Gajendra Singh Shekhawat gets Jal Shakti to fulfil PM Modi's promise

New omnibus ministry to deal with all water- and sanitation-related issues

Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, 51, who trounced Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s son Vaibhav Gehlot to become member of Parliament from Jodhpur for a second time, will be minister for the newly formed Ministry of Jal Shakti.

The ministry formed by amalgamating the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation with the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation has also been added to it.

His task is cut out. The BJP manifesto for the 2019 general elections promised that its government would launch a ‘Jal Jivan Mission’. Under the mission the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government will introduce a special programme ‘Nal se Jal’ to ensure piped water for every household by 2024. Going by the last government assessment, only 32.57 million (18.24 per cent) of the 178.54 million households have piped water connections at present.

This could be the next big popular social scheme of the NDA government in its second tenure, the way Ujjwala was to provide gas cylinders and connections and the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna to provide houses to the poor. 

Shekhawat was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 2014 and was made minister of state for agriculture and farmers' welfare in the previous NDA government in September 2017.

Shekhawat, who cut his teeth in student politics as part of the Akhil Bhartiya Vidhyarthi Parishad in Jodhpur, continued to remain closely associated with the Rashtriya Swaymsevak Sangh through his political journey, working in border districts of Rajasthan. In the BJP equations within the state, he did not strike the right chord with the erstwhile BJP chief minister Vasundhara Raje. But Shekhawat was made electioncommittee convener for the assembly elections, which the BJP lost.

His role as a state minister was limited. But, in this tenure he gained a profile with two large-ticket populist schemes of the previous government — the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and Ganga rejuvenation — under his watch alongside the new commitment to deliver tap water to all. While the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan — making India open-defecation free — gained some strides in the last five years, the Ganga rejuvenation schemes failed to deliver, with pollution levels in several stretches of the river worsening rather than improving. 

The NDA redirected funding from schemes to provide drinking water to the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan in its previous tenure. By 2015-16 expenditure on drinking water schemes had come down to Rs 4,369 crore from a high of Rs 10,489 crore in 2012-13. Shekhawat would expect to reverse this slide in financial allocation in the upcoming budget if his newly created ministry is going to be in any shape to take on the arduous target set in the manifesto. Delivery of piped water to each household, as compared to merely drinking water from any of the available sources, such as groundwater, presents a bigger logistical and fiscal challenge.

The long-term issues of water resource management in the country will continue to challenge the new omnibus Ministry of Jal Shakti — groundwater depletion, diminishing quality of water resources, inter-state water disputes, and inter-linking of rivers across basins.