ‘Dashboard’ is in the public domain.
A ‘Mobile App’ has been developed for the use of all stakeholders to bring in ease of working. A sensor-based IoT solution is piloted for measurement and monitoring water supply on a real-time basis.
Every water supply asset created has been geo-tagged. Hydro-geo morphological maps are used in the planning of single-village schemes in identifying drinking water sources as well as building aquifer recharge structures.
Household tap connections provided are linked with Aadhaar number of the ‘head of household’ and all financial transactions are undertaken through Public Finance Management System.

Progress

As on May 20, 2021, the tap water supply has reached to 7.42 Crore (38.68%) rural households in the country 3.23 Crore (17%) at the time of the announcement of the JJM.
Presently, Goa, Telangana, A & N Islands, and Puducherry have become ‘Har Ghar Jal’ States (100% supply) i.e., much before 2024.
Further, 10 more states/UTs have more than 50% tap water connection.

Conclusion

There is a paradigm shift from the ‘department-based and construction-based’ approach to ‘service delivery’ approach along with training and empowering all the stakeholders.
The centrality of the Gram Panchayats and VWSCs/ Pani Samitis is to ensure assured tap water supply in adequate quantity of prescribed quality on a regular and long-term basis.
Thus, Jal Prabuddh Gaon (water enlightened villages) will lead the path to make the Aatma Nirbhar Bharat (Self-Reliant India).