Delhi : Inspite of the COVID-19 induced roadblocks, Jal Jeevan mission has been making consistent strides towards providing clean tap water to every home by 2024.The government’s ambitious Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) has achieved a major milestone today, with 6 crore rural households getting tap water connections. It is a humungous achievement considering that the mission was announced in August 2019 with only 3.23 crore rural house holds having tap water connections.
Though the goal of this mission is to provide 55 litres of water per capita per day to every rural household through Functional Household Tap Connections (FHTC) by 2024, the mission includes extensive information, education and communication as components to create a Jan Andolan for water and to make it everyone’s priority.
As on 21 March 2022, around 9,24,01,150 rural households have been provided with tap water connections.The JJM also focuses on development of in-village piped water supply infrastructure to provide tap water connection to every rural household and also on development of reliable drinking water sources or augmentation of existing sources to provide long-term sustainability of water supply system. The programme also does technological interventions for removal of contaminants where water quality is an issue.JJM has also created numerous employment opportunities for the common people, viz. in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir as of February this year, 735 people have been nominated for training to ITI by the Jal Shakti department and another 550 people have been identified for skill training in masonry, plumbing, fitting, accounting etc.
Further, five people from each of 6,887 villages in UT had received training to test the quality of water supplied using Field Test Kits (FTKs).
According to an official statement of JJM in February, 100 districts have became ‘Har Ghar Jal’, i.e. every rural household in these districts is getting assured tap water supply. Chamba in Himachal Pradesh, is the 100th district in the country to become ‘Har Ghar Jal’. It also is the fifth aspirational district to achieve 100 per cent tap water supply. As on February, three States, viz. Goa, Telangana, and Haryana and three UTs, namely, Andaman & Nicobar islands, Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu, and Puducherry have become ‘Har Ghar Jal’. The other states that are close to achieving 100 percent coverage shortly are Punjab at 99 per cent, Himachal Pradesh at 93 per cent, Gujarat at 94 per cent, and Bihar at 90 per cent. All these states plan to become ‘Har Ghar Jal’ by 2022.
The mission has brought relief to women and young girls who faced the drudgery of fetching water walking long distance in search of water. To ensure health and well-being of children, a campaign was launched on 2 October 2020 to provide tap water in school, anganwadi centres and ashramshala of the country. In a short span of about 17 months, 8.49 lakh schools (83%) and 8.71 lakh (78%) anganwadi Centre across the country got access to tap water for drinking, cooking mid-day meal, handwashing and for use in toilets.
Besides JJM, the government has introduced various initiatives under Atal Bhujal Yojna, Namami Gange Mission, PM Krishi Yojana and Per Drop, More Crop Campaign for drinking water management and water supply for agriculture to support farmers and rural citizens..
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