Over three lakh rural habitations across the country continue to be deprived of the government’s minimum prescribed provision of 40 litre per capita per day (lpcd) of potable drinking water with assured quality.
With the ambition to now achieve a service level of 55 lpcd by 2024, the data presented by the Ministry of Jal Shakti in the Lok Sabha this past week notes that Rajasthan, West Bengal, Assam top the list where the coverage is facing quality issues or seeing diminished supply.
Bihar, Punjab, Karnataka and Uttarakhand are the other States which too are battling the problem.
The Ministry noted that the coverage was monitored in terms of habitations having provision of a minimum 40 lpcd with sources at a reasonable distance.
“As reported by States/UTs till Dec., 2019, 81.27% rural habitations having 76.61% population have provision of minimum 40 lpcd of potable drinking water and 15.56% rural habitations having 19.69% population have service level of less than 40 lpcd, whereas 3.17% rural habitations having 3.69% population are with water sources having quality issues,’’ noted Minister for Jal Shakati Gajendra Singh Shekhawat.
Fund sharing
He explained that the fund-sharing pattern between the Centre and the States/UTs for the National Rural Drinking Water Programme, a Centrally sponsored programme, was 100% for the Union Territories, 90:10 for the Himalayan & the northeastern States and 50:50 for other States. The Ministry noted that in the past five years ₹31,569.77 crore had been made available to States and since 2014, to improve piped water supply in low income States, namely Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, ₹1,185.23 crore had been released with the assistance of the World Bank.
In 2016, ₹1,000 crore was released for installation of community water purification plants & commissioning of PWS schemes in arsenic/fluoride-affected States.
Also to provide safe drinking water to 27,544 identified arsenic and fluoride affected rural habitations, the National Water Quality Sub-Mission was launched and so far ₹3,690.34 crore had been released.
“To meet the domestic needs of every rural household, the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) has been launched in August, 2019 which aims at providing potable water through Functional Household Tap Connection (FHTC) at service level of 55 lpcd by 2024 with an outlay of ₹3.60 lakh crore, in partnerships with States,’’ said the Minister in his reply.
