Integrated Drinking Water Project in multiple states in partnership with the Jal Jeevan Mission

The Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), a flagship programme of the Government of India, seeks to involve communities in water supply planning and management. The community stakeholders are engaged in different aspects of water conservation, source sustainability, rainwater storage, and the treatment and reuse of wastewater. Through this approach, JJM aims to provide functional household tap connections (FHTC) to over 140 million households in the country by 2024. A sum of Rs3.6 trillion has been allocated under the Mission to ensure FHTC coverage in rural India.

The core objectives of JJM and the Tata Trusts’ Tata Water Mission are aligned. With a view to add value to the sector and to build scale, the Tata Trusts partnered with Government of India and state governments of more than 2,000 villages across 12 states to provide technical and implementation support for the Jal Jeevan Mission.

The Trusts are also active participants in the national-level task force set up by the Ministry of Jal Shakti and provide policy inputs for the effective design and implementation of the JJM programme.

In April 2021, the Trusts initiated the Integrated Drinking Water Project (IDWP) across states in partnership with JJM. The project aims to provide safe drinking water through FHTCs to over 200,000 households, covering 1 million people, across 1,730 villages and habitations. At the conclusion of the project, each household will have an assured supply of 55 litres per capita per day (LPCD) of safe drinking water, all year around.

The Trusts facilitate the effective implementation of the JJM programme and extend support in multiple areas. These areas include:

  • building the capacity of village water and sanitation committees,
  • developing need-based village action plans (VAP) and detailed technical reports (DTR),
  • undertaking social behavioural change communication interventions and other initiatives to enable sustainable and community-managed intra-village drinking water systems,
  • developing robust community-led institutional mechanisms to ensure effective operation and maintenance of drinking water systems in a sustainable manner,
  • providing technical assistance to state and central governments in piloting and demonstrating technologies such as Internet of Things (IOT) for water management,
  • deploying affordable technical water purification solutions in communities and households,
  • promoting alternative and sustainable energy solutions, and
  • using unique approaches for community participation.

Building the capacity of the village water committee members is a key aspect of the programme. The Trusts will train them in various aspects of programme implementation, such as water quality monitoring and surveillance, operation and maintenance, records-keeping, regular supply of water, water tariff collection, rainwater harvesting awareness, artificial recharge, water-saving, etc. Women and youth groups will be trained to assess water quality using field test kits.

As the project draws to close, third-party impact assessment of JJM’s interventions are being conducted. To know more about the mission’s successes, the challenges encountered, and the roadmap ahead for sustainable water security in rural India, read a summary report based on the impact assessments covering states of Assam, Tripura, Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh & Ladakh.

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