Mission Bhagiratha, on completion, would also help the Telangana Government in meeting the millennium sustainable development goals in terms of providing basic necessities to help do better in maternal mortality, infant mortality, nutrition, sanitation, education and other needs of the society at large.
“By providing potable, safe and affordable drinking water through household distribution through the Mission, the State can meet the sustainable development goals and even impact the life cycle as it influences several stages of life from pregnancy to adolescence improving socio-economic indicators,” explained Unesco’s water and sanitation expert S.R. Nalli here on Tuesday.
Training programme
He was presiding over the first week-long training programme being organised for investigators to take up baseline survey for the project assisted by the Centre for Social and Economic Studies (CESS). About 100 engineering students, boys and girls, drawn from different colleges were drafted for the exercise. A sample size of 1,200 villages were chosen for the survey to cover 15,000 habitations and seven parameters are to be checked like the sources of drinking water, demand, supply and so on. “We will review the impact of the Mission again after two to three years comparing with the survey now,” said Prof. Revathy of CESS.
Earlier, Rural Water Supply & Sanitation Engineer-in-Chief B. Surender Reddy informed that the entire nation was watching the progress of Mission Bhagiratha and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was thinking of taking the project nationwide.
Crediting the Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao for conceiving the project and ensuring it reached a stage when most work would be done by the year end, Mr. Reddy stated that even the conceptual stage was taken by his department saving ₹200 crore which private consultants would have charged. Objective is to provide potable water from 100 litres to 130-150 litres a day per head in the rural and urban habitations. After collecting water from various irrigation projects sources like Srisailam, Jurala, Manjeera, Godavari river and others, water supply would be increased from 48 TMC to 72 TMC in 30 years from giant inlet tanks under construction to treatment plants through steel pipelines criss-crossing the 31 districts. CESS Director S. Ghalab also spoke.
