Page 40 - Annual Report

Technological Innovations for

Smart Water Management in

Rural Areas

The community is central to the initiative and Himachal Pradesh. The purpose of these pilot inability to take speedy corrective action. Besides
understanding the water needs of villagers was projects is to show how the monitoring the waste of public funds, such lapses worsen the
critical in the design and implementation mechanism can contribute to wider rollout of the socio-economic woes of rural families, particularly
framework arrived at by the project team. In rural Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM). The monitoring system women. It is expected that the pilot projects will
India, the responsibility of managing water employs sensors, software, electronics and the provide a water-monitoring prototype that can be
resources rests largely on Panchayats (village internet—the technology elements of the IoT operationalised through JJM in all of India’s
councils), which have limited resources, data, matrix—to capture, collate and transmit data on 660,000-plus villages. That would make this
information and technical knowledge. Further, the quality and quantity of water available to pathbreaking solution—which kicked off in
equitable distribution of water is just not households in the chosen villages. Human September 2020—the largest of its kind in the
happening in rural regions. There is a need to intervention is minimal in a low-cost set-up, where world in terms of implementation, scale and
enhance the efficiency of water usage, a host of water-related parameters, such as spread. Flexibility is built into the IoT-based
decentralise the process and make village distribution, leakages, groundwater levels and solution, which has been fine-tuned to function in
communities the managers of the process. To purity, and community usage statistics, are areas with poor internet connectivity and a
enable this, the Trusts and the Tata Community tracked in real time. shortage of skilled personnel to run it. The villages
Initiatives Trust, in partnership with the The case for robust and reliable management and in the programme are solitary units—except for
Government of India, developed and deployed monitoring of India’s increasingly scarce water Gujarat, where there is a cluster—and they have
‘Smart Water Management’ in geographically and resources, has never been more critical. An been picked to account for assorted climatic
geologically diverse villages across Uttarakhand, estimated 30% of rural water supply schemes conditions, water sources and availability levels.
Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and flounder due to poor maintenance and the

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