1) India faces significant water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) challenges with approximately 14% of the population lacking access to improved water sources and over 500 million people practicing open defecation. 2) The government has implemented various policies and programs to improve WASH access, including the National Rural Drinking Water Program and Swachh Bharat Mission. 3) Key targets include providing piped water to 90% of rural households by 2022 and achieving an open defecation free India by 2019.

1. WATER, SANITATION AND
HYGIENCE (WASH) IN INDIA
Annual Strategic Planning & Program Review Meeting
Banega Swachh India (BSI) Project,
7th & 8th December 2016, Nainital, UK
Dr. Suchitra Lisam
National Health Program Manager ,
Public Health Specialist
ADRA India

2. Part I: Facts & WASH scenario
Part II: WASH Policies & Programmes
Part III: Key NRDWP, BSM Indicators
Part IV: SDGs –Targets and Indicators
Part V: Health Risks and Impacts

3. PART I: FACTS & CHANGING WASH
SCENARIO IN INDIA

4. WATER- FACTS
• Fundamental to life, livelihood, food security and
sustainable development
• Covers 71% of the Earth's surface; 96.5% of this
water is found in seas and oceans, 2.5% -freshwater
• Ground water- 20% of freshwater and 0.01%-
surface water (lakes, rivers etc.)
• Source of domestic water supply (87%) is ground
water
• Access to safe drinking water has improved over the
last decades, but approximately 14% (884 million
people) of world’s population still lack access to
improved water source and had to use unprotected
well, springs, canals, lakes or rivers and over 2.5
billion (35%) lack access to adequate sanitation

5. WASH SCENARIO IN INDIA
Lack of access to water supply and drainage
facilities
• 87% of the households have access to improved source
of water and use tap, tube-well, hand-pumps and
covered wells as the main source for drinking water.
• Of these, 96% of urban households and 84% of rural
households have accessed to improved source of water
supply
• 47% have the source of water within the premises. A
good 36% households still have to fetch water from a
source located within 500 meters in rural areas and
100 meters in urban areas
(Source: Census 2011; WHO/UNICEF-2012)

6. WASH SCENARIO IN INDIA
Sanitation crisis:
• 53.1% (63.6% in 2001) of the households in India do not
have a toilet, with the percentage being as high as 69.3%
(78.1% in 2001) in rural areas and 18.6% (26.3% in
2001) in urban areas.
• 59% (626 million) Indians still practice open
defecation and that majority of them live in rural areas.
• Jharkhand tops the list with as high as 77% of homes
having no toilet facilities, while the figure is 76.6% for
Orissa and 75.8% in Bihar.

9. CHANGING SCENARIO
• Integration of housing, water and sanitation
programmes in 12th Five Year Plan
• In response to the situation, the budget for the
sector has been more than doubled, from Rs 1,500
crore in 2011-12 to Rs 3,500 crore for the coming
fiscal year.
• A Steering Committee of the Planning Commission
has proposed an allocation of Rs 44,116 crore (at a
hike of 675 per cent over the 11th plan allocation)
for sanitation and Rs 1,22,570 crore (hike of 312
per cent over the 11th plan allocation) for drinking
water in 12th Plan
• India has been constructing 1.5 million toilets a year
under its Total Sanitation Campaign. However, 50
per cent of them remain unuse

11. PART II: POLICIES, REGULATIONS AND
PROGRAMMES

12. POLICIES AND PROGRAMME
• Water supply and sanitation is a state responsibility
under the Indian constitution and states may give the
responsibility to Panchayat Raj Institution (PRI) in rural
areas
• GoI supplements the efforts of State Governments by
providing financial assistance under the centrally
sponsored Accelerated Rural Water Supply Programme
(ARWSP), started in 1972, now renamed as National
Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) since
01.04.2009
• Accelerated Rural Water Supply Programme was
modified as the National Rural Drinking Water
Programme (NRDWP) which was last updated in
2013.
• NRDWP has major emphasis on ensuring sustainability
of water availability in terms of potability, adequacy,
convenience, affordability and equity, on a
sustainable basis.

13. Cont.:
• Department of Drinking Water Supply was created in
Ministry of Rural development in 1999, to provide a
renewed focus with a mission approach to implement
programmes for rural drinking water supply
• Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation created as
separate Ministry on 13th July, 2011.
• In urban areas, responsibility is given to the
municipalities called urban local municipal bodies
(ULBs)

14. Cont.
• Responsibility for water supply and sanitation at the central
and state level is shared by various ministries at central level
and three ministries have responsibilities in the sector.
• Ministry for drinking water and sanitation- responsible for
regulation and policy framework and is the nodal Ministry for
the overall policy, planning, funding and coordination of the
flagship programmes of the Government of India viz. the
National Rural Drinking Water Programme(NRDWP) for
rural drinking water supply and the Swachh Bharat Mission
(Gramin) SBM(G) for sanitation.
• The Ministry for Housing and Urban poverty alleviation
• The Ministry of Urban development

15. PARADIGM SHIFT IN POLICY/PROGRAME
• 1949: Environmental Hygiene Committee (bhor committee)
• 1950: Water as state subject in Consitution
• 1969: National drinking water supply programme (UNICEF)
• 1972-73: Accelerated Rural water supply programme (ARWSP)
• 1981: India is party to International drinking water supply and sanitation decade
(1980-1990)- formed national apex body for policy formulation
• 1986: National drinking water mision & Central Rural sanitation programme
• 1987: First Water Policy drafted
• 1991: National drinking water mission renamed as Rajiv Gandhi national
drinking water mission
• 1999: Total sanitization campaign and formation of department of
drinking water under Ministry of rural development
• 2002: Swajaldhara ( In 1999-2000, Sector Reform Projects was started to
involve the community in planning, implementation and management of
drinking water schemes which was in 2002 scaled up as the
SwajaldharaProgramme.
• 2009: National drinking water supply programme (revised)
• 2008: National Urban sanitation policy
• 2011: Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation upgraded as separate
Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation
• 2012: Nirman Bharat Abhiyan
• 2014: Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin) for sanitation and innovation of new
technology in rural drinking water- 3 program divisions (water, water quality and
sanitation)

18. OBJECTIVES OF NRDWP
• Enable all households have access to safe and
adequate drinking water and within reasonable
distance;
• Enable communities to monitor and keep
surveillance on their drinking water sources;
• Ensure potability, reliability, sustainability,
convenience, equity and consumers preference to be
the guiding principles while planning for a
community based water supply system;
• Provide drinking water facility, especially piped
water supply, to Gram Panchayats that have
achieved open defecation free status on priority
basis;
• Ensure all government schools and anganwadis have
access to safe drinking water;

19. APPROACHES OF NRDWP
• Most rural water supply schemes use a centralized
approaches i.e. a government institution designs a
project with community, no water fees to be paid for
its subsequent operation
• In 2002, GoI came up with national level programe
to change the way in which water supply services are
supported in rural areas
• Swajaldhara decentralizes service delivery
responsibility to rural local governments and user
groups.
• Communities are being consulted and trained, and
users agree to pay a tariff that is set at a level
sufficiently high to cover operation and maintenance
costs, includes measures to promote sanitation and
to improve hygience behavior.

20. STRATEGIC PLANS & TARGETS
• The Ministry of DWS has prepared a Strategic Plan for
the rural drinking water sector for the period 2011 to
2022.
• Goal of the Strategic Plan is:
 To ensure, that every rural person has enough safe
water for drinking, cooking and other domestic needs as
well as livestock throughout the year including during
natural disasters and,
By Year 2017: (a) Drinking Water Facilities
• To ensure that at least 50% of rural households are
provided with piped water supply; at least 35% of rural
households have piped water supply with a household
connection; All services meet set standards in terms of
quality and number of hours of supply every day

21. STRATEGIC PLANS & TARGETS
By Year 2019: (a) Rural Sanitation facilities
• To attain a Clean and Open Defecation Free India by
2nd October 2019.
By 2022: (a) Drinking water facilities
• To ensure that at least 90% of rural households are
provided with piped water supply; <10% use public
taps and <10% use hand pumps or other safe and
adequate private water sources.
• Every rural person in the country will have access to
70 lpcd within their household premises or at a
horizontal or vertical distance of <50 meters from
their household.

22. SWASHH BHARAT MISSION
• Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin) –Clean India
campaign was launched on 2nd October, 2014 to
accelerate efforts to achieve universal sanitation
coverage, improve cleanliness and eliminate open
defecation in India by 2nd October 2019
• The goal of the Programme is to achieve Swachh
Bharat by 2nd October 2019.
• The Programme has two verticals- Swachh Bharat
Mission, Urban {SBM(U)} for cities and Swachh
Bharat Mission, Gramin {SBM(G)} for rural areas

23. Cont.
• Community based collective behavior change is
mentioned as the preferred approach, although the
States are free to choose the approach best suited
to them.
• New Programme provides flexibility to the States
in implementation of Programme
• Greater emphasis on capacity building, especially
in community approaches and Programme
management.
• Programme is being run as a citizen’s movement
with cooperation of all sects of the society
including the NGOs, Corporates, youth etc

24. CRITICAL ISSUES IN 12TH PLAN
• Need to focus on piped water supply rather than on
handpumps
• Enhancement of service levels for rural water supply
from the norm of 40 lpcd to 55 lpcd
• Greater thrust on coverage of water quality affected
habitations
• Making available additional resources for operation
and management of schemes
• Conjoint approach between rural water supply and
rural sanitation so as to achieve saturation of
habitations with both these services.
• Participative planning and implementation of water
resource management practices
• Gradual shift from over dependence on ground water
to surface water sources, and conjunctive use of
ground water, surface water and rainwater

25. PART III: KEY INDICATORS

26. Key Indicators: NSS-73rd round
Indicators on households having improved source of drinking water,
sanitation services
Number per 1000 households having drinking water within premises and
proportions of households travelling different distances to reach principal source
of drinking water
Average time (in minutes) taken in a day by household members to fetch drinking
water from outside the premises during
Average waiting time (in minutes) in a day for household members at the principal
source of drinking water at outside the premises d
households treating drinking water by any method
households getting good quality of drinking water
households who got sufficient water throughout the year for all household
activities
households with sanitation facilities
Households with improved draining and waste disposal facilities

27. PART IV:SDGs-TARGETS &
INDICATORS

33. PART V: HEALTH RISKS AND IMPACTS

34. BACKGROUND
• Approximately 80-90% of untreated sewage discharged
directly into rivers and streams, the main source of water
supply in cities. Human faeces remains one of the
world’s most dangerous pollutants, spreading microbes
that causes water borne diarrheal diseases.
• Lack of adequate sanitation and safe water has
significant negative impacts including diarrhoea/ water
borne diseases, chronic diseases, respiratory diseases ,
skin disorders, allergies , headache and eye infections
• 80% of all diseases and 1/3rd of deaths in developing
countries are caused by consumption of contaminated
water and 1/10th of productive time of each person is
lost due to water related diseases

37. WATER RELATED DISEASES
• Water borne: diarrhea diseases, infective
hepatisis, typhoid, guinea worm etc
• Water wasted: typhoid, trachoma, skin
infection, infective hepatitis
• Water based- guinea worm, schistosomiasis
• Water related: malaria and dengue fever etc.

38. Benefits of improving sanitation
• Reducing the spread of intestinal worms,
schistosomiasis and trachoma, which are neglected
tropical diseases that cause suffering for millions;
• Reducing the severity and impact of malnutrition;
• Promoting dignity and boosting safety, particularly
among women and girls;
• Promoting school attendance: girls’ school
attendance is particularly boosted by the provision
of separate sanitary facilities;
• Potential recovery of water, renewable energy and
nutrients from faecal waste.