Jal Jeevan Mission Achieves 60% Coverage Milestone
Under the leadership of Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, today 60% of rural households have access to clean drinking water through taps. More than 1.55 lakh villages, (25% of total number of villages), in India have so far reported ‘Har Ghar Jal’, i.e., every household in these villages has access to clean drinking water through taps at their household premises.
In the current year from January to March 2023, one tap connection has been provided every second under Jal Jeevan Mission. This is a remarkable feat, wherein during the first three months of 2023, 86,894 new tap water connections have been provided every day, on an average.
Jal Jeevan Mission was announced by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi on 15th August, 2019 with the aim to provide all rural households with adequate quantity (55 lpcd) water of prescribed quality in adequate pressure, on regular and long-term basis. The overall financial commitment for Jal Jeevan Mission is INR 3600 billion (US $ 43.80 billion) which makes it one of the largest welfare programmes in the world. At the time of the launch of the Mission in August 2019, out of 19.43 Crore rural households, only 3.23 Crore (16.65%) had access to tap water. Despite several disruptions in recent years due to the Pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict etc., States/ UTs have made persistent efforts to implement the Jal Jeevan Mission. The country crossed another milestone in the journey towards ‘Har Ghar Jal’ on 4th April 2023, with over 11.66 Crore (60%) rural households provided with tap water supply in their homes. 5 states of Gujarat, Telangana, Goa, Haryana, and Punjab and 3 Union Territories of Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Daman Diu & Dadra Nagar Haveli and Puducherry have reported 100% coverage. The country is steadily progressing towards covering all the rural households will have safe drinking water through taps.
Jal Jeevan Mission is not merely an infrastructure development programme. The focus in the Mission is on service delivery in terms of sufficiency, safety, and regularity of water supply. The speed and scale of implementation of JJM has been unprecedented. In just about 3 years, more than 8.42 crore rural households with more than 40 crore people (@4.95 persons per rural household, source IMIS) have been benefitted under the programme. This is more than the population of USA (33.1 crore), almost twice the population of Brazil (21 crore) and Nigeria (20 crore), and more than thrice the population of Mexico (12.8 crore) & Japan (12.6 crore).
With focus on health and well-being of children, special efforts have been made to provide tap water connection in all rural schools, anganwadi centres and ashramshalas (tribal residential schools) for drinking, cooking mid-day meal, hand washing and use in toilets. As on date, tap water supply has been provided in 9.03 lakh (88.26%) schools and 9.36 lakh (83.71%) anganwadi centres.
