Jal Jeevan Mission: UP ranks at the bottom, Gujarat seventh state to achieve 100 percent household tap water supply

New Delhi: Gujarat became the seventh state/Union territory to achieve 100 percent household tap water connectivity under the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM). Earlier, this milestone had been attained by Haryana, Telangana, and the smaller states/UTs of Goa, Puducherry, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, and Daman & Diu. JJM was established in 2019 to provide 55 liters of water per person, per day, through functioning tap connections to every rural family by the year 2024. According to the JJM website, out of the targeted 19.15 crore rural homes in India, 10.41 crore, or 54.36 percent, currently have tap water connections.

Uttar Pradesh ranks at the bottom among states with only 19.41 percent tap water connections. It has managed to provide tap water supply to 51.28 lakh households out of a total of 2.64 crores. In absolute numbers, Bihar (1.6 crores), Maharashtra (1.03 crores), and Gujarat (91.73 lakh) have provided the highest tap water connections under JJM.  

Since the start of the mission, a whopping 7.17 crore households have been provided with tap water connections. The year 2020-21 saw the highest tap water connections at 3.22 crore, followed by 2.05 crore in 2021-22. 

JJM, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet project, has been lauded on the global stage for improving health parameters among children. American economist and Nobel Prize winner Michael Kremer recently estimated that the project will save the lives of 1.36 lakh children under the age of five every year. Even the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) lauded the JJM last year, saying that such projects should be implemented in backward nations. 

However, the slow implementation of JJM in India’s most populated state of Uttar Pradesh has both officials and activists concerned. “UP’s size, population, and regional variations in water availability all pose formidable challenges, and western UP and the Bundelkhand region have different challenges. The state will have no choice but to adopt different strategies for each of their ecological zones,” VK Madhavan, chief executive of non-profit organisation WaterAid India, recently told a publication.