How Gujarat’s piped water availability will increase productivity

“In Gujarat, a total of 91.73 lakh households in rural areas are provided water through tap connections under the mission. 100% coverage of rural households is possible by installing 63,287 km of distribution pipelines, 3,498 underground pumps, 2,396 high tanks, 339 wells, 3,985 tube wells and 324 mini schemes and 302 solar powered drinking water distribution systems. Officials of the Government of Gujarat. Water treatment plants are not mentioned in this list of facilities to enable the provision of piped water supply to households in the state. Hopefully these will be added as well.

This water work in Gujarat, as well as in other states, is completed and underway, based on the Jal Jeevan Mission announced by the central government in 2019. The mission seeks to provide functional household tap connections (FHTCs) to all rural households, cities. , presumably, they are believed to be doing so themselves.

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Piped home water is a remarkable productivity-enhancing infrastructure. The burden of fetching water for the household mostly falls on the women. In many parts of the country, it takes several hours of trekking to fetch water, while carrying heavy pots and buckets full of water. If water is delivered home, it frees women from hard labor and millions of man-hours for more productive activities.

Jal Jeevan Mission also calls for gray water management i.e. recycling the used water. If this happens – the mission is open on this, and leaves it up to local agencies to supplement resources as well – the water shortage will be managed to a great extent. India is home to 17.7% of the world’s population, but only 4% of the world’s fresh water. India has to plan for the use of water and conserve it.

Clean drinking water is another source of systemic improvement in productivity. This would reduce morbidity and mortality (low incidence of disease and death), and malnutrition (parasitic worms ingested through impure food and water not only cause disease but also reduce the absorption of nutrition from the food eaten. We do).

To consolidate this end result, clean drinking water must be supplemented with a proper sanitation system, infrastructure for sewage collection, treatment and disposal. It is a long task, much more difficult than supplying drinking water. While the Sanitation Mission focused on building toilets in the home, the business of building sewer networks and drainage systems, supplemented with treatment plants, remains a distant dream.

In the absence of piped water to households, toilets in water-scarce areas were not being used as sites for flushing down sewers, but as shelter storage for precious water brought in from far away with much labor. were being used as structures. While the government declared India open defecation-free (ODF), some villagers and tigers (who didn’t understand the concept) staged human versus animal encounters, while the human part of this dueling pair in search of a starlight villager. was following the area. place to defecate. The recently slain Champaran monitor found his last victim while the man was soaking up both the open field and the official pride over the ODF status of the area. Piped water supply will change this situation.

When Lee Kuan Yew thought of modernizing newly independent Singapore, he aimed to provide water through taps that people could drink directly – a feature of the developed world then not available anywhere in Asia outside of Japan. Was. He achieved his goal. India is consoling itself, resting in the water purifier industry, which came about because of potable water delivered through taps at home, inverter back-up and power generator back-up industries. equals, who were exposed because of inefficiencies. in the power distribution system.

If completed by 2024 as envisaged by the Jal Jeevan Mission, India could set the domestic water purifier industry firmly in the past, along with the old movie and cricket stars who sell its products.

It is worth noting that piped water in the house represents an example of public expenditure that smells sweet, whether it is a freebie, welfare expenditure, revri or any other name.

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