Water charges collected belong solely to the community: Drinking water secy

In a Q&A, Vini Mahajan says the Jal Jeevan Mission is now moving at a frenetic pace that they are taking it one day at a time

Functional tap water connections under the Jal Jeevan Mission reached 60 per cent of in India's rural households on Tuesday. With the mission's target of 100 per cent coverage by 2024 getting closer, Vini Mahajan, secretary, department of drinking water and sanitation in the Ministry of Jal Shakti said that the programme is now moving at a frenetic pace and that they are taking it one day at a time. In conversation with Ruchika Chitravanshi, Mahajan also said that they are pushing states to form operation and maintenance policies, including levying of user charges that the community must be allowed to retain. Edited excerpts:

While the country has reached 60 per cent household tap water connections in rural areas, how come states such as UP, Rajasthan have remained well below the halfway mark?

When the programme started, we did not know we would be hit by Covid. The international situation had led to a massive increase in the prices of steel and plastics. Contractors who had been awarded projects at a certain price expectation were reluctant to buy materials at significantly higher prices. Also, we started from unequal bases. Some states had done a little better before the mission started, others were at a really low level and had not actually worked on this. Prior to this ambition of getting the connection to every home, the ambition was relatively modest at getting potable water into the habitation. How long it takes, depends on the nature of the scheme. A single village scheme can take 8-12 months to complete, while complex multiple village schemes can take two years or more. Timely clearances also take time. Piped water can require permissions from railways, forest department, highways authority.

What is your strategy on the operation and maintenance (O&M) of the taps that you are creating?

We are actively looking at this right now. One of the reasons why previous schemes sometimes became dysfunctional was that they were seen as government assets. Once you get used to clean drinking water, you will have to have it day after day, year after year. This is a high national priority so we encourage states to come up with O&M policies that they can hand over to the village community and women’s self help groups.

We also want to make sure enough skilled manpower is available at the ground level to take care of at least some small basic maintenance and urgent issues such as leakage in a pipe as it can lead to biological contamination.  We have a three-month course ready with the National Skill Development Corporation for this.

There have been proposals for levying user charges for these connections. Are states on board?

There should be some money with the community to take care of issues, such as having a pump operator to turn it on and off and ensuring chlorination happens. The good news is that many states have accepted it. What we are saying is this: please do not impose charges and say these will go into the treasury or to the government or a government agency. The communities must be empowered to reliably collect and retain the charges they collect. It is then much easier for collections to happen. The electricity used can be pretty substantial. It may not be feasible to have user charges that recover the foregoing cost and therefore we are encouraging the states to think this through - how much would they like to subsidise.

So you are not pushing for metering for these connections?

Household metering is a very complex thing even cities haven't been able to do so. Volumetric pricing for houses is perhaps not even necessary at this stage. We are only wanting to ensure the minimum of 55 litres per capita per day, but going forward there is likely to be a demand from commercial establishments as well. Lot of tourism is getting promoted because of the availability of clean water. So states have to think how they want to charge these establishments.

JJM has seen a 27 per cent increase in budget allocation this year. Will it suffice?

Government is fully behind this mission. The Prime Minister is personally providing the political thrust to this. We are able to confidently tell states to go ahead in the works as funds will not be a constraint. As of now the constraint has been actually in spending. Every year we had to surrender our budget, because states have not been able to absorb. And that is totally understandable. Departments dealing with rural water supply never had this kind of gigantic task before them. This year we were able to utilise almost the entire allocation and we will be able to utilise much more now.

You have one and a half year left for the deadline of what the mission set out to achieve. Do you think you'll reach 100 per cent by August 2024?  

We are taking one day at a time. We are looking at what needs to be done in terms of getting coverage, water quality, resolving O&M issues, and source sustainability.

What is your biggest challenge now?

Making sure that the works are done to quality. Especially now that the work is happening at a frenetic pace all over the country, we have to ensure that the quality is not compromised - starting with the quality of pipes to the way they are laid. The challenge lies in actual implementation and making sure systems have been put in place by the states to ensure communities see these as their and not government’s assets.