The Jal Shakti Ministry on Wednesday tweeted that the government had provided 11 crore rural households with a tap water connection. Data from the Ministry’s dashboard suggest that 56% of the targeted 19.3 crore households had been covered. In September 2022, 53% of the households, or 10.2 crore households, had been covered.
Union Minister for Jal Shakti, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, tweeting about the achievement, said: “The vision of our PM Sh. Narendra Modiji, the relentless pursuit of the goals set out for Jal Jeevan Mission by the ministry and the effort of our team on ground has made this mega milestone possible.” “Eleven crore homes are now assured of health and well-being with this elixir of life reaching their doorsteps.”
In villages where the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) has reached, the adolescent girls no longer drop out of school to help their mother walk long distance and get water to quench their thirst, claimed Mr. Shekhawat, “It goes a long way in empowering and educating the girl child.”
Mr. Modi too congratulated the Ministry, via a tweet, on the achievement.
Last October, the Ministry made public the results of a Ministry-commissioned survey, of a cross-section of rural households, that suggested Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, Goa, and Puducherry reported more than 80% of households with fully functional connections, while less than half the households in Rajasthan, Kerala, Manipur, Tripura, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Sikkim had such connections.
A fully functional tap water connection is defined as a household getting at least 55 litres of per capita per day of potable water all through the year.
Close to three-fourths of households received water all seven days a week and 8% just once a week. On average, households got water for three hours every day, and 80% reported that their daily requirements of water were being met by the tap connections.
The Jal Jeevan Mission aims to provide safe and adequate drinking water through individual household tap connections by 2024 to all households in rural India.
The scheme has a financial outlay of ₹3.60 lakh crore, with the Centre funding 50% of the cost with States and Union Territories, except for Union Territories without a legislature, where it foots the entire bill, and northeastern and Himalayan States and Union Territories with legislatures, where it funds 90% of the bill.
