India has made remarkable progress with the ‘Har Ghar Jal' initiative under the landmark Jal Jeevan Mission. New piped water connections for over 150 million families are a monumental feat. This achievement showcases our collective will and innovative spirit.
Yet, WHO reports that India also loses over 4 lakh children under the age of five every year and an additional over 50,000 children aged five to nine years due to diarrhoea, mainly caused by the consumption of contaminated water.
Consumption of contaminated water causes other serious health issues ranging from skin irritation, throat infection, hair fall and baldness, to cholera, typhoid, skeletal fluorosis, kidney damage, neurological disorders and even life-threatening cancer. The impact of contaminated water not just affects the health of India, but also slows down the economic growth, with villages and towns facing mass migrations.
The major cause of these health challenges is the discharge of untreated wastewater, which accounts for 70% of the total wastewater generated. This untreated discharge further spreads through rainfall and contaminates the water bodies or the adjoining land, before finally seeping into groundwater reserves.
Cities like Chennai, Indore, Surat and Alappuzha are already taking the lead with correct water management initiatives. We need to evolve from engineering to stewardship. Here is a five-point implementation plan to build on our success in India’s water story:
The first point is to see the local Pani Samitis not just as maintenance crews, but as the true custodians of public health in their villages. They are the ones with the most at stake. What if we equipped them with tools and knowledge? Over 24 lakh women across 5 lakh villages have been trained for testing water samples using Field Testing Kits (FTKs) under the Jal Jeevan Mission.
The second shift is to treat our water networks less like physical plumbing and more like a vital, living system. We can now give this a nervous system—sensors and data that tell us not where a problem has occurred, but where a problem is beginning to develop. This allows our public utilities to become proactive and to manage their systems with surgical precision, going beyond leak detection to verify water quality, thus moving from a reactive to a proactive approach.
The third shift is to prioritise wastewater treatment. A national focus to ensure every drop of wastewater is treated before discharge is essential. Treatment through direct government intervention or incentivising private enterprises in wastewater treatment is the way forward to protect our water bodies.
The fourth shift is to implement smart, long-term conservation infrastructure. Excess rainwater from flood-prone regions gets directed through drainage systems and aquifer storage and recovery systems to storage or groundwater recharge. Using it in combination with landscape-level scientific measures like check dams and recharge wells. Thus, only pure water seeps into the soil alone, reducing chemical leaching from pesticides and fertilisers and protecting aquifers for generations to come.
The fifth and final adaptation is to imbibe a culture of quality consciousness. The Water Quality Management Information System (WQMIS), under the Jal Jeevan Mission, lays the foundation. The Government has set up over 2800 laboratories across the nation. Now, the industry, innovators, and communities need to step up and ensure this culture of quality consciousness percolates down to the ground level. Once the mindsets are tuned to focus on quality, contamination issues will get resolved.
The story of water in India has always been one of ambition. The world is watching us. Let’s show that, along with delivering water, we are also ensuring that every drop takes us closer to securing India’s water future.
Authored by Hardik Barchha is a Strategic Leader leveraging AI and insights and is passionate about #ViksitBharat aspiration.
