If you are used to water treated with Reverse Osmosis (RO) method, you may be depriving yourself of much needed nutrients due to low levels of calcium and magnesium in it. And that could potentially cause calcium deficiency.
A study conducted by the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRD-PR) on setting up of RO plants in rural India has cautioned those tends to extract essential minerals and that they were being set up in several places despite absence of water quality issues.
Study of 21 GPs
The study focused on discovering if RO plants are set up only in those villages where quality of water is unfit for drinking or if it was coming up as a fashionable infrastructure.
The study covered 21 gram panchayats in seven States where the highest number of RO plants had been set up, as per data provided by Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Government of India. It included three gram panchayats in Telengana (Gantlavalli, Kammadanam and Pappireddyguda), and three in Andhra Pradesh (Akividu in West Godavari, Ramagiri in Anantapur, and Makavaripalem in Visakhapatnam).
Reflecting on the findings, P. Sivaram, head, Centre for Rural Infrastructure, NIRD-PR, said empirical verification revealed that in every third case, RO units have come up where there is no quality related problem in the water. “Our hunch was that possibly, gram panchayat heads feel elated to say that they provide RO-treated water to voters when in reality the water available is potable,” he said.
Apart from losing essential minerals, RO plants have several cost implications in terms of maintenance. In several panchyats, they were found to be operated by private players for profit or by NGOs rather than the panchyats themselves.
Cost implications
The study further revealed that in terms of the cost, people were paying for the water in all gram panchayats, with the costs varying between ₹50 to ₹150 per month depending on usage. Challenges continue to persist in their uptake since several families feel the taste of RO-treated water is bland, or that it is not affordable, and they preferred piped water supply.
Another major issue was the wastage of the reject water resulting from the RO systems. The study suggested that the reject water can be utilised by channelling it for other uses such as in school and anganwadi toilets like it is being done in some of the study villages in Rajasthan.
The study recommended that RO plants to be set up only in panchayats with water quality problems to avoid the high cost and maintenance burden.
