“Model” Gujarat’s rural areas continue to suffer from a major lag in the drainage system, if the latest Government of India (GoI) report, “Drinking Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Housing Condition”, a survey carried out between July and December 2018 across the country, is any indication.
The survey report, which was released last week, says that as against the national average of 38.9% rural households having no drainage system, Gujarat’s 45.5% rural households do not have any drainage facility.
Published by the National Statistical Organization (NSO), there are only five major states, where a higher percent of rural households has no drainable facility – these are Odisha (82%), West Bengal (69.6%), Jharkhand (56.9%), Assam (53.4%), and Tamil Nadu (52.6%).
Several of the so-called Bimaru states are better performers than Gujarat. Thus, in Rajasthan 44.6% households have no drainage, followed by Madhya Pradesh (41.6%), Chhattisgarh (41.1%), Bihar (36.4%), and Uttar Pradesh (19.4%).
Interestingly, the survey also shows that, in Gujarat, the wastewater disposal into the drainage system takes place from 32.9 rural households, while in a whopping 45.5% of cases wastewater disposal takes place without treatment and in the open, low lying areas and streets, and in 5.1% of cases it is allowed to go to nearby rivers or nallas.
As for the country as a whole, 48.1% of the households in the rural areas disposed of household waste water without treatment to open low land areas/streets while in 9.3% cases, it goes into rivers or nallas.
Interestingly, the figure of a whopping 45.5% households lacking drainage system comes against the backdrop of the report claiming that Gujarat’s only 0.5% rural households are such were no water is available in or around the latrines.
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