Water-WISER students contribute to a report on the Jal Jeevan Mission
Jal Jeevan Mission or ‘Water for Life’ mission is a flagship scheme of the Government of India to provide piped water supply to every rural household within premises. Announced by the Prime Minister in August 2019, the mission set out an ambitious target to cover the remaining 161 mn households which were lacking piped water supply in their premises by 2024, making it one of the world’s largest piped water supply program.
Commemorating the unique journey of Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), a special report was published by Sankala Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on climate and sustainability, in partnership with United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) on 20th September 2024 in New Delhi. The report provides insights into the innovative strategies adopted by the mission to successfully provide tap water supply connections to about 120 million households since its roll-out. Additionally, the book also compiled successful case studies offering an exhaustive look at the various building blocks that the mission relied on for this transition to improved services.
The report titled ‘Jal Jeevan Mission – Har Ghar Jal: A study of access to clean tap water to every rural home in India’ offers valuable lessons to other countries in similar settings facing challenges of scaling up regional efforts to a national level program. The report delves into the topics of planning for universal coverage ensuring equity and inclusion and leaving no one behind, identifying priority areas, accessing resources through convergence with other water programs, finding suitable and affordable technologies for water supply and increased public awareness, building capacities of stakeholders at all levels, ensuring transparency and accountability measures through third party monitoring and annual functionality surveys, and above all use of technology for monitoring service levels and water quality.
The report was released by officials of Sankala Foundation, UNOPS, and Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation in New Delhi
Two of the Water-WISER students who have previously worked on this mission under the guidance of the then Mission Director and Additional Secretary, Mr. Bharat Lal now had the opportunity to contribute to the report, this time as researchers and writers. Spurthi Kolipaka is a 3rd year PhD student at the University of Leeds, and Renjitha M.H. is a final-year PhD student at Cranfield University.
Spurthi visited India in April 2024 as part of her PhD’s data collection period and pre-planned with her supervisors to meet and work along with the wider researchers team at Sankala Foundation.
After discussing with her supervisors, Spurthi who penned a significant part of the report, while in India to collect data for her PhD research work in April 2024, engaged with the wider research team at Sankala Foundation. She supported the team by guiding them toward relevant resources and field personnel, sharing her experience of JJM planning and roll-out, helping with chapter structure and brainstorming, as well as editing and refining a few chapters. Renjitha further supported Spurthi by editing and finetuning the few chapters authored by her.
In Spurthi’s words, “I am beyond thrilled to see the published report. This was the result of a lot of hard work especially by the Sankala team researchers who I had the privilege to work with during my field visit.
This is probably the only report on JJM out there that truly captures the initial journey of JJM planning and roll-out, the myriad challenges faced by the team and the innovative strategies adopted. JJM stands as a shining example of systems change and the report hopefully offers valuable insights to other practitioners and researchers.
The report will soon be made available on the Sankala website or those interested can email Spurthi at cnsk@leeds.ac.uk.