Gujarat's 100% rural households get clean drinking water, Modi think-tank claims: 'State No 1 in water index'

Ranking Gujarat No 1 in Composite Water Management Index (CWMI) for the second successive year, the Modi government's powerful policy-making body, Niti Aayog, appears to have left no stone unturned in order to "prove" how it has reached this drastic conclusion. One of the greatest "successes" it cites in this respect is --believe it or not-- Gujarat has "achieved" a 100% score in the ‘rural drinking water’ theme of the Water Index.

Sourcing on a site run by the Gujarat government, www.gujaratindia.com, instead of assessing things independently, which is what a policy-making body should ideally do, the Niti Aayog report, released this month, claims that this 100% score has been made possible because the state government "provides clean water to all of its ~35 million rural residents." Giving credit for this to Gujarat’s rural water supply programme, led by the state’s Water and Sanitation Management Organisation (WASMO), the report says, its main aim has been "to supply the village community with adequate, regular and safe water through household-level tap water connectivity, including households of people from backward communities."
It adds, "The programme strives to build a sustainable model through building capacity of village communities and empowering them to manage water resources themselves. The programme is based on a unique cost-sharing model, where the community partially shares the cost, owns the drinking water supply assets, and holds the operation and maintenance responsibilities."
"As a result of this programme", the report continues, initially, villagers were "mobilized to discuss the key problems that the local drinking supply system suffers from", adding, "These efforts involved participation by NGOs to ensure the inclusion of all views, especially those of women and the poorer members of the village."

Based on these discussions, a Village Action Plan (VAP) was drawn up with 10% of the estimated programme cost collected from residents and 90% contributed by WASMO, the report continues to claim, adding, a representative ‘Pani Samiti’ for the village was then "established to plan and implement the programme."

"Finally", the report says, WASMO and its partner organizations provided hand-holding and capacity building support to the Pani Samitis for a year, to ensure that the programme is technically and financially sound, and thus sustainable, with a huge positive impact: The rural water supply project is being providing clean water access to villages in all state districts.
"As of the end of 2013, ~50% of the villages completed schemes at an investment of Rs 800 crore, and Pani Samitis were formed in almost all of the ~18,400 villages in the state", the report contends, adding, "This programme has been the driver of Gujarat’s 100% achievement in the ‘rural drinking water’ category of the Index, helping the state fully cover all rural habitations and achieve a 100% decline in rural water quality incidents in FY 16-17."
Ironically, the claim of 100% success with the help of Pani Samitis or water committees stands in sharp contrast to what the report seeks to suggest elsewhere: Just about 15% -- one of the worst in India -- irrigated command areas have operational Water Users' Associations (WUAs), a community-driven scheme, with the right to manage all water-related issues. As many as 12 other states are better performers in this.
Yet, it continues, the lessons Gujarat has for other states include mobilizing community participation by "tapping" local knowledge base of problems and challenges surrounding water supply systems, even as "ensuring true representation through partnerships with NGOs and other relevant organizations."
It is not just the rural areas that this "success" is visible, the report suggests. Even in urban areas, it says, 100% urban population has been "provided drinking water supply." These are not the only successes that the report seeks to cite for Gujarat.
The capacity installed in the state to treat the urban waste water as a proportion of the total estimated waste water generated in the urban areas of Gujarat, the report claims, is 71%, the highest in India. Then, Gujarat treats, says the report, 62% of waste-water.

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog