Drinking Water: A Political Priority at Long Last

Context: Recently the Prime Minister has launched Har Ghar Jal Yojana in Mirzapur and Sonbhadra districts, in the Vindhyachal region of Uttar Pradesh, providing access to tapped-drinking water.

Significance of the Scheme:

• Provision of tapped drinking water: Rural households in 2,995 villages in this water-starved region will in 2022, for the first time, have access to drinking water supplied through taps.
  • At present only 6.51% of households in Uttar Pradesh, the most populated state in the country with 200 million people, receive drinking water supply through taps.
• In line with development lexicon: which recognizes safe drinking water and sanitation as a basic human right
  • According to the United Nations Development Programme, every $1 of investment in water can generate $8 worth of economic development.
• Health and Mortality benefits: Lack of drinking water is a major cause for the killer disease diarrhoea.
  • Diarrhoeal diseases accounted for nearly 1.3 million deaths a year among children under five years - United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) 2017.
  • More than half of these deaths occurred in just five countries, including India, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Ethiopia.
  • A tenth of the deaths of children under the age of five in India occurred because of diarrhoea. - Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR).
• Relieve the burden on women: Providing access to drinking water in taps will unveil benefits miraculously similar to that provided by the use of cooking gas.
  • Epidemic prevalence of uterine and rectal prolapse in some Bundelkhand villages.
  • Young men in these villages can’t get brides because of perpetual water shortages!

Conclusion: Drinking water and sanitation are desirable twins and, hence, it makes eminent sense to provide them together, not as a privilege, but as a fundamental right.