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(GIST OF KURUKSHETRA) Har Ghar Jal

[October-2020]

Har Ghar Jal

According to a 2018 National Institute for Transforming India, the NITI Aayog report, India is facing the "worst water crisis in its history" which is threatening "millions of lives and livelihoods". The report paints a gory picture of our water crisis wherein around sixty crore Indians "face high to extreme water stress and about two lakh people die every year due to inadequate access to safe water." It says that the crisis is only going to get worse and by 2030 the country’s water demand is projected to be twice the available supply. This may further create severe water scarcity for crores of people and may lead to an approximate loss of 6 percent in its GDP point then.
India has more than 18 percent of the world’s population but it only has four percent of world’s renewable water resources of which farmers consume almost 90 percent of the available groundwater.
The National Sample Survey Office’s (NSSO) 76th round, July-December 2018, informs that one in every five (21.4 percent) households in India has piped drinking water connections. In rural India, just 11.3 percent households receive potable water directly at homes whereas about 42.9 percent of the households in the rural areas use hand pump as the principal source of drinking water. In urban India, 40.9 percent households receive piped water into dwelling as the principal source of drinking water.
Importance of water and its conversation for the well being of human beings as well our cohabitants in earth cannot be highlighted enough. The government has been working on water issues on a war footing. It sees management of water in a holistic manner.
The Ministry of Jal Shakti, created in 2019, has integrated various departments and ministries dealing with water resources and water supply under one roof, with the aim to assure “availability of potable water for all.”

Salient or Key Features of the Mission:

In a report published on the occasion of completion of one year of the Jal Shakti Ministry it has highlighted important features of the mission as:

a) Emphasis is on ‘service delivery’ rather creating infrastructure; Gram Panchayat and/or its subcommittee, i.e. Village Water & Sanitation Committee (VWSC) / Paani Samiti or user group to plan, implement, manage, operate and maintain their own water supply system.

b) SHGs/community-based organisations/NGOs involved as Implementation Support Agencies to enhance community’s capacity to implement the mission making JJM, truly a ‘people’s movement’.

c) Safe water to be ensured in water quality affected areas on priority. Other priority areas are water scarce areas, aspirational districts, SC/ST majority villages/habitations, villages under Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY) and PVTG habitations.

d) Villagers to be skilled as masons, plumbers, electricians, fitters, etc. so as to ensure long-term maintenance of water supply systems.

e) In order to instil the ‘sense of ownership’ among the community, communities to contribute five percent of the capital cost in cash/kind /labour in villages of hilly and forested areas/NE and Himalayan States and villages having more than fifty per cent SC and/or ST population; for other areas, the community contribution is ten percent of the capital cost.

f) GPs/ VWSCs/Paani Samitis to be provided ten percent of the ‘in-village infrastructure’ cost as performance incentive after completion of the scheme and successful demonstration of operation and maintenance.

g) Strengthening and setting-up of water quality testing laboratories at State, district and block levels to monitor quality of water supply and open those to public.

h) Five persons, preferably women, in every village to be trained to check quality of water supply using simple ready-to-use test kits.

i) Public Financial Management System is mandatory to be used for all financial transactions to ensure transparency as well as tracking of funds.

j) Ministry of Jal Shakti has set up Integrated Management Information System (IMIS) for monitoring of physical and financial progress and the same is linked with dash board.

k) Rashtriya Jal Jeevan Kosh (RJJK) has been set up to mobilise and accept contributions/ donations from various sources towards achieving the goal of JJM.