ENDING THE DRUDGERY

Even seven decades after Independence, just over a third of India’s 191 million rural households have access to tap water. A nation’s hope now rides on the ambitious Jal Jeevan Mission

- RAJ CHENGAPPA

AT the headquarters of the Union Jal Shakti ministry in New Delhi, Bharat Lal, additional secretary and director, Jal Jeevan Mission, clicks on his computer to check on the progress of the government’s massive programme to ensure that every rural household has a functional tap connection for drinking water by 2024. The dashboard of the ministry website flashes that 127,000 households across the country have been provided with a functional tap connection on that particular day. Next, he checks the total number of households that have been provided these tap connections since the mission was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 15, 2019. The figure stands at 38.46 million. That’s phenomenal progress considering that prior to that date, only 32 million households had

Yet, despite the Jal Jeevan Mission fast-tracking supply, only around 36.9 per cent, or a little more than a third of the 191 million households, have piped water supply. That about 63 per cent of India’s rural population still has to step outside their homes and wait in queues, sometimes for hours, to get their daily requirement of water should be a matter of shame for a country and its leaders.