Jal Jeevan Mission: Flowing In The Right Direction

Context: An analysis of objectives, outcomes and potential of Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM).

Significance of JJM

• Rural transformation: Every rural household is to have a functional tap connection by 2024, which will provide an adequate quantity of water of prescribed quality on a regular and long-term basis.
• Women empowerment:The expected outcomes related to a reduction in drudgery in the life of women and providing dignity of life to rural communities.
• Fiercely decentralised: 
  • JJM seeks to embrace the beneficiary population as stakeholders — both in the initial implementation and subsequent maintenance phase. 
  • It seeks to galvanise a Jan Andolan (people’s movement) with the total involvement of the village community, where the community is even expected to contribute 5% of the expenditure by cash or voluntary labour.
  • It prescribes a “bottoms-up” five-year village action plan through the formation of a village water and sanitation committee or Pani Samiti, under the gram panchayat, which is to play the key role in planning, implementation, operation and maintenance of the in village water supply system.
  • The long-term aim is to convert these Pani Samitis into local “Water Utilities” to manage both technical and commercial aspects.
• Quality of service: 
  • Service delivery standards have been adopted whereby a household will receive a potable water supply of 55 litres per capita per day of prescribed quality.
  • Sensor-based control systems will be installed to measure quantity, quality and regularity of water supply through an internet-based real-time format.
  • Water quality monitoring will be done by the local community, with a focus on empowering village women to take over this task.
  • The state will support this activity by opening up laboratories to have the water samples tested at a nominal rate.
  • Treatment of discharged “Grey Water” and its re-use is an important component of the plan so as to ensure conservation as well as prevent any public-health hazard.
    
• Skill development and employment opportunities: For an entirely new set of plumbers, masons, pump- mechanics, quality-control specialists across Bharat — opening up a vast job market.
  • At 15 new jobs per village, that is an addition of 90 lakh new jobs in rural India. 
    
• Specific interventions: These relate to arsenic and fluoride affected locations, drought-prone and desert areas, SC/ST majority villages and socio-economically backward “aspirational districts.”

Challenges of water in India

• Rural India has 18.93 crore households, of whom only 17% had some version of a tap water connection.
• The federal structure of our polity, the diversity of the water-source challenge in different geographies and the sheer granularity of the deliverables.
• Numerous incidences of contamination of groundwater with fluoride, arsenic, iron, salinity, nitrate and heavy metals is posing quite a challenge

Way Forward: Some suggestions – 

• Launch an aggressive outreach programme for corporations, trusts, and foundations in India and abroad, who may wish to participate in this historic drive by adopting a cluster of villages.
• The evolution of the Pani Samitis into local Water Utilities can be widened to include electricity, public health and education.
• Build a dedicated technical team to address the long-term elimination of contamination.