Clean drinking water: Still a distant dream for millions in Assam

BY MONOJ GOGOI

Assam, with highest populated in terms of number and density, a northeastern state of India with diverse geomorphology often comes to the limelight even in national and international levels due to catastrophic floods occurrs in the monsoon. Assam is always believed as a water-abundance state for it's annual rainfall average (varied between 2600 to 3000 cm) which is more than the double than the national average (about 1100 cm) and the Brahmaputra river system. The Brahmaputra has innumerous tributaries with various sizes and characteristics. Other water bodies like wetlands, marshy lands, swamps, fisheries (cature and culture), various sizes of ponds are also available in the state. The state is often comes to the discussion for it's devastating floods and erosions and it's mitigation measures not for draughts or water scarcity. There are millions of people, living in some topographies face immense difficulty to get sources of drinking water within within 1 km or 2 km of radius. Excessive rainfall within the 4 months of the monsoon does not mean all seasons water availability in the state which affected in clean drinking water, sanitation and hygiene.

Just after 9 years of India's Independence, in 1956, the government of Assam constituted Public Health Engineering department and entrusted the responsibilities of providing safe and clean drinking water and to improve sanitation facilities in rural areas of Assam.

What the department did in the past, it's past and don't want to delve it. But when anybody sees the abundant structures of the water supply projects, scattered across the state. Now the department is implementing the following programmes across the state:

1. Two centrally sponsored flagship programmes
i. National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP), and
ii. Swachh Bharat Mission (G)

2. Different state government programmes like Scheduled Caste Sub - Plan (SCSP), Tribal Sub - Plan (TSP), Special Plan Assistance (SPA) etc.

3. Externally Aided Programme like World Bank aided projects.

The World Bank aided project was launched in April, 2009 by the then Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, presently comes under the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, for assisting states in providing drinking water to rural population of India by a systemic way involving the community in operation and maintenance.

2. Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) : It needs community participation which is a very challenging task in Assam. Under this scheme, the government claims that sanitary latrines has already been provided to hundred percent rural families and there is no open defecation in the state. But reliable sources claim that the achievement is only just above 70 percent in Assam. Open defecation is still going on in many rural areas. The present design of government provided sanitary latrines are substandard and not replicable in some areas like flood-prone areas and water stressed topographies.

A non -governmenal organization, Indo-Global Social Service Society (IGSSS) which has been working on the issue for years in  several districts of Assam under a programme called Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH). Through the programme, the organization tested water in various locations and contamination with high level of iron, arsenic, alkaline, magnesium etc. In most cases it's beyond permissible limits. The organization also supports the community with bio - sand filters, aqua plus filters, Mark III and IV tubewells, Tara Pumps etc. The rural population is still unaware about the fungal and bacterial contamination at the source of drinking water which resulted in various water - borne - diseases. The IGSSS also educating people to about all these contamination which is found almost all the districts of Assam beyond permissible limits and also creating awareness of it's affects on human health.

Water Scarcity in Assam

The 2.0 Modi government targets a Swachh Bharat which was a dream of Mahatma Gandhi. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced an ambitious new scheme last year"Nal se Jal" which aims to supply clean drinking water to every households of the country by 2024. The estimated cost of this scheme is about 6.3 lakh crores.

Nirmala Sitharaman, the Finance Minister of the country told in her maiden budget speech in July last year that the newly set up Jal Shakti Ministry will work on it with the states to reach the target by 2024 under Jal Jeevan Mission.
In this financial year 2020 -2021, Sitharaman allocated a sum of Rs12,300 crore which is lower than the previous budget. In that budget the Finance Minister had allocated Rs 12,644 of which Rs. 9,994 crores for Swachh Bharat Mission Rural and Rs. 2,650 crores for Swachh Bharat Mission, Urban.
Water and sanitation has intricately related. Hereby the government deal the matter seriously. A state water policy should be brought out as soon as possible. It may be mentioned here that in 2007 , a draft water policy was in circulation among the the people for consensus who were working on water and socioeconomic issues for long time. To address the water issues properly we must need a well accepted State Water Policy.