About Jal Jeevan Mission
Jal Jeevan Mission's primary output is to provide all rural households with a functional household tap connection (FHTC) by 2024. In parallel, the Mission also strives to achieve four key measurable outcomes: improved health conditions in rural communities; reduction in drudgery faced by women and girls; empowerment of women; reduced school dropout rates of upper primary school girls; and increase in employment opportunities for rural communities. Such an approach would ensure the socio-economic well-being of rural households. Jal Jeevan Mission is a time-bound mission-mode program that needs a robust institutional framework for its successful implementation to achieve the stated goal. Hence, a four-tier institutional mechanism is to be set up at the national, state, district, and village levels.
National Level
Post-independence At the time of the launch of India's planned development, the Environmental Hygiene Committee recommended a program to provide safe water supply to all villages within a certain period as part of the First Five Year Plan (1951–56). For this purpose, the National Water Supply Program was launched in 1954 under the health sector. Until the Third Five Year Plan (1961–1966), drinking water supply in rural areas was a component of the Community Development Program. This effort was supplemented by the Ministry of Health under the then National Water Supply and Sanitation Program. In 1972–73, the Accelerated Rural Water Supply Programme (ARWSP) was launched to supplement the efforts of state governments, especially in areas of acute scarcity and those endemic to water-borne diseases. The program gained further momentum during the Fifth Five Year Plan (1974–79) under the Minimum Needs Program.
In 1986, the National Drinking Water Mission (NDWM), popularly known as the Technology Mission, was launched in order to provide scientific input and cost-effective technological solutions to address water scarcity. In the Eighth Plan (1992–97), sub-missions for tackling quality problems, i.e., habitations suffering from excess arsenic, fluoride, iron, salinity, scarcity of water sources, and requiring sustainability of the sources and systems, were taken up.
In 1999-2000, decentralized, demand-driven, community-managed sector reforms were undertaken, involving Gram Panchayats and the local community in the planning, implementation, and management of drinking water schemes. This was later scaled up as Swajaldhara in 2002 and was implemented until 2007-08.
In 2004–05, ARWSP became part of Bharat Nirman, aiming for full coverage of habitations by 2008–09. The ARWSP was implemented until the year 2008–09 of the Eleventh Plan (2007–12). In 2009-10, it was modified and renamed the National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP), with a major emphasis on ensuring the sustainability of water availability in terms of potability, adequacy, convenience, affordability, and equity, on a sustainable basis, adopting a decentralized approach involving Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) and community organizations.
In 2013, certain changes were introduced in NRDWP, viz.: i.) providing a focus on pipe water supply schemes; ii.) wherever possible, enhancing service level from 40 lpcd to 55 lpcd; iii.) providing a greater thrust on water quality and Japanese Encephalitis-Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (JE-AES) affected districts; iv.) wastewater treatment, recycling; and v.) O&M of aging schemes. In 2017, NRDWP was restructured to i.) make it more competitive, result-oriented, and outcome-based; ii.) provide flexibility to states while implementing the program by reducing its components, and iii.) provide piped water supply, with the only exception allowed in JE-AES-affected districts.
The 14th Finance Commission (2015–2020) recognized health, education, drinking water, and sanitation as of national importance and defined sustainable drinking water supply systems as those being operated under a formal management model, having 100% household meters installed, and whose net revenues from water tariffs and subsidies are sufficient to cover at least the O&M costs of the system'. It has also recommended 100% metering of individual connections in both rural and urban households, commercial establishments, and institutions, and that individual connections be provided only when functional water meters are installed.